Whether an institution identifies college students as its consumers (Wyckoff 1998) or to evaluate the
impact of general advertising slogan (Mathur and Mathur 1995), the purpose of higher education
institutions in creating an advertising slogan should be interesting, reflective, and distinctive. This
strategy is not as used in business. Research shows that the transfer of the marketing concept in
business for university marketing today has become a common and practical matter (Sherr and Lozier
1991; Kotler and Fox 1985). Therefore, the main objective of the university in order to develop a
slogan has to be adapted to the philosophy and culture of potential students as consumers.
The slogan owned by the university or higher education institution in Indonesia has a wide range of
forms; some are in the form of words, clauses, sentences, in addition, there are some using wider
forms such as discourse. The arrangement of slogan is unique, interesting, and in appropriate with the
vision and mission of the university or higher education institution.
To achieve the goal in developing the slogan, the language selection is very important. Language
used in the slogans of private universities in Bandung Indonesia are varied : not only Indonesian as the
national language used in the slogan, many universities are using the local language, and yet the most
emerging today is the use of foreign languages especially English.
Many factors play a role in the choice of language in the slogan. One factor in the choice of language
in the slogan of the university/college is for image building. It is undeniable that the reason why
prospective students choose universities are greatly influenced by their perceptions of the university.
The students choose universities that they are familiar with and have a good image. The image factor
affects the decision taken by prospective students when selecting a university. Proper visual identity
of a college (one of which is the slogan / motto) can be an appropriate strategy in building the image.
Thus, whether the selection of foreign languages especially English, which is currently used widely
for slogans in several universities in Indonesia may improve the image of a college or not at all? How
about the existence of Indonesian as the national language and the language of instruction in
education? This study is conducted in several universities in Bandung Indonesia which use English in
their slogan. The reason why this research is conducted in Bandung because there are many private
universities established in this city, and some choose to use English in their slogan rather than using
Indonesian or Sundanese language as the language of the region. In addition,the purpose of this
research has been formulated as the folowing :
1. The research was conducted to find out the students’ perception towards the use of English in
the universities’ slogans.
2. The research was coducted to discover the students’perception towards the image
development of the universities.
3. The research was conducted to find out whether there is a significant correlation between the
use of English in universities’s slogan and the development of image of the universities.