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A COMPARISON OF PERCEIVED INSTITUTIONAL
IMAGE BETWEEN OLDER DAY AND'

OLDER EVENING STUDENTS
presented by

Ruth Jessica Gould Kurlandsky

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A COMPARISON OF PERCEIVED INSTITUTIONAL IMAGE BETWEEN

OLDER DAY AND OLDER EVENING STUDENTS

by

RUTH JESSICA GOULD KURLANDSKY

AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University'
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of College and University Administration

1990

ABSTRACT

A COMPARISON OF PERCEIVED INSTITUTIONAL IMAGE BETWEEN
OLDER DAY AND OLDER EVENING STUDENTS

BY

Ruth Jessica Gould Rurlandsky

23:2212.

The purpose of this study was to detemmine if there are
differences in the perception of the institutional image of
Grand Rapids Junior College on the part of selected groups of
day-attending and evening-attending students over the age of

25.

W

In the Fall 1989 semester, students in day and evening
sections of the same courses were asked to complete a survey
instrument including college image factors and demographic
information (all anonymously). Responses were collected on
Likert-type items describing components of a college image;
students were asked to respond twice: once, to describe
their "ideal" college; the second time, to describe their
"real“ current experience. A difference score was computed

and used as a measure of satisfaction.

Ruth Jessica Gould Rurlandsky

findings.

The day and evening student groups dwmcnstrated a great
deal of similarity with each other. Significant differences
were found on four factors: concern/involvement of the
faculty, placement service, general support services, and
campus safety. On all these factors, evening students were
less satisfied than day students. In addition, evening
students were more likely to be employed than day students

and reported higher family incmme.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page
I. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM 1
Introduction 1
Statement of the Problem 4
Purpose of the Study 5
Significance of the Study 5
Definition of Terms 6
Hypothesis 6
Limitations of the Study 8
Delimdtations of the Study 8
Procedures Used in this Study 8
Organization of the Study 9

II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 10
Marketing in Higher Education 10

The Admissions Officer 21

Adult Education 30

III. DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 41
Purpose 41

Survey 41

Sample Size 43

Data Collection 43
Utility of the Answers 44

Data Analysis 45
Post-test Followup 46

IV. ANALYSIS OF THE DATA 47
Surveys Collected 47

The Institution's Image 48

Day Vs. Night Attenders' Image 51

Ideal Vs. Real Perceptions 51
Non-Significant Items 52
Significant Differences 54
Demographic Descriptors 57
Non-Significant Items 57

Age: Special Comment 58

Statistically Significant Differences 59

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS (Continued)

Interviews
V. FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND SUMMARY

The Problem

Design and Procedure

Findings

Conclusions

Reflections

Cognitive Dissonance
Implications for Further Study
Changing an Image

APPENDIX SURVEY INSTRUMENT
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

Table

1:

LIST OF TABLES.

Number of Surveys Collected

Institutional Image of Grand Rapids
Junior College--Day and Evening

College Image Factors Receiving Similar
Scores from Day and Evening Students

College Image Factors Receiving
Significantly Different Scores from
Day and Evening Students

Age of Respondents in the Day and
Evening Research Groups

Demographic Descriptors Demonstrating
Similarity Between Day and Evening Students

Demographic Descriptors Which are Different
for Day and Evening Students

Family Income Reported by Day and
Evening Students

Likelihood of Employment by Day and
Evening Students

vi

48

49

53

55

59

59

60

61

62

Figure 1:

LIST OF FIGURES ‘

Institutional Image Profile

vii

50

CHAPTER I

HE RE R L

c on

Marketing has become a concern common to many colleges
and universities. The tangible aspects of it range from
handing out keychains with the college name on it to
understanding the notion of an institution-wide marketing
approach with careful preparation of a marketing plan and
appropriate research leading to market segmentation and
institutional adjustment of objectives, programs and
services.

The pressure for marketing seems to be driven by the
decline in the number of college age students--the tail end
of the famous post-World War II baby boom was 18 years old in
1982. The focus of this pressure is on recruitment, either
to keep the number of applications for admission equivalent
to the "boom" years or to actually increase admissions at
institutions which were built in the 1960s, specifically to

meet the needs of those populous years.

Grand Rapids Junior College in Grand Rapids, Michigan,

is a public two-year college with a seventy-five year history

of excellence. It began at the suggestion of the University
of Michigan, as a "feeder school" from the Western part of
the state. It served as the first two years of a four-year
liberal arts program. In the expansion of the sixties, it
took on more students and an occupational component. Along
the way came growth in the number of course offerings at
night and on weekends. Just recently, the some divisions of
the College have experienced a "crossover": the number of
students attending what has been called Continuing Education
classes now slightly exceeds the number of students who
attend during the traditional day-time hours.

Generally, the needs of older students seemed to be
different than those of the traditional eighteen year old
college freshman, and older students were the ones who worked
during the day and came to school during Continuing Education
times, if at all. Now, however, there are increasing numbers
of older students who come during traditional hours. As the
number of teenagers decreases, the proportion of older
students will increase.

