2014 Volume 10 Issue 1 Pages 125-146
Current Japanese universities cannot escape from conducting public relations targeted at potential university candidates. The origin of the need for public relations is rooted in the national policy to encourage the provision of information to university-bound students in order to help them choose their career course. However, the purpose of providing information about a university has been shifting toward the recruitment of freshman candidates. In Japan, research on this topic is just beginning. So far, the national universities have been the primary conductors of researcher on this topic, beginning in 2000, with a focus on assessing the effectiveness of public relations for the recruitment of favorable students. In the present study, we analyzed the responses to items concerning public relations of questionnaires given to the applicants for the “type II admissions office examinations” of the School of Engineering, Tohoku University, collected over a 10-year period. The results show that there is no difference in the responses with respect to the applicants’ hometown for the paper-or-on-line-based public relations activities. However, face-to-face activities were more effective for local applicants. Over the study period, public relations activities became increasingly important to the participants, although expanding these activities has imposed heavy loads on university faculties and staffs.
