TY - JOUR AU - Datsenko, Tetiana AU - Vyhovska, Olha AU - Sinko, Andrii PY - 2020/12/30 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - SOCIAL MEDIA AND HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: USING SOCIAL NETWORKS TO RECRUIT STUDENTS JF - The Modern Higher Education Review JA - edreview VL - IS - 5 SE - INFORMATIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION DO - 10.28925/2518-7635.2020.5.9 UR - https://edreview.kubg.edu.ua/index.php/edreview/article/view/92 SP - 91-99 AB - <p>The number of&nbsp;offers in&nbsp;higher education both in&nbsp;Ukraine and&nbsp;everywhere in&nbsp;the&nbsp;world is&nbsp;quite large, and&nbsp;accordingly the&nbsp;competition for&nbsp;new students is&nbsp;high. Higher education institutions (HEIs) in&nbsp;such conditions must know how to&nbsp;effectively present themselves to&nbsp;target audiences. New digital technologies and&nbsp;social media can help. Social media has become especially important during the&nbsp;quarantine restrictions associated with the&nbsp;COVID-19 pandemic.<br>Universities have to&nbsp;use the&nbsp;Internet as&nbsp;their main source of&nbsp;communication, both for&nbsp;disseminating information and&nbsp;for&nbsp;recruiting new students. As&nbsp;a&nbsp;result, the&nbsp;use of&nbsp;social media in&nbsp;higher education is&nbsp;growing rapidly, and&nbsp;HEIs are making increasing efforts to&nbsp;establish their online presence. Higher education institutions try to&nbsp;establish contact with their potential students when they study in&nbsp;high school using various media platforms, including social networks and&nbsp;messengers.</p><p>This article is&nbsp;devoted to&nbsp;the&nbsp;theoretical analysis and&nbsp;practical research of&nbsp;using social media, in&nbsp;particular social networks, by&nbsp;higher education institutions in&nbsp;Ukraine to&nbsp;recruit students and&nbsp;maintain two-way communication with them.<br>The&nbsp;study has shown that most freshmen actively used social networks to&nbsp;search for&nbsp;information about a&nbsp;HEI and&nbsp;some of&nbsp;them maintained a&nbsp;dialogue with the&nbsp;university through these social networks before the&nbsp;admission. An&nbsp;important regularity has been defined: the&nbsp;more widely and&nbsp;qualitatively a&nbsp;higher education institution is&nbsp;presented in&nbsp;social networks, the&nbsp;more often entrants and&nbsp;students turn to&nbsp;them in&nbsp;search of&nbsp;the&nbsp;necessary information. However, social networks still remain an&nbsp;auxiliary tool, as&nbsp;the&nbsp;majority of&nbsp;Ukrainian entrants first of&nbsp;all trust the&nbsp;official websites and&nbsp;feedback of&nbsp;graduates when choosing a&nbsp;higher education institution. In&nbsp;any case, the&nbsp;higher education marketing is&nbsp;becoming increasingly digital and&nbsp;this trend doesn’t look to&nbsp;slow down anytime soon.</p> ER -