What effect will this growth in "older student"
population have on the marketing effort of the College? Do
older students perceive the College differently? More
specifically, this researcher is interested in whether older
students who attend at night perceive the College differently
than older students who attend during the day. The most
obvious difference in the evening is the darkness--not a

trivial factor when trying to find one's way around a multi-

building campus. Next is the fact that no departmental
secretaries are on duty, nor is most other service personnel.
Fred Harrington, in The Future of Adult Education (1977),
summed it up succinctly when he described the barriers for
adults who want to be in an on-campus credit program: the
day system is rigidly designed for the young, full-time
student--and adults who need flexibility must work around
those rules: the evening college has a "grubby, hurried
feeling" (p. 44) and is taught by day instructors who are
tired and wish they were home or part-time instructors who
aren't around outside of class time to provide any support.
The support service offices of the College, which might
provide help and encouragement that evening college faculty
may be unable to provide, are open only on a somewhat limited
basis. The Bookstore, for example, while open from 8:00 a.m.
to 6:00 p.m. the entire semester, maintains evening hours
until 8:00 p.m. only the first three weeks of the semester.
The cafeteria remains open until 8:30 p.m. but the alternate
snack bar area closes daily at 2:00 p.m. The Career Resource
Center is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00
p.m. and maintains late hours until 8:00 p.m. on only two
evenings a week. Counseling is available until 8:00 on the
four evenings a week that classes are offered; Job Placement
is only until 7:00 p.m. only on Mondays. Those who need
support services on weekends have an even tougher time.
While the current situation is more supportive than the

earlier weekday only schedule. a student who leaves work at

5:30 for a 6:00 to 9:00 (or 10:00) o'clock class has no
chance to make use of a support office on that trip.
Additional trips, or special arrangements, must be made. On
top of everything else, of course, parking tokens cost more
for a three-hour unit in the evening than during the day.
Nevertheless, there is substantial enrollment in the
evening and on weekends, and there is no sign of a decrease.
There is always the possibility, however, that the evening
enrollment need could be met by other colleges in the area.
Perception of this type of trend on the part of the
administration would certainly be considered a marketing

problmm.

e t o Prob em

It is important to study the image of an institution
because people respond to their perception ofva college's
image, and not necessarily to its reality. (Rotler, 1985, p.
37) Different groups in the institution's market may have
different impressions of the quality or responsiveness or
services offered by that institution.

The problem, in the setting at Grand Rapids Junior
College and probably in other colleges with both day and
night components, is that it is not known whether older night
students perceive the College's image differently than do
older day students. The following questions appear to be

important in this type of research: Is there a

difference in the perception of the College between older day

students and older evening students? What is the direction
of this difference? Is the magnitude statistically
significant?

Additionally, if there is a difference in perception,
are there discernable differences between the groups? What
are the specific differences in perception between the two
groups? What factors might correlate with or cause the

differences in perception?

Purpose of the Study

Older students have entered the college and university
system in great numbers, influenced by demographic, societal
and economic factors. While much has been written about
adult education and about evening programs (see Chapter II,
below), there has been apparently little research which
differentiates between groups of adults.

The purpose of this study is to compare perceptions of
the institutional image of a college between two groups of
older students--those who see the college in the light of
traditional day programs and those who attend the evening

programs .

Significance of the Study

Such a study can be of use in orienting the
institution's market plan in reference to these two target
groups. In addition, a difference in perception between

these two groups can guide the providing of services which

are perceived to be lacking in one setting or the other. For
example, suppose that night students as a group are more
likely to perceive a lack of services such as career
counseling than day students are. The college could decide
to open the Career Resource Center in the evening. But
suppose the Center is already open in the evening? Then a
"corrective" measure would be to engage in publicity about
the Center's hours; another measure might be to "market" such

services along with general evening course marketing.

't'o Te

older student: any currently enrolled student who has
attained the age of twenty-five years. This group is also
referred to as adult students.

day attending: older student, as above, who is enrolled
in classes only weekdays between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and
5:00 p.m.

evening attending: older student, as above, who is
enrolled in classes that meet after 5:00 p.m. A student who
is enrolled in evening classes and in a weekend course may be
included. A student who is enrolled in evening classes but
also attends during the day will not be included in this

study.

antithesis.
This study is concerned with the perception of

institutional image on the part of adult students who attend

day classes and a separate group of adult students who attend
evening classes. It is hypothesized that there is a
difference in their overall perceptions of the college. The
investigator believes that this difference will be most

evident in three areas:

1. That day students perceive that the campus is less

forbidding than do the night students.

2. That support services are perceived as less

available by night students than by day students.

3. That those attending during the day will be less
likely than the night students to be employed full-

time.

Stated as null hypotheses to be tested:

There is no difference between day adult students and
evening adult students on measures of satisfaction about
the college experience.

Sub-hypothesis 1: There is no difference between day
adult students and evening adult students on measures of
campus safety or campus attractiveness. ,

Sub-hypothesis 2: There is no difference between day
~adult students and evening adult students on measures of
satisfaction with support services.

Sub-hypothesis 3: There is no difference between day
adult students and evening adult students in likelihood
of employment.

W

The study is limited by the concerns of survey research:
the ability to measure what the researcher thinks is being
measured: and the additional difficulties involved in

tabulation and validation.

i ' t' t e Stud
This study only deals with perceptions of students at

Grand Rapids Junior College. This college is larger and more
comprehensive than many two year colleges, but does not have
the residential component of most four year colleges.
However, any college which has a substantial commuter
oriented, evening class program, may find useful results.
The results of this study could be used to stimulate thought

at similar campus settings.

r U d

The population of this study will consist of the older
adult students enrolled at Grand Rapids Junior College in the
Fall semester of 1989. The research sample will consist of
approximately 500-600 older students enrolled in the day and
evening programs during the Fall of 1989. A questionnaire
has been developed and will be pretested during the 1989
summer session. It follows other questionnaires used before
in this type of study. (See Chapter III, below.) The
questionnaire asks subjects to respond to Likert-type items

describing their idea; college, and their real experience at

Grand Rapids Junior College, and asks for some demographic
data. Therefore, two major areas will be examined: 1) Do
differences in the perceptions of day and evening older
students exist in the surveyed topics;'and 2) How well are
the perceived realities correlated with the desired qualities
within each of these two groups? If there are differences
between the groups, the demographic data will be examined to

determine differences between the two groups, as people.

