The purpose of this study is to understand how colleges and universities use language to represent themselves on their institutional websites (official websites of higher education institutions). Organizations, like colleges and universities, seek to create and maintain a distinctive identity in an effort to build legitimacy (i.e., status) and attract students (i.e., tuition dollars). Institutional websites are increasingly important to the admissions and marketing practices of colleges and universities due to their ability to rapidly communicate a significant amount of content to a vast audience. Colleges and universities use language, whether textual (i.e., written) or visual (i.e., images), to position and differentiate themselves from other institutions and promote their efforts. This study utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the language on the institutional websites of 12 colleges and universities across a number of characteristics (e.g., control, type, geographic region, admissions selectivity) in the United States. Theoretically, CDA provides the means to examine everyday language in an effort to raise awareness about issues of inequality, such as access to education. Methodologically, Fairclough's approach to CDA has three dimensions of analysis. The first dimension is descriptive analysis where the intent is to describe the properties of the textual and visual elements. The second dimension involves interpretive analysis where the goal is to examine the contents of language and its functional parts to understand and interpret the connections between the role of language and the greater social structures it reflects and supports. Societal analysis, the third dimension, focuses on explanations of larger cultural, historical, and social discourses surrounding interpretations of the data. The analyses from this study suggest that colleges and universities utilize a common promotional discourse en masse to market rather systematic representations of "higher education" despite the fact that they vary widely by a number of institutional characteristics. Specifically, analyses reveal that institutions use language to repeatedly establish prestige and relevancy by touting the accomplishments of their institutional actors. The institutions attempt to engage the viewer with relational language, present numerous co-curricular experiences along with numerous images related to generic institutional characteristics (e.g., architecture, campus scenery), and multiple layers of navigation. The scholarly commitment associated with higher education plays a reduced role while the intangibles available to the prospective student are at the forefront of representations in the sample. Institutions also poorly represent other social goods (e.g., class, sexual orientation). Of the 453 images in the study, 98 feature a non-white actor (21%) and 146 feature a female actor (32%). Representations of diverse actors often appear in the form of caricatures (e.g., Native American in tribal dress). Given the mission and rhetoric stemming from many postsecondary institutions, including the institutions in this sample, to increase access to education for underrepresented individuals and enhance diversity in all its forms, the language utilized on the websites does not align with such statements. By deploying similar promotional discourse, the institutions choose what to present, emphasize, and exclude. Hence, institutions retain a great amount of control over information the viewer has access to on the institutional website. The language in use reveals that the institutions retain significant control over its actors with strategic placement of obligational discourse and, in most cases, complete silence on issues. Such discourse constructs an unrealistic portrayal of higher education while simultaneously reducing the role higher education has as a social institution committed to teaching, research, and service.

本研究的目的在於了解當前高等教育的改革趨勢，進而探討與分析越南高等教育對當前高教改革趨勢的相關改革及其所衍生的問題，並提出一些建議，作為越南教育主管當局的參考。 基於高等教育大眾化、市場化及國際化的理論基礎，本研究採用文件分析與訪談法進行研究，探討與分析越南高等教育對當前高等教育改革趨勢的相關改革及其所衍生的問題。經過研究後，本研究得到以下的結論： 一、大眾化、市場化及國際化是當前高等教育改革趨勢 二、越南高等教育發展的各個時期經過許多變遷和不斷地改革 三、教育品質低落是當前越南高等教育的最大問題 四、為滿足國家發展的人力資源需要及人民學習的需求，越南高等教育加速大眾化 五、在高等教育市場化的趨勢下，越南高等教育以革新教育管理制度、推動社會化教育政策及結合產學合作方式等改革來因應。 六、為提高國內高等教育品質及與國際接軌，越南政府以留學生政策、學術交流合作及結合國內外合辦高等教育政策，來推動越南高等教育國際化。 七、越南高等教育大眾化導致量與質不均衡、整併及增設高校問題及非公立高等教育機構的問題 八、越南高等教育市場化所衍生的問題包括教育市場尚未完全形成、管理制度的問題、社會化教育政策的問題。 九、人才流失、國內高等教育市場面臨國際競爭壓力及經費不足導致國際交流合作困難是越南高等教育國際化的主要問題。 / The purposes of this study is to explore the reform trends of higher education; to analyze the reforms of higher education in Vietnam and its problems and then to offer some suggestions to the Vietnamese educational administration as a reference. Based on the basic theory of massification, marketization and internationalization of higher education, analyze the reforms of Vietnamese higher education and its problems through the document analysis and interview methods. The study has following findings: 1.Massification, marketization and internationalization are the trends of higher education reform in the world. 2.Vietnamese higher education system has undergone several periods of reform and every period has its features. 3.Low quality is the most serious problem of Vietnamese higher education. 4.The needs of manpower for national development and the learning need of society have resulted in accelerating the massification of higher education in Vietnam. 5.Innovation of the management system, promotion of the educational socialization and industry-academy cooperation are the resolutions to face with the marketization of higher education in Vietnam. 6.In order to improve the quality of higher education and to integrate into the world’s level, Vietnamese government has promoted the internationalization of higher education by the policies of teachers and student mobility, academy exchange and inter-cooperation. 7.The massification of higher education in Vietnam has resulted in the imbalance between quality and quantity and many problems from the amalgamation and the non-public higher education institutions system. 8.Education market has not completely shaped, the problems of management system and educational socialization policy are resulted from the marketization of higher education in Vietnam. 9.Brain drain, pressure from the directly competitiveness with foreign universities and lack of finance are the problems of Vietnamese higher education system in internationalization process.