Shaping Perceptions: Sustaining the Corporate Image of Public Universities in Malaysia

Controversies and portrayals of media towards the public universities able to tarnish universities’ reputation and trust among the stakeholders. The implications have led to poor enrolment and low positive visibility in Malaysia’s largest public university. The corporate image of one higher institution is important to ensure the survival of one organisation specifically in a higher institution. Therefore, knowing and identifying the level of the organisation will help the institution sustainability in the long run. Besides, the aims of university ranking in comparison to private higher institutions are risking the image of public universities as the good rankings. Due to this reason, declination in placing stakeholders’ preference to choose public universities is no longer a first choice. These issues have led the current study to explore the perception of the stakeholders of public universities and its effects on the university’s corporate image. Findings show that there is significant impact of stakeholder’s perception on the university’s corporate image sustainability. The four factors that significantly contribute to corporate image sustainability are quality confidence (r= 0.771), quality commitment (r=0.665), university responsibility and university achievement (r=0.742; r=0.819). Thus, the university must focus on improving the four (4) factors to improve corporate image sustainability to ensure its survival in the future.