An Analysis of Baccalaureate College Mission Statements

Abstract

We examined baccalaureate colleges mission statements to better understand how these organizations represent themselves to potential students and other external constituent groups. We drew these documents from two sources, the colleges' official web sites and an archive constructed and maintained by U.S. News and World Report. Most sampled colleges submitted revised or different mission statements to U.S. News than published officially on institutional websites. Our findings suggested that the communication patterns of baccalaureate colleges are both vague and idiosyncratic. Official mission statements often proved descriptive or appealed to normative concepts. The statements submitted to U.S. News, by contrast, often utilized ''strategically deployed shifters.'' These terms suggested legitimate content but eluded precise definition. Mission statements submitted to U.S. News thereby proved amenable to student recruitment efforts.

Organizational Identity in Higher Education: Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives

“…Such cases were evident at the department and institutional levels (Gonzales 2013 ;Mills et al 2005 ;Morphew and Jenniskens 1999 ;Waeraa and Solbakk 2008 ), often examining faculty responses to branding exercises and organizational change. Work on college and university promotional materials relied on discourse analysis or content analysis, with the rare quantitative analysis (Delucchi 1997 ;Hartley and Morphew 2008 ;Morphew and Hartley 2006 ;Taylor and Morphew 2010 ). Quantitative studies were more likely to be focused on strategic practices such as market positioning (Zemsky et al 1997 ) or enrollment management (DesJardins 2002 ).…”

“…The study suggests that mission statements communicate a broad set of interests among diverse stakeholders including accrediting agencies, rating guides, applicants, and the general public. Two recent studies of mission statements built on these fi ndings suggested that colleges and universities use mission statements to signal identity to important external stakeholders while being careful to employ terms that are strategic in their nebulousness (Morphew and Hartley 2006 ;Taylor and Morphew 2010 ).…”

Changing missions? How the strategic plans of research-intensive universities in Northern Europe and North America balance competing identities

“…All of the documents were analyzed using qualitative content analysis techniques (Krippendorff 2004). These and similar methods have been used in previous research on changing higher education missions to identify rhetoric linked to institutional ideology (Morphew and Hartley 2006;Taylor and Morphew 2010;Saichaie and Morphew 2014).…”

Responses to Conflicting Field Imperatives: Institutions and Agency Among Evangelical Christian Colleges

“…Patterns in campus strategy (Bastedo andBowman 2010, 2011;Bastedo 2009, 2011), communication (Hartley and Morphew 2008;Morphew and Hartley 2006;Taylor and Morphew 2010), and organizational structure (Hearn and Belasco in press;Morphew 2009;Tolbert 1985;Wilkins and Huisman 2012) have been explained as evidence of institutional processes. Many scholars understand religious organizations in similar terms.…”

“…In the recent past, ECCs emphasized this distinctiveness when presenting themselves to prospective tuition-paying students. Whereas the great majority of U.S. private colleges tout the exchange value of degrees that provide access to well-compensated careers (Breneman 1994;Dellucchi 1997;, evangelical Christian colleges historically have emphasized the chapel services, spiritual life, and other religious dimensions of their educations (Hartley and Morphew 2008;Morphew and Hartley 2006;Taylor and Morphew 2010). By so doing, campus officials sought to capitalize on their colleges' distinctive identities to attract tuition-paying students.…”