A Typology of Students' Use of the Community College

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Subscription Department, 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774. Tel: 800-825-7550; Tel: 201-748-6645; Fax: 201-748-6021; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/browse/?type=JOURNAL

Y

16

College Students; Community Colleges; Classification; Remedial Programs; Student Behavior; Enrollment Trends; Course Selection (Students); Longitudinal Studies; Mathematics Instruction; Student Participation

10.1002/ir.415

0271-0579

Students use the community college in a wide variety of ways to achieve an equally wide variety of ends. Some of these ends align closely with institutional goals, priorities, and performance indicators, and others do not. Consequently a typology of community college students based on their use of the institution has the potential to be of great informational and interpretive value to community college stakeholders. In this article, the author broadens and extends his previous work (Bahr, 2010a), presenting a revised classification scheme. He also demonstrates the utility of a behavioral classification scheme for interpreting findings of significance for policy and practice. In particular, he examines how a behavioral classification scheme may inform the interpretation of findings concerning one especially prominent issue in many community colleges today: postsecondary remediation. (Contains 4 tables.)

ERIC

54

2012

EJ957425