Customer Capital in Higher Education Institutions; Present and Future Strategic Decisions

All types of institutions face many challenges in the context of recent characteristics of the societies and economies. One of them is the proces of better understanding the very dynamic customer needs; this involves that a high quality for goods and services does not only mean they provide higher satisfaction in a classical way, but they generate experiences. Specific literature reveal that creating memorable events can become one of the most competitive advantage for companies. Nowadays, higher education institutions have to become more and more attractive to potential candidates and even to new coming students. It is no longer true the fact that having a certain number of students as new entrants means aproximately the same number of graduates. Fluctuations affect the annual number of students because of many reasons - difficulty to accomodate in another city, financial issues when the city is more expensive than the home town, the profile of study is not what he or she expected to be etc. Since information and communication have accelerated the knowledge, new generations of students have developed higher standards about what they get, no matter what it is about - goods or services, including education. Therefore, in order to become more attractive, higher education institutions must look for a new type of competitive advantage. A solution to this is the investment in the customer capital. In the quality management approach, students are the higher education institutions' clients. Therefore, customer capital becomes student capital. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the importance of the student capital in the proces of creating a high competitive advantage for higher education institutions. The main objectives of the paper are: to define and describe the student capital, to identify the perceptions of the young generation on short and long term about student-higher education institution relationship and to reveal strategic decisions for effective management and leadership in higher education institutions.