0 tie o t e St

This study is divided into five chapters. Chapter I
introduces the study and its purpose, the statement of the
problem, a description of the population and the limitations
of the project. Chapter II includes a review of the relevant
marketing literature and an overview of the adult education
literature. Chapter III describes the methodology used in
developing the questionnaire, the method for obtaining the
data and the procedures used in analyzing the data. Chapter
IV presents the findings of the study. The conclusions to be
drawn from the study and implications for further research

are in Chapter V.

CHAPTER I I

BEXIEH_QE_IHE_LIIEBAIQRE.

er c '0

Marketing as a business function has been utilized for a
long time. As a function for non-profit organizations, it
began to develop in the 1960s and early seventies--as
illustrated by the appearance of articles in professional
journals. The field began to "crystallize" in 1975 with the
publication of Philip Rotler's book, Marketing for Nonprofit
Organisations, now in its third edition as Strategic
Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations (Rotler and Andreasen,
1987).

Douglas Leister (1975), in an article probably written
before the publication of the 1975 Kotler work, outlined
the concept of marketing in the Journal of Higher Education.
He presented the notion of education as a product in a very
cmmpetitive marketplace. Although the decline in the
birthrate had to have happened eighteen years earlier,
colleges seemed to be caught by surprise with the need to

actively seek students in order to keep their recently

10

11

expanded space full. The growth of community colleges, while
needed to absorb the baby bomm, then had a lasting impact
when the boom passed through the college years. Leister
reports on a perceptual study of students at several
regionally competing institutions in western Washington
state. Identifying an institution's strengths and weaknesses
relative to its competitors assists in market positioning.

James C. Blackburn (1979) traces the appearance of
articles in the professional literature leading up to
Rotler's 1975 book and points out that a major article
urging¢_rather than merely describing, marketing and its
potential uses in higher education, appeared in The Chronicle
of Higher Education. It was therefore read widely and its
suggestions taken under consideration in different places
simultaneously, a not uncommon occurrence in education. In
addition, Blackburn notes that colleges and universities had
already been using techniques adapted from.business
practices; giving such as examples as budgeting systems,
management information systems, and planning charts. Perhaps
the education community was ripe to adapt marketing in a
widespread fashion, especially after the baby boom began to
pass through the system.

“Since 1975, a great deal of work has been done in
marketing in the service sector of the economy, and in higher
education, in particular. Rotler appears to remain the
leader in the field and published Strategic Marketing for

Educational Institutions in 1985 (Rotler and Fox, 1985).

12

During this time period, other people and institutions
were also concerned with the use of marketing in higher
education. The College Board held a Colloquium on College
Admissions in 1976. Four papers were presented at the first
meeting of this Colloquium since 1963. In the first
presentation, Humphrey Doermann (1976) projects that the
United States will experience a 15 year period of no growth
or of actual shrinkage in higher education enrollment, due to
the decline in the birth rate earlier, and now the decline in
the size of the annual high school graduating class. New
opportunities to broaden the applicant pool--such as the
recruitment of older students and the increase in part-time
students-~will bring with them new problems in program
design, public policy and public subsidy. The second
presentation was by Philip Rotler (1976), who presented his
audience with an explanation of marketing theory and ideas on
applying that to college admissions. His presentation was an
effort to counter the negative image that the use of
marketing had among administrators and among the public. He
was careful to point out the differences between marketing
and advertising. Kotler states "...the aim of marketing is V/
to make selling unnecessary. The better the marketing job,
the less the need for hard selling." He outlines seven
activities basic to the college marketing process. The first
step, positioning the institution in the marketplace,
involves assessing the public's perceived image of that

institution. One of the last steps, college improvement

13

planning, involves measuring student satisfaction with the
quality of the academic and other facilities on campus. In
the third presentation, Howard Geltzer and Al Ries explained
the concept of positioning. As the birthrate declined, for
example, the makers of baby shampoo repositioned their
product as gentle enough for every day. Thus, baby--now
gentle--shampoo could be sold to adults. They suggest that
colleges need to do the same thing: find a "hole", an unmet
need in the marketplace, and position themselves to fill that
hole, to be perceived as the providers of a particular kind
of educational service. The final presentation, by Daniel
Sullivan and Larry Litten, demonstrates the use of research
as a key to more successful marketing for admissions. Based
on their study at Carleton College, they discuss the use of
interviews with prospective students, including those who
inquire but do not apply, those who apply but do not enroll
and those who do enroll. Other factors, such as cost.
location, financial aid, and reputation are considered;
overall, this study is considered a model for admissions
research by the organizer of the conference. Leonard Berry
and Bruce Allen (1977) describe marketing as a concept
of exchange relationships with all of an institutions various
publics. Both of the authors are faculty members of academic
departments of marketing. They explain that marketing is
more than the need to attract more students, but the need to
improve all of its exchange relationships. They suggest that

this is done by adapting the organizational structure for

14

better functioning of the marketing function, including
assessing the current relationships, assigning priorities and
planning strategies for improvement. They believe that the
marketing function will be crucial for most institutions of
higher education, and that higher education as a societal
institution will be stronger after a retrenchment process
lasting a few decades.

