Three Root Causes for the Impasse in Reputation Measurement for Higher Education Institutions

Monitoring the reputation of Higher Education Institutions is a key challenge. Despite decades of research and theory in Higher Education marketing addressing this issue, a definitive method for capturing and monitoring reputation of such institutions has yet to emerge. This paper argues that research into a theoretically sound method for capturing and monitoring the reputation of Higher Education Institutions has stalled due to three significant obstacles: (a) the complexity of defining the construct of reputation itself, (b) ongoing disputes regarding the appropriate methods of measurement for the constructs of reputation, (c) insufficient tailoring of the construct of reputation to the distinctive nature of Higher Education Institutions.