Personality development and the college experience

Studies of freshman-senior data on undergraduates show that, despite major differences among institutions and students, the direction of net change was basically the same in several diverse colleges. Institutional freshmen means spanned a wide range, yet students became more autonomous, more aware, more integrated, more aesthetically sensitive, more tolerant, more liberal in religious views, and less concerned about material possessions. Although all students tended to change in the same direction at all colleges, they did not become more similar; diversity increased for the total group and, more often than not, diversity increased within each college.When sub-groups of similar students were examined within institutions, different patterns of change appeared, and were systematically related to such factors as college climate, student characteristics, teaching practices and study activities, and student-faculty relationships. Thus, differential change occurred as a function of institutional fit. When there is a close fit change proceeds along lines indicated by cultural and genetic forces and is consistent among diverse colleges. Where there is a misfit — students who have not developed to the general level at which a college operates, or whose development has gone beyond the operating level of a college — significant changes occur which are strongly associated with varied college characteristics and educational practices.The research reported here was supported by NIMH Grant #MH14780-05     

Measures and predictors of educational growth with four years of college

The potential utility of a college admissions test as a measure of the cognitive learning outcomes of general education is investigated. A residual form of the ACT Assessment was administered to a stratified random sample of 112 seniors at Tennessee Technological University. Detailed comparisons of gain scores are made with those of a previous study which focused upon educational growth with two years of college. Although the results show substantial gains in performance on the ACT Assessment for the seniors, the absence of demonstrable relationships with institutional experience or exposure variables together with the presence of ceiling effects warrant the recommendation that admissions tests are not appropriate as indicators of cognitive learning outcomes.Presented at the Twentieth Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Atlanta, April 1980.     

The becoming place: A study of educational change in a small college

One of the more astonishing characteristics of educational research is the relative lack of social organizational analyses of higher educational institutions. There is even a greater gap in the literature with regard to thechange process associated with a given university or college. The present study is an examination of one college's attempt to change from a traditional white female finishing college to a larger biracial and coeducational college committed to experimental and innovative educational programs. Two ideal types of educational social organizations are utilized as explicit aids for the specification of the educational change process observed for the Becoming Place during the time period 1969 to 1975. The major findings, which are based on several data sources, can be summarized as follows. (1) Even when a proposed educational change is characterized by ideals of maximum involvement in the decision making process for all members of a college community, resistance to the change can be very substantial. (2) Ironically, little or no involvement by the faculty, students, and alumni in the initial decision to innovate was a major factor for the resistance to educational social change. The research is concluded with a consideration of the findings in terms of possible implications for the future of small colleges.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Knoxville, TN, April 1980.     

Cooperative Work Experience Education Program

Community colleges face a laundry list of challenges. In the forefront is the lack of bachelor's degree attainment of community college transfer students. Community colleges are taking a variety of steps to aid transfer. One of the newer trends focuses on the benefits of collaborative partnerships between a community college and four-year institutions. The impact of collaborative partnerships is especially significant to students in rural areas where access to higher education has been limited for several reasons. Nine years ago, Hazard Community and Technical College (HCTC) partnered with several public and private four-year institutions to provide students with increased access to bachelor degree programs. The resulting concurrent use partnership model, the University Center of the Mountains (UCM; http://www.ucmky.net), may be viewed as an example of the advantages offered by this particular step. UCM is a response to critics of the community college baccalaureate who point to a variety of potential problems when the community college mission is extended in this fashion.     

Retired professors and professional activity: A comparative study of three types of institutions

This study compares the professional activities of retired professors from liberal arts colleges, a comprehensive university, and a major research university. Results show that a large majority of faculty continue to perform professional roles and that strength of ties to colleagues and professional organizations outside the institution are correlated with professional activity at all types of institutions. Major differences among institutions are: (1) liberal arts college and research university faculty show consistency between pre- and postretirement professional activity levels, whereas comprehensive university faculty do not; (2) university faculty show higher levels of participation in a number of professional activities than do liberal arts college faculty; (3) rated importance of research or other creative work is related to professional activity for comprehensive university faculty and rated importance of consulting and university service are related to professional activity for research university faculty.     

Growth and development of college administrative structures

Current research suggests that organizations tend to move through distinct growth stages from a more person-centered to a more task-oriented bureaucracy. The study reported here examined the structural characteristics of community colleges at regular intervals. Five major growth stages were found, each similar to a theoretically derived growth period.The colleges progressed from having, in their early years, decentralized decision-making, few and flat reporting spans, and few structured and controlled activities, to having, in their later years, many tall reporting spans and many structured and controlled activities. They moved toward centralized decision-making in the middle years and then reverted to decentralized forms in later years.     