In an article representative of the widespread notice of
the increasing need for competition among colleges for the
dwindling pool of potential students, Edward Fiske, in the
Atlantic Monthly (1979), reported on the "shift from a
seller's to a buyer's market" (p. 93) and called it "the most
traumatic change now under way in American higher education."
(p. 93) He discusses the coming period of declining
enrollment, forecast on the shift in the demographic age
curve--not as many teenagers coming up through the ranks. He
gives examples of hard sell, and often silly recruiting
techniques, ranging from free frisbees to no-need
scholarships. While pointing out that this makes education
just like big business, he warns that there are several
problems possible in this rush. He suggests that the most
obvious problem is lack of truth in the publicity. Other
problems are the increased cost and the sacrifice of quality
in the programs. He does agree that colleges may need to
adjust programs to meet the changing needs of students, but
reminds readers that the end result of "education" is a

degree or certificate, that students must be evaluated

15

regardless of the selling job needed to get them there, and
that perhaps some colleges "should fold" in the crunch.

Also in 1979, Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, devoted one
of their quarterly sourcebooks in the series New Directions
for Institutional Research to Developing a Total Marketing
Plan (Lucas, 1979). There were four essays in this
collection, all focusing on the educational researcher and
the appropriate role for the marketing concept and market
research techniques. Of particular interest to this
researcher was the article by Gerald Gaither (1979) about
research tools. He suggests that a college's image is veryv”
important; "an unrealistic image builds unrealistic
expectations." (p. 38) Students who find what they expected
after they enroll are more likely to be retained. It is
therefore important for a college to know what its image is,
in order to determine whether there is need for work on
/ changing the image. A marketing survey is presented where
students rate their own and an ideal college on various
factors. Both mail questionnaire and personal interview
techniques are discussed. He includes a very cogent
description of the special problems inherent in student
marketing: first, many public institutions are not supposed
to use public money for recruitment, often perceived as
marketing; second, existing personnel, often faculty, need to
lose their feeling of suspicion about proper marketing;
third, the concepts of educational marketing are not yet

well-developed--they are, rather, being adapted from the

16

profit sector; fourth, the researcher gets little immediate
feedback: and fifth, while marketing was often ignored in the
non-profit sector, and possibly denigrated, marketing
activities were occurring in an underground fashion, without
full recognition. It is time now to practice a conscious and
thoughtful approach.

The College Board (1980), believing that after the
growth of the 1960s and 1970s, there would be "virtually no
collective experience or policy precedent to guide
administrators in managing the envisioned retrenchment..."
(p. ix) convened a colloquium.to present the views of those
who favor marketing as a tool to increase admissions and
those who see risk in the possible effects of marketing on
the overall system and on the public interest. Participation
was limited in order to achieve a seminar setting; the
meeting was held at the Wingspread Conference Center and is
now sometimes referred to in the literature as the Wingspread
Colloquium. [This researcher, upon seeing this reference the
first time, thought of admissions officers learning to move
faster by spreading their wings.] Larry Litten, the
Colloquium director, expressed the sense of the meeting in a
short statement at the beginning of the published proceedings
(The College Board, 1980): there are "both potential
benefits and risks from the adoption by colleges of the
formal concepts, principles, and practices of marketing..."
(p. 1) The proper idea of marketing is to clearly identify ¥///

the characteristics and qualities of a college and then to

17

present them accurately to the public.

Brent Knight and Dennis Johnson (1981) describe
marketing as a "people-oriented, student-centered concept
[that]... is the opposite of crass promotion or poorly
conceived schemes." They, too, cite Philip Kotler as the
foremost authority. Their point is that marketing can help
higher education by requiring that a college find out why
students do not enroll or are not retained. Without using
the word "image", they point out that a college must find out
what potential students think of it, and address recognizable
problems in the marketing plan. For example, a college may
appear to serve only residential students, when local
students could easily commute and receive a good education.
Asiautechnique for discovering the problems in a college's V//
image, they recommend the focus group. The college can then
use the infommation obtained to improve or change aspects of
the college, or to try to clarify its reputation. They go on
to cite the need for responsive faculty and office staff.

The marketing program can affect the college on many
dimensions, including governmental relations, fund raising
and better communications with various constituencies.

Stan Grabowski published a large report for the American\
Association for Higher Education called Marketing in Higher
Education (1981). In this report, he explains what marketing
should be and how to prepare a marketing plan. He summarizes
the parts of a marketing plan and points out that an

institution must have a clear idea of its own mission and

18

goals in order to position itself for the market and to
communicate that position to various aspects of the public,
such as potential students, parents, alumni, staff, current
students, and high school contacts. In a discussion of ‘/3
image, he points out that it is important to measure one's
own image and to compare it to that of competing
institutions. A large bibliography is appended which
illustrates the growing amount of literature in the field.

As the literature becomes more voluminous, topics are getting
more specific than simply "using marketing in higher
education." ’

William Turner (1982) prepared a doctoral dissertation
on the use of market positioning research in higher
education. His contention is that an institution of higher
education should position itself in the market for the most
effective recruitment: that in order to know what its K/r
position is or should be, it is necessary to use a research
model to detenmine the perception of the institution on the
part of the public. In particular, popular perception may
also represent an understanding of the weaker aspects of the
institution (p. 149). His paper presents a multidimensional
scaling model for the type of research needed to determine
perception.

