UNIVERSITIES AND THEIR IDENTITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Universities in the 21st century feel the need, more than ever, to brand themselves and to assert their identity in the area of higher education, be this in the realm of their national context or on the international arena. A crucial element of the effort for branding resides in selecting or adopting a name which can single out a particular university and help it assess its unique features. The paper aims to highlight the main types of names used in labelling universities, contributing thus to studies dedicated to analyzing trends in studying the transformations in higher education. The paper discusses the results of the analysis carried out on the corpus of Romanian accredited universities in the 21st century, be they public or private. The analysis and comparison of the 105 universities showed major types of labeling universities, among which geographical references, descriptive explanations of the profile, symbolic names of (famous) scientists or founders are the most popular. There is evidence that coining more than two elements makes the name fuzzy and has a contrary effect than the one to help the branding process. The findings of this study open the path towards a deeper understanding of the factors that help or hinder the branding effort for universities, especially for the ones that still need to make their way in facing globalization and internationalization.