The Discounting Dilemma: Institutional Benefits,Unintended Consequences,and Principles for Reform

In recent years, concerns regarding runaway college tuition and student loan debt have risen to the forefront of the public consciousness, undermining confidence in the value of a college degree. Ironically, the very issue that is now causing such alarm—high tuition—has been a signature feature of the financial model intentionally employed by the vast majority of smaller private colleges and universities in the United States, including members of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU). In the “high-price–high-aid” model, postsecondary institutions mark up their “sticker price” (meaning the publicized cost of attending per year) and then offset the tuition hike with sizable discounts that take the form of institutional grants marketed as scholarships. This article examines the institutional benefits and unintended consequences of tuition discounting, giving special attention to effects within the evangelical Christian segment of the private sector of American higher education. The article concludes by offering a set of principles for reforming tuition pricing and financial aid practices at Christian colleges and universities.     

Effects of key state policies on private colleges and universities: sustaining private-sector capacity in the face of the higher education access challenge

The relationship between key state policy variables — (1) relative (private–public) tuition prices, (2) state student-aid funding, and (3) public institution density — and the competitive position of private colleges and universities is examined. Elite private schools are found to be nearly impervious to state policy. Large and moderately selective private institutions are adversely affected by public institution density and low public prices. Such prices divert students who would otherwise prefer these private institutions to similar public schools. State student aid funding most affects the enrollment market shares of the small, low-selectivity private colleges enrolling the greatest proportions of minority and modest-income students. The findings suggest state policies in this era of strong demand for higher education and constrained public sector capacity should use price signals (student aid and public institution pricing) to encourage students to consider seriously whether private higher education might serve their needs as well as or better than public institutions.     

Impacts on college administration: Management information systems and management by objectives systems

Forty-nine private liberal arts colleges received grants from the Exxon Education Foundation to improve their management procedures. Research was conducted to determine the success of the management innovations, and the impact of the process on the college's management. About half the colleges had innovations that completely failed because of staff turnover, inadequate administrative support, or other causes. In the other, more successful group the research showed a number of positive impacts of the projects: (1) Management Information Systems were quite useful in providing comprehensive management data, in analyzing hot spots of trouble, and increasing sophistication of administrators; (2) Management by Objectives projects increased administrative and faculty morale and insured more adequate planning, and (3) combinations of both MIS and MBO projects produced the strongest positive impact. Both types of projects, however, failed to link planning with budgeting, a major flaw.     

College presidents' role performance and faculty satisfaction

This research analyzed faculty evaluations of college presidents' role performance with the intent of identifying underlying dimensions and to ask further which dimensions predicted faculty satisfaction with presidents. Data were gathered from 896 faculty members from two technical colleges, three community colleges, two private universities and three public universities in a Western state. The factor analysis revealed three relatively independent dimensions of the presidential role: personal-public image, faculty and student interaction with presidents, and absence of autocratic leadership style. The personal-public image was the most important dimension and predicted faculty satisfaction across the four types of institutions of higher learning. Faculty-student interaction with the president, while not as important a dimension of the presidential role, predicted faculty satisfaction in three institutional types, but not in public universities. The absence of autocratic leadership style predicted satisfaction in community and technical colleges.     

Skill School Boys: Masculine Identity Formation Among White Boys in an Urban High School Vocational Autoshop Program

Through interviews and observations, I explore how a group of white working-class boys who have family traditions in auto repair construct notions of masculinity in a public-vocational-school autoshop class in Buffalo, New York. Many of the students in this group say that they plan to open their own garages on graduation. Although there are many facets to the production of a sense of manhood, I focus on the ways in which young white males in a restructuring economy narrate a sense of self grounded in the area of work on a multiethnic shopfloor—a sphere which they ultimately coconstruct around notions of the racially deviant other. At present, there is not a lot of literature on identity formation processes among youth who are trained in school to become trades-people, particularly in relation to jobs that are typically coded male.     

An Approach to Measuring Cognitive Outcomes Across Higher Education Institutions

Over the past decade, state legislatures have experienced increasing pressure to hold higher education accountable for student learning. This pressure stems from several sources, such as increasing costs and decreasing graduation rates. To explore the feasibility of one approach to measuring student learning that emphasizes program improvement, we administered several open-ended tests to 1365 students from 14 diverse colleges. The strong correspondence between hand and computer assigned scores indicates the tests can be administered and graded cost effectively on a large scale. The scores were highly reliable, especially when the college is the unit of analysis; they were sensitive to years in college; and they correlated highly with college GPAs. We also found evidence of value added in that scores were significantly higher at some schools than at others after controlling on the schools mean SAT score. Finally, the students said the tasks were interesting and engaging.     