As the baby boom hit the college age in the 1960s and
made much noise about the need for relevance in education,

some new colleges were created. When the "bust" began to

arrive in the late '70s, some were in trouble. Evergreen

19

State College in Washington was one of these. Its former
director of college relations, Charles Fowler (1983),
reported that it survived by applying the concepts of
marketing "to institutional recruiting, retention, and public
relations." (p. 20) Although there was "criticism from
idealistic academics" (p. 20), the plan was successful at
increasing enrollment, student retention, and public
awareness. He outlines a six step plan that he believes \//
other institutions should follow.

Robert Cook and Ronald Zallocco (1983) used a
computational model, based on one used in marketing to
predict brand preference by consumers, to identify selection
criteria used by students to choose colleges. Using eighteen
attributes of colleges, they surveyed freshmen at five
universities in Ohio. They measured perceived images and ‘1
preferences and detenmined that "university preferences and
attendance can be predicted based on the beliefs about and
relative importance of attributes and characteristics of the
universities themselves." (p. 205, 208) They suggest that
this kind of data is useful in estimating institutional
competition and preparing marketing plans.

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education
(CASE) supported the publication of a practical guide to
marketing higher education (Topor, 1983). In the foreword,
M. Fredric Volkmann reminds readers that "only a few years
ago, it was certain political suicide" (p. ix) to talk about

marketing in higher education. One spoke of improving

20

communications or working for better results. Now that
attitudes toward marketing in the educational community are
beginning to change, it is important to do it properly.
Topor presents marketing concepts in a'case study fashion,
complete with questions at the end of the chapters so that
the reader may evaluate progress.

CASE put out a short pamphlet in 1986 (Smith and Hunt,
1986) which was a compilation of several short articles which
appeared earlier in various issues of CASE Currents. The
best reading is "Choice Comments"--eight students tell the
real reasons behind their college choices.

Also in 1986, CASE published another book by Robert ,xf‘
Topor (1986). This is entirely devoted to the tepic of
institutional image. He defines image as others have defined
it: "the aggregate...of the feelings, beliefs, attitudes,
impressions, thoughts, perceptions, ideas, recollections,
conclusions, and mindsets people have of" an institution. He
also points out that an image is abstract, complex, and
changeable. It is necessary to use market research to
determine what an institution's image is. He points out that
most people think too narrowly; image is not just a
publication, for example. Everything an institution does can
become part of its image. He also explains how to build an
image, purposefully, for an institution, how to select a
market position, and how to prepare and implement a marketing
plan. l

The impact of the whole idea of marketing applied to

21

institutions of higher education can perhaps best be summed
up by the title of an article by Robert Grossman (1987):

"Marketing: Key to Institutional Survival and Success." The
battle over whether marketing is appropriate in the academic

setting is finished: marketing won.

1W

Marketing is often thought of as an Admissions Office
function--the need to recruit students by selling them the
idea that a particular college is the correct choice for
them. Veysey (1980), a higher education historian, traces
the development of the Admissions Office as a separate unit
of a college or university--it doesn't even appear until
after World War I. In its early functions, the object seems
to have been to keep out certain ethnic groups and minorities
and thus maintain the image of upper class comfort that an
institution had. (p. 8) By the 1950's the notion of
meritocracy had spread, and with the Civil Rights movement,
concerns began to change. Since 1965, the pressure of
changing demographics has pushed marketing as a recruitment
tool to the forefront of efforts to maintain enrollment
numbers.

'Evidence that marketing is an Admissions concern is the
content of the quarterly journal, College and University) a
publication of the American Association of Collegiate
Registrars and Admissions Officers. While many articles are

general and deal with basic admissions functions, there are

22

always some devoted specifically to a marketing effort or
idea.

Robert Sternberg and Jeanne Davis (1978) published a
paper in this journal that seems to be perhaps the last of
the admissions articles without the concept of marketing.
Their thesis is that on May 1, when students must confess
which college they have actually chosen out of all they have
applied to and, specifically out of the ones that have
granted them admission, admissions officers would like to
know why any student they have selected would choose to go
elsewhere. They describe two studies they have done of
students' perceptions of Yale University and sixteen of its
major competitors. They perfommed surveys to determine
whether there are certain dimensions of attributes which
differentiate colleges and some clusters of attributes that
belong to groups of colleges. There were. They suggest that
the study was useful, but restricted to known subgroups of
colleges, not a universally broad approach.

In 1979, William Caren and Frank Remerer published an
article in this journal called "The Internal Dimensions of
Institutional Marketing," in which they cite Kotler's work
(1976) several times and an earlier article in the same
journal. They begin with a statement that admunistrators at
this time were still reluctant to adopt a marketing concept,
even though other business practices had already been widely
adopted in education. Their belief is that up to that time,

the reluctance had been due to luxury--an institution could

23

always spend more money in preference to doing something new,
and to a feeling of uniqueness: that colleges solve problems
in a collegial setting and do not find the techniques of
business appropriate. They go on to argue that higher
education administrators are beginning to adapt some of the
techniques of marketing, but are being guided by external
forces. This leads to a "hard-sell"--flashier brochures,
phone calls to parents, more expensive word processing.
Instead, they suggest, attention should be paid to internal
dimensions. The institution should reorient its structure
and responsiveness in terms of a marketing approach,
beginning with the mission statement, and including full
campus participation and a change in the organization chart,
if necessary. The authors also highly recommend
institutional research on such things as demographics,
enrollment patterns, why admitted students failed to enroll,
and why students don't stay, as fundamental support for a
marketing plan.

