How Korean universities portray themselves in the global marketplace: text-mining analysis of university president's messages

PurposeThis study aims to examine university president's messages (PMs) on Korean university websites to analyze how Korean universities present their image and position themselves in the global marketplace.Design/methodology/approachAssuming that visions, missions and strategies might vary depending on the characteristics of a university, the study analyzed PMs according to university type: research, teaching and technology. The authors applied text analysis to 105 Korean universities' PMs to understand the images they project. The authors also used text mining on the PMs to examine the frequencies of keywords, to create word clouds, to investigate the keywords' degrees of centrality and to conduct sentiment analysis.FindingsThe findings show that Korean universities' PMs project hybrid images, simultaneously portraying the universities as public institutes that produce public goods and as globally competitive strategic actors. In addition, while Korean university PMs explicitly position the universities as education-oriented, they nonetheless reveal that the universities pursue both research-oriented and education-oriented goals.Originality/valueThis is the study to examine PMs using text mining with Python to extract information and reveal hidden meanings regarding how universities portray themselves on their websites. Highlighting current challenges faced by universities, this article argues for continued discussion on their societal roles and their strategies for positioning themselves in today's globalized and marketized higher education environment.