In recent times when the perceptions on the concept of public relations are differentiating, the studies which are conducted with the purpose of eliminating the ambiguity on the concept or on the issue of how the concept is perceived have been gaining an importance. In this context, it is thought that determining whether the concept of public relations, which is underpinned by communication, is perceived in line with its main principles or not is of high necessity. In this direction, the main purpose of this research is to examine the metaphorical perception on the university students who take and do not take the public relations course. This study was designed according to the phenomenology design through metaphorical analysis technique in the scope of qualitative research design, and the collected data were content-analyzed. The study group of this research consists of 63 (34 male / 29 female) students who take the public relations course and 40 (20 male / 20 female) students who do not take the course. As a data collection tool, the participants were asked to define the expression of “Public relations implementations are as ……, because…..” in order to identify the metaphors (mental images) of the participants on the concept of ‘public relations’. The results of this study demonstrated that the participants who take and do not take the public relations course have similar metaphorical perceptions, and at the same time, it was observed that the participants who do not take the public relations course perceive public relations as a department and a managerial communication function. It can be concluded that the education that the participant received on management phenomenon in the faculty of economics and administrative sciences have an impact on this result.