The rush into marketing or pseudo-marketing approaches
must have begun with a vengeance. As soon as 1981 Larry
Litten published a paper, also in the journal College and
University, called "Avoiding and Stemming Abuses in Academic
Marketing." He recommends greater education or training for
administrators as to what marketing should really be about
and education for the public about the role and function of
institutions of higher education. He advocates greater

communication, discussion, and research among marketers,

24

market researchers, administrators, faculty and students.
The intimate role of the student in the production of the
"product" (education) does make this a unique field. He
recommends limitations on such specific abuses as hard-sell
recruiting; for example, he suggests no more than two
unsolicited direct contacts to any prospective student, and
those should be by mail, the least invasive median.

John Maguire and Robert Lay (1981), in the same issue as
the article described above, discuss the college choice
process. They postulate that the process of deciding which
college to attend is composed of two subprocesses: the
evolution of an "image" of the college in the mind of the
student and then the appraisal of how those images match the
student's perceived needs and capabilities. Images are
modified by the acquisition of more information, but
nevertheless play a role in the choosing a college. They
report on an image survey administered to 2500 applicants
accepted at Boston College, using 28 attributes to solicit
responses on Likert scales. Using several statistical
techniques, they were able to suggest that seven factors
account for most of the variability in predicting college
choice. The importance of image during the decision process
seemed to vary over the time from application to actually
beginning classes, including a period of cognitive dissonance
after the first deposit was paid, but before the student
really began on campus.

Huddleston and Rarr (1982) presented a definition of

25

"image" and a means of measuring it. Interestingly enough,
they did not cite the Maguire and Lay article. By 1982,
these authors felt that "institutional image is one of the
most discussed concepts in college admissions." (p. 364)
Their article focuses on the need to understand the image
concept, begguge student decisions are based on it, and on
the need to know what an institution's image is, so that it
can be changed if needed. The development of a desirable
image may take a long time, and once established, may last a
long time. There are many instances in everyone's experience
where a college seems to be "coasting" on its reputation,
after that good reputation seems no longer to he deserved.
Huddleston and Rarr believe that careful planning can result
in image modification. However, image must be known,
therefore measured, first. They describe a study using the
semantic differential for twelve attributes of an ideal
college image and a real image of Bradley University;
administered to students visiting its Undergraduate
Admissions Office. They found that the image of the real
Bradley differed significantly from the ideal image on nine
of the twelve attributes. The image profile drawn frdm the
study was a "zig-zag"--that is, different attributes received
different scores, not an "it's all OR" type of response
pattern.

M. Overton Phelps and C. C. Swann (1984) published a
cautionary article. They advised admissions officers and

counselors to think about the need to give students wise

26

guidance, rather than just a hard sell when one's college
could use all the bodies it could get. There are no right
answers, they say, but it is necessary to stop and think.

In 1985 George Brooker and Michael-Noble published an
article lamenting the lack of implementation of formal
marketing programs in institutions of higher education. They
felt, at the time, that well-managed organizations were able
to recognize the importance of doing this, but that most
educational administrators were identifying "marketing as
merely selling or promotion." (p. 192) The article was not
a study, but an advocacy for marketing. They reviewed why
marketing is important to any organization, why colleges have
problems with proper implementation, and suggested specific
solutions. Problems cited included "complexity of the
marketing mix (product/service, price, promotion and place)"
(p. 193) and the breadth of constituencies that want to
contribute to the process. The solution suggested is a
careful plan, made known to the entire institution, including
appointment and proper function of a university official
responsible for marketing. They do believe that this
administrator should not be authoritative, but rather
cooperative with the other units of the organization. They
agree that higher education is a unique situation, not like
businesses, but argue that the careful marketing plan can
build on the strength of the uniqueness of an institution.

Cindy Struckman-Johnson and Steven Kinsley (1985)~v/”r'

reported on a study which assessed the image perception of

27

the University of South Dakota among the institution's
various constituencies, including potential students (high
school seniors), current students and University alumni.

They first explain that they view the concept of image as a
set of "oversimplified notions about qualities such as
academic reputation, faculty expertise, athletic emphasis, or
campus appearance." (p. 316) Image reflects perceptions and
not necessarily the "reality" of the college. They argue
that the reasons for assessing image are clear, but the
methodology is not well developed. They suggest that the
image profile approach developed by Huddleston and Karr
(1982) is the most promising. Using a set of semantic
differential scales similar to the ones used by Huddleston
and Karr, they surveyed several thousand people, by mail. A
response rate of 25-30% was obtained for the different
subgroups. They drew an image profile for the "ideal"
university for the combined population and for the University
of South Dakota for each of the subgroups. All held a
generally positive image of the ideal and the real
university, with various factors getting "higher" scores than
others--that is, in looking at the image profile drawn, there
is "zig-zag" from 1.5 to 5 on a seven point scale. High
school seniors had a generally more positive opinion on the
scales than either the current students or the alumni:
current students seemed to be least positive about such
things as campus attractiveness: alumni seemed to now

perceive the University as less competitive in admissions,

28

having a smaller enrollment, and gave the lowest rating of
all groups about preparation for a job. Struckman-Johnson
and Kinsley suggest that this pattern reflects a
"worldliness" factor. Alumni are the people who have been
out in the so-called real world for up to five years, and
their perceptions have been colored by experience. On the
other hand, their appreciation of the personal atmosphere of
the University and its small town atmosphere seemed to have
been enhanced by time. Their study had an impact on the
University's planning. The factors perceived as weak were
going to he addressed in the marketing plan of the
institution, and an updated survey was to be completed at a
later date.

