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The Bird’s Eye View of Community Colleges: A Behavioral Typology of First-Time Students Based on Cluster Analytic Classification

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Abstract

The development of a typology of community college students is a topic of long-standing and growing interest among educational researchers, policy-makers, administrators, and other stakeholders, but prior work on this topic has been limited in a number of important ways. In this paper, I develop a behavioral typology based on students’ course-taking and other enrollment patterns during a seven-year observation period. Drawing on data for a population of 165,921 first-time college students, I identify six clusters of behaviors: transfer, vocational, drop-in, noncredit, experimental, and exploratory. I describe each of these student types in terms of distinguishing course-taking and enrollment behaviors, representation in the first-time student cohort, predominant demographic characteristics, and self-reported academic goal. I test the predictive validity of the classification scheme with respect to long-term academic outcomes. I investigate the relationships between the primary classification scheme and several alternative classification schemes. Finally, I demonstrate the replicability of the classification scheme with an alternate cohort of students.

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Notes

  1. Due credit should be given to Mauss (1967), who advanced an early (possibly the first) typology of community college students. Mauss’s study is not addressed in detail here because it focused on students’ identification with particular campus subcultures, a focus that differs markedly from this present study’s focus on behavioral patterns. Likewise, Attinasi et al. (1982) put forward an interesting typology of motivational orientations toward course content among community college students, but, again, their focus differed sufficiently from this present study to preclude a detailed discussion of their findings.

  2. Note that the use of behavioral variables, as opposed to demographic or psychographic variables (such as academic goal), has been advocated in other lines of inquiry that employ cluster analytic methods, such as market segmentation research (Ziberna and Zabkar 2003).

  3. Missing data on the measure of course success occurred when a given student enrolled only in for-credit courses but no valid course grades were reported by any college for that student. One may surmise that this would occur mainly in cases in which a student enrolled in relatively few courses, but this assumption was not tested.

  4. Regular semesters include the Fall and Spring semesters, and exclude Summer terms. Summer terms were excluded because they typically involve enrollment in lower unit loads. Consequently, students who enroll in Summer terms regularly likely exhibit mean unit loads that are somewhat depressed relative to comparable peers who enroll only in regular semesters.

  5. Successful completion of a for-credit course was defined as a grade of A, B, C, or Credit. Noncredit courses, which do not have an associated grade, were assumed to be completed successfully in all cases.

  6. Prior to the standardization of variables, observations on any given variable (except the course success ratio and the two measures of persistence) that exceeded the 99th percentile of observations for that variable were recoded to the 99th percentile. This step was taken to reduce the potential effect of measurement error on the cluster analysis. The greatest number of cases affected by this step on any one variable was 1,672. The mean number of cases affected by this step across all relevant variables was 1,588.

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Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions and suggestions of Patrick Perry, Willard Hom, Alice van Ommeren, LeAnn Fong-Batkin, Craig Hayward, Michelle Barton, Colleen Moore, Nancy Shulock, Jeremy Offenstein, Jim Fillpot, Robert Johnstone, Edward Karpp, and Catharine Liddicoat, as well as the assistance of Waldo Galindo, Myrna Huffman, and Tom Nobert. This study was supported with funds provided by the Chancellor’s Office of the California Community Colleges.

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  1. Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan, School of Education Building, Room 2108, 610 E. University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1259, USA

    Peter Riley Bahr

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Bahr, P.R. The Bird’s Eye View of Community Colleges: A Behavioral Typology of First-Time Students Based on Cluster Analytic Classification. Res High Educ 51, 724–749 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-010-9180-5

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