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Alumni Engagement in Higher Education: A Matter of Marketing and Leveraging Social Identities

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Competition in Higher Education Branding and Marketing

Abstract

University advancement officers are tasked with engaging the public in order to create and further relationships and to increased donations. There is a complex strategy at most US colleges and universities that leads to the engagement of alumni and others. These relationship strategies can be viewed as a form of marketing. Historically, American higher education, like much of the nonprofit sector, engaged all of its constituencies in very similar ways, with some differences mattering on the size of donation. However, as higher education continues to diversify and becomes less homogeneous, more nuanced strategies, that take into account social identity and cultural difference, are needed. This chapter explores existing literature on why social identity should be considered in higher education marketing and provides recommendations for practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, USA

    Noah D. Drezner

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  1. Noah D. Drezner
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  1. School of Education, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Antigoni Papadimitriou

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Drezner, N.D. (2018). Alumni Engagement in Higher Education: A Matter of Marketing and Leveraging Social Identities. In: Papadimitriou, A. (eds) Competition in Higher Education Branding and Marketing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58527-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58527-7_9

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