Textbooks, by their very nature, summarize the research
that has gone before and attempt to crystallize the various
earlier presentations into some coherent theory or approach.
Kotler and Fox, in their 1985 book, Strategic Marketing for
Educational Institutions, present the methods of image
measurement used by Huddleston and Karr, and by Struckman-
Johnson and Kinsey. They separate a person's image of an
institution from that person's attitudes about that
institution: two people may hold the same image of Harvard,
for example, but feel differently toward it. Nevertheless,
these who hold a positive image are more likely to be drawn
to it. Kotler and Fox go beyond image measuring of the real
or ideal on the part of outside subjects to suggest that the

school's administrators and board develop a profile of the

29

desigg§,image. (Did they forget faculty?) The desired image
should be drawn alongside the perceived image(s) of the
target market group(s) so that the gaps can be seen. There
are then actions that can be taken, within the context of the
marketing plan, so that the gaps can be made smaller. The! \’/
caution that changing an image is a slow process; once people
have an image of an institution, they tend to perceive only
what continues to fit that image. However large or small the
connection between image and behavior, they believe that the
connection is real, and that a college benefits by measuring
its own image and planning actions based on that measurement.
Despite all the scholarly work going on in marketing at
this time, Michael Noble (1986) complained that marketing is
still largely misunderstood. Too many institutions talk
about marketing but "do" selling and advertising. He points
out that it is "not a trivial issue" (p. 319) because
potential students, and their parents, hear the promises made
by a college trying to sell itself and become angry when
those promises seem to go unmet after enrollment. Some have
even sued. In order to determine the development of
professional marketing planning and execution at institutions
of higher education, he prepared a questionnaire, which was
pretested and then mailed to a stratified sample, accounting
for large and small, public and private, colleges and
universities. The survey determined the extent to which the
respondents had a high-level administrator responsible for

marketing, whether that administrator had decision-making

30

influence over various offices, whether a professional
marketing firm had been consulted, and whether marketing
faculty had been used for consultation. His conclusion was
that few of the respondents were actually "professionally
managing their marketing activities" (p. 324) even though
many of them seemed to be engaging in selling. Many
administrators demonstrate understanding of the marketing
concept; they don't, however, seem to act on that

understanding.

mm

The research to be undertaken here began as an effort to
explore perceptions of the author's college as a marketing
concept: the "institutional image" described by the
researchers mentioned above. At the same time, research has
been proceeding by authors in the educational field, some of
whom who would describe their work as "perception studies" in
education without regard for the jargon of the marketing or
business oriented field. In addition, this researcher is
particularly interested in that literature which considers
the need of the older or otherwise non-traditional student.

Darkenwald and Merriam (1982) point out that defining
who is an adult and what constitutes education is difficult.
But, however one decides to handle the ambiguity, it is clear
that the educational institution is dealing with voluntary
participation, when offering programs to adults. It is

therefore very important to be aware of how and why an older

31

student decides to be a student. (p. 117-9) This calls for
market research. Fred Harrington (1977), in addressing the
barriers to adults returning to post-secondary schooling,
describes the typical campus as having a set of rules
oriented to "the young...of an earlier generation." (p. 31)
He points out that returning students are often counseled to
go to evening college (or summer session, or extension
courses). Those who want day classes must be fitted into the
system. He then describes the shortcomings of both options.
Jerold Apps (1981) posits that the return of adult
students to campus constitutes a quiet revolution, perhaps
more profound in its effect than the noise of the sixties.
(p. 11) He is interested in improving the educational
environments for the adult students. While he presents the
contrasts between adult (returning) students and traditional
students, he does not differentiate subgroups of adults.
Cohen and Brawer, in their book The American Community
College (1982), describe the overall picture of community
colleges in this country. In their chapter on "Students,"
they point out that the presence of older students on campus
has increased dramatically since the 1960s. Part of the
reason is that many colleges set up special programs for
retirees and recruited them: but, in general, many adults are
returning to community colleges to get a degree that they
never had a chance to get before or to upgrade job skills.
(p. 31-2) But even in their rather thorough description,

they do not distinguish between adults who choose to attend

32

more-or-less traditional day programs and adults who come in
via the evening college or special session programs.

Leonard V. Koos (1970) begins his substantial book on
The Community College Student with a subheading "The Later
Adolescent." Chapter 10 does get to the issue of "Adult
Education and the Adult Student." He points out that the
proportion of adult students in community colleges has been
growing and that these adults are generally assumed to be
part-time enrollees, presumably in special programs, often
run at night. However, he goes on to note that the
proportion of adult students in full-time programs has also
been increasing--and leaves one with the impression that this
includes adults fitting into the traditional day programs.
(p. 388) There follows some discussion on the needs of adult
students in various periods of their lives--young adulthood,
middle age, and later maturity--but no differentiation

between day program attenders and night school students.

Outside of textbooks, journal articles began to show
interest in marketing in adult and continuing education and
in the community college setting. As early as 1974, W. Wray
Buchanan and H. C. Barksdale published an article touting the
development of marketing skills in university extension.

