University image in context of educational intentions of school graduates

The problem of correlation of the models of the Higher Educational Establishment(HEE) real image concerning educational intentions of school graduates was investigated. The results are summarized in the givenarticle. Tomsk is considered to be a city with a high level of competition of the HEEs. There are seven state, two private universities anda number of branches and representatives of universities from other cities. The heightened competition is also caused by the so-calleddemographic gap of the 1990s, which caused the shortage of university applicants. The aim of the research is to study the ideal outwardimage of a State University and its correlation with the real models of the popular Universities of Tomsk in the context of schoolgraduates' intentions on higher education. A number of indicators to measure educational intentions are offered, namely: a reasonableintake of people in the situation of choice of both the profession and the educational establishment. To study the model of image theoutward characteristics were taken from scientific literature and adopted to Tomsk HEEs. The research showed that the greater part ofschool-graduates had a mixed type of motivation choosing the University: quality of education, certain specialty, and ability to get agood job placement. The semantic differential scale was used to create the model of an ideal university image. The results show themost vivid image features of the University. They are leadership, activity and popularity. All these features belong to social capital.Wealth, innovation, up-to-dateness and size are also important. These characteristics correlate with cultural and economic capital. Themajority of the interviewers believe that availability is the best variant. But some people within the group have contrary opinions, whichproves the fact that they prefer to make more efforts while preparing and entering HEEs and get prestigious education, which providescompetitive advantage at the labour market. School graduates sometimes tend to set their chances for getting free and targeted placesin the university. In most cases intention as a realized aspiration for getting higher education is an absolute purpose of Tomsk schoolleavers.The most important factors for choosing a certain University are the quality of education and personal interest in the specialty.

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