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Does community college versus four-year college attendance influence students' educational plans?

Journal of College Student Development, Mar/Apr 1998 by Pascarella, Ernest T, Edison, Marcia, Nora, Amaury, Hagedorn, Linda Serra, Terenzini, Patrick T

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POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The findings of the current study underscore the need for community colleges to provide sufficient support or mentoring to students who enroll primarily to complete their first 2 years of postsecondary education and then transfer to a four-year institution to finish their bachelor of arts degree. Simply providing offices and services, such as a transfer center, may not be sufficient to encourage students to make effective use of them. The disproportionately large numbers of minority and first-generation college students enrolling in community colleges may warrant a more proactive system of student affairs programs and support services that actively encourages their aspirations and plans. For example, evidence reported by Nora and Cabrera (Cabrera & Nora, 1992, 1993; Nora, 1987; Nora & Cabrera, 1994, 1996) indicates that active support and encouragement by significant others, including faculty and professional staff, are particularly crucial to the persistence of minority and nonminority students in two-year and commuter institutions. Similarly, Rendon (1994) found that active validation of non-traditional student worth and competence in the classroom has an important impact, not only on how those students come to percieve themselves socially and academically, but also on their subsequent aspirations and plans.

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Second, from a more general environmental perspective, community college administrators and student affairs professionals may have to focus particular effort on eliminating the aura of second class status often attached to community colleges and their students in American society (e.g., Brint & Karabel, 1989; Dougherty, 1994; Zwerling, 1976). This second-class or secondbest mind-set may never quite be overcome, either by the students who enroll, or by the professional counseling staff who work at community colleges. Clearly, it is important to help ease students' transition from secondary to postsecondary education, and to assist them in developing a realistic view of their academic skills and resources in relationship to what will be required to complete a bachelor of arts degree. At the same time, however, community college advisors and counselors must take care not to turn the cooling-out hypothesis into a self-fulfilling prophecy through behaviors and attitudes that needlessly undermine a student's confidence and discourage him or her from pursuing educational goals that are potentially achievable.

LIMITATIONS

This investigation has several major limitations that should be kept in mind when interpreting the findings. First, although the sample consisted of a broad range of institutions from around the country, the fact that the analyses were limited to 18 four-year and only 5 two-year institutions means that we cannot necessarily generalize the results to all two-year and four-year institutions. Similarly the sample from the two-year institutions consisted of only 119 students followed over a 2-year period. This is a rather slender thread on which to hang definitive test of the cooling-out hypothesis. For this reason the findings of this study should be regarded as constituting only a preliminary test of the cooling-out hypothesis.

Does community college versus four-year college attendance influence students' educational plans?

Journal of College Student Development, Mar/Apr 1998 by Pascarella, Ernest T, Edison, Marcia, Nora, Amaury, Hagedorn, Linda Serra, Terenzini, Patrick T

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