They propose that offices of adult and continuing education
are already using marketing tools "in carrying out their
service mission." (p. 34) Their study included a survey of

the 99 member institutions of the National Association of

33

State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. They determined
that the extension programs do engage in marketing, are very
aware of pricing, and engage in various communication and
distribution channels. Difficulties in adopting the
marketing concept are attributed to the "lack of planning for
the concept to be communicated to all employees." (p. 38)
They conclude that marketing practitioners could help the
extension administrators and that these administrators need
to become "master craftsmen of marketing techniques." (p. 44)

As thinking about marketing in education was being
driven by a perceived shortage of high school graduates,
others were noticing that adults were a fast growing segment
of the population. Edith Roth (1978) described numbers of
adults then and soon over 60. She then cited legislation
pending at the time which prohibits discrimination based on
age in any programs funded by the federal government. She
describes several special programs available for older
adults, and suggests that colleges should be opening up and
modifying programs specifically for this population.
Although her point of view is that the geriatric population
wants education and professionals ought to respond to their
needs, a wise administrator could see the marketing
potential.

At the annual convention of the American Association of
Commmnity and Junior Colleges in 1978, Ouerin Fischer (1978)
presented a paper describing a conceptual framework for

marketing the community college. He believed that, at that

34

time, community colleges tended to believe that a list of
recruitment activities represented a marketing effort: it is
really only a selling effort. Whereas success of selling is
measured in increased inquiries or applications, success of
marketing is measured in increased attendance, and is
achieved by coordinating all student services. Not just the
community college recruiting office, but all the offices on
campus, must respond to student requests.

Loma Meyer (1980) assessed the institutional image of
eleven postsecondary institutions in the competitive
marketplace of the Twin Cities, Minnesota. She determined
the major "perceptual and evaluative dimensions" used by
various groups of potential students in developing their
perceptions of the institutions' positions. Understanding
these dimensions is proposed as an aid to providing programs
responsive to different "buyer's" needs in a competitive
setting.

By 1981 the rush to marketing in the adult education
literature must have been on its way to being an avalanche.
James Gollattscheck (1981) advised caution in the jump to a
marketing approach. The changes wrought in an institution by
the needs of a marketing plan may not be what the institution
expected. For example, a successful market outreach may
bring in students with wider diversity--learning
disabilities, physical handicaps, elderly students--that the
faculty is not prepared to deal with. Gollattscheck does not

say that marketing shouldn't be done, but does suggest that

35

adequate planning is necessary, as well as careful thought
about the possible results of marketing.

Marketing activities had spread in two year colleges as
well as four year institutions, even in the conservative
midwest, by 1981. Janet Smith (1981) and her colleagues at
Cuyahoga Community College of Cleveland, Ohio, surveyed 126
urban two or four year colleges and universities with student
populations between twenty and thirty-five thousand. They
found different concerns and market emphases between the two
and four year settings. Two year colleges reported a need
for attention to curricula not meeting market needs,
including a concern for the variety of times that classes
could be offered, and market research focused on identifying
the needs of employers. Four year colleges (all urban
settings) reported declining enrollment due to increased
competition and a public perception that the campus was
unsafe. Market research at these institutions focused on
demographics and other infonmation needs, and a lesser focus
on identifying the needs of special groups. In two year
colleges, marketing responsibility tended to reside with the
Office of Public Relations, while in four year colleges, it
was more likely to be in the Admissions Office. In both two
and four year colleges, only about one-fourth of the faculty
was reported as being fully supportive of the marketing
activities.

Members of the League for Innovation in the Community

College were surveyed by a graduate student in Journalism.

36

Diane Dann (1982) studied what community colleges were doing
that was called marketing and who at the college was likely
to be responsible for it. The study did not cover how well
the marketing activity was done. She determined that the
majority of those colleges surveyed were interested in
marketing; one-third already had well-developed marketing
functions by then and another third were interested in
expanding this function. Smaller schools were more likely to
be involved in marketing than medium or large sized schools.
In particular, marketing activity was driven by
dissatisfaction with enrollment levels. Marketing
responsibility had been assigned to different places in the
college's organization, but one-third reported that marketing
was assigned to the public information officer. The scope of
marketing activities seemed to vary depending on who was
responsible: surprisingly, the scope seemed to be broader
when responsibility was assigned to an instructional dean or
admissions officer, rather than to the public relations
officer.

Marketing activities can be carried out in different
ways by different institutions. Certain similarities in
structure or function must appear when the phenomenon becomes
widespread. At an annual convention of the American
Association of Community and Junior Colleges, Quentin Bogart
(1984) presented a paper describing four distinct structures
for marketing in four geographically diverse community

college districts. These were described according to what

37

organizational structure deminated the marketing planning
process and its implementation. The four included: central
administration control, with the involvement of the college
president: marketing committee control; marketing division
control, where a whole division of the college was
professionally staffed for marketing and devoted to it: and
the student services structure, where the Dean of Student
Affairs was charged with organizing and leading a marketing
program.

Once marketing programs have become established, it
seems to be possible to move on to more specific questions.
Several studies have been published which address the
question of motivation. What are the needs of various
potential groups of students and what are the attitudes that
lead them to particular colleges? In particular, this
researcher is interested in studies of older, non-traditional
groups of students.

Michael Hu (1985) laments the lack "of a comprehensive,
fully integrated marketing plan" (p. 201) in many colleges.
At the same time, colleges are seeking non-traditional
students in the 25 to 64 year old age group. He believes
that a clear understanding of the needs of this group is
important in order to establish a marketing plan which will
attract them, He surveyed current students, including
"regular day-time" and "evening/weekend" (p. 203) students,
prospective students, and non-prospective students. Survey

results were reported for these three subgroups of the

38

sample. In general, he reports a significant demand for
higher education in the non-traditional group, which could be
met by establishing "separate programs and promotional
strategies" (p. 208) for the three groups. Current students
seemed to focus on quality of the educational offering,
prospective students on converting interest into action, and
non-prospective students on overcoming barriers such as the
need