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ABSTRACT
There appears to be growing support for calls to accentuate marketing practices in higher education that emphasize positive psychology forms of satisfaction over simple measures of credentialing for employment (i.e., marketization). A study is reported that empirically considers the potential of acting upon these recent calls for including eudaimonia and well-being in measures of success in the operations of universities. Such efforts will necessarily occur within the domain of positive social psychology. We propose and empirically assess a theory of positive social psychology that reconciles self-determination theory, goal hierarchy theory (and means-end theory), as well as the theory of the mind associated with these calls. The reported study provides empirical evidence supporting the possibility that universities can affect the social well-being of students as stakeholders by focusing on eudaimonic- and flourishing-related goal achievement. This suggests an emphasis on higher forms of satisfaction. The implications for university marketers and decision makers, as well as social science researchers, are presented and discussed.
INTRODUCTION
The average cost of a college education continues to rise year after year. Today a fouryear in-state public education on average costs more than $20,000 annually. This cost more than doubles for a private education (www.collegedata.com). Given that it takes many students over four years to graduate, students (and their parents) are often facing a six-figure expense, an expense that continues to rise. This suggests that it is important as educators to step back and ensure that what students take-away from their college experience is both pertinent to their future job attainment as well as their lifelong pursuit of living well and happily. While a college degree may lead to a job, and subsequently an income, it is well accepted that money generally has a diminishing relationship with happiness. The present research supports the view that well-being is perhaps a better global measure of university "success" than simple employment counts (Taylor and Judson, 2014), and empirically demonstrates that eudaimonic goal achievement indeed does contribute to student well-being in higher education. .
These results are consistent with the emerging positive psychology literature. Fave (2013) argues that happiness is gaining increasing momentum as a core concept in social science research today, and that happiness research typically conceptualizes individual well-being from two different but...