Why bright college students won't teach

A case study of the career expectations of noneducation college seniors (primarily in high demand fields) reveals that present policies, such as career ladders, merit pay, and traditional college loan programs, may have little positive impact on their consideration of teaching as a career alternative. For the brightest of the students, the most significant reasons why they won't teach relatenot to the lack of financial reward in teaching, but to frustrating working conditions, bureaucratic requirements, the lack of professional control, and few opportunities for intellectual growth, as well as their intolerance for diversity in the workplace and their perception of teaching as a boring job. In most cases, these negative lessons about teaching were learned while they were public school students. The recent movement to professionalize teaching would appear to be an important step in luring these bright students into teaching. However, professionalism alone will not ensure a school district's ability to attract and retain bright college students as teachers.     

More Than a Pipeline Problem: Labor Supply Constraints and Gender Stratification Across Academic Science Disciplines

Employing a nationally representative sample of science faculty in U.S. colleges, we investigate 3 explanations for persisting differences in women's faculty representation across science fields even after adjusting for women's variable representation among doctoral recipients. First, we examine labor market factors: (a) differential growth rates and critical mass in the supply of women doctoral recipients, (b) growth or contraction in academic and nonacademic job opportunities, and (c) presence of foreign-born scholars. Second, we control for institutional explanations such as differential rates of faculty unionization and less receptivity to women at prestigious or research-oriented universities and fields that are applied, soft, or nonlife sciences. Third, gender role explanations are addressed by controlling for gender differences in work experience, work interruptions, and the prestige of doctoral credentials. After finding that none of these explanations account fully for distinctive patterns among science fields in the faculty gender composition, we discuss how they may reflect differences in academic cultures.     

COLLEGE RANKINGS: Democratized College Knowledge for Whom?

Every fall the opening of the academic year is heralded by an ever increasing number of newsmagazines that rank colleges. In addition to the standard bearers of this market — U.S. News and World Report and Money — magazines that offer their readers advice on how to choose a college are proliferating. For example, one can find lists of the "best colleges" and "best buys" accompanied on newstands by the top jock schools (Sports Illustrated), the best party schools (Playboy), and the best colleges for Asian Americans (A. Magazine). This paper is a study of who uses the contentious and seemingly influential newsmagazine rankings of U.S. colleges and universities, and an analysis of what types of freshmen find these rankings useful in making their choice of college. Equally important, it is a discussion of why reputations are important and how they can serve as a hedge against uncertainty. Finally, the paper provides an analysis of the for-profit sector's encroachment into a critical educational equity arena-college access-embedded within a discussion of whether widely available college rankings result in democratized college knowledge.     

The dimensions of academic scholarship: Faculty and administrator views

Faculty and administrators responded to 32 activity statements related to scholarship on a frequency basis and on the characteristicness of the role. Approximately 1,000 faculty members in 24 colleges and universities and 55 administrators from 5 of the schools participated. Factor analysis revealed 6 dimensions of scholarship — professional activity, research (publishing), teaching, service, artistic endeavor, and engagement with the novel, the last being a new conception, one valued highly by both faculty and administrators in all types of colleges and universities. Significant differences appeared with respect to faculty and administrative views on the importance of research in regional universities.     

Insiders,outsiders, and the community college: A sociology of knowledge perspective

It is proposed that a more comprehensive view of the community college would emerge if a sociology of knowledge perspective toward analyses of that institution were adopted. Robert K. Merton's discussion of insiders and outsiders is applied to the often conflicting images of the role of the community college found in analyses of those affiliated with that institution (insiders) and those who view it from the vantage of the university (outsiders). It is suggested that a synthesis of insider and outsider perspectives is possible.     

Redistributive fee increases, net attendance costs, and the distribution of students at the public university

This paper examines the effect of policies that increase tuition at public four-year colleges while returning a substantial portion of the revenue to economically disadvantaged students in the form of increased financial aid awards. Such “redistributive fee increases” are demonstrated to have potentially important effects on the distribution of students choosing to attend in-state public four-year colleges. Specifically, if in-state public four-year net attendance costs increase by themselves high-test students are far more likely than low-test students to choose alternative paths while if the net attendance costs of alternative paths also increase Black and Hispanic students are most likely to choose alternative paths.     

Normative Support for Improving Undergraduate Education in Teaching-Oriented Colleges

A number of recommendations to improve undergraduate education have been put forth in the higher education literature. However, we maintain that the implementation of these recommendations at our colleges and universities is unlikely if norms or group standards of appropriate and inappropriate behavior do not support these recommendations. Consequently, this study investigated the normative support for 6 selected recommendations to improve undergraduate education at teaching-oriented colleges. Results indicate support for 3 of the 6 recommendations: systematic program of advisement, providing students with prompt, formative feedback on assignments, and fostering an egalitarian classroom climate. These are the same recommendations supported by norms at higher education institutions that are more focused toward research and graduate education. The implications suggest that the normative structure that supports teaching improvement efforts may be more similar among various institutions than previous research might have indicated.