ACT research report: How do community college transfer and occupational students differ?

What Do We Know About Community College Vocational Students? An ERIC Review

“…A search of the ERIC database yields seven major statewide or national studies that provide relevant information: * Stewart (1968) who administered personality inventories and interest scales to students enrolled in 43 occupational curricula at 20 California community colleges. * Brue, Engen, and Maxey (1971) who compared transfer and vocational students at three Iowa community colleges on the basis of vocational aspirations, occupational interest, self-assessments of ability, academic achievement in high school, socioeconomic background, and other measures. * Garbin and Vaughn (1971) who conducted a national survey of 5,000 community college vocational students to provide a demographic, socioeconomic, and occupational profile of these students.…”

Tracking In Community Colleges

“…(Medsker and Tillery, 1971) Students in the transfer programs score higher on traditional tests of academic ability and achievement than students in the terminal programs. In addition, students in the more prestigious terminal programs, called &dquo;technical&dquo; programs, score higher in academic ability and achievement than students in the less prestigious terminal programs, sometimes called &dquo;vocational programs.&dquo; (Medsker and Tillery, 1971;Brue et al , 1971;Karabel, 1972) Source: American Council on Education (1967a, 1967b, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972).…”

“…Similarly, Blacks are more likely than Whites to be in the terminal programs, and less likely to be in the transfer programs. (Cross, 1970; Coordinating Council, 1969;Brue, et al , 1971;and Jaffe and Adams, 1972) The lowest track in the community college is the remedial or developmental programs, and most discussions of these programs refer to the &dquo;non-traditional&dquo; I or &dquo;educationally disadvantaged&dquo; students who enroll in them. Although no empirical data are available to measure the social class background of the remedial students, one recent study of five remedial programs indicated an overrepresentation of Blacks and Mexican American students that were enrolled in the remedial courses.…”

Assessing student progress in academic achievement

“…Certain characteristics that make community colleges different from other types of institutions also provide them with unique assessment problems. One of those problems relates to the diversity of a typical community college's students and their needs (for example, see Cross, 1968;Brue, Engen, and Maxey, 1971; Garbin and Vaughn, 1971;and Lenning and Hanson, 1977). Thus, adjusting campus achievement assessment efforts to "the individual character of students" is an especially difficult and complex problem for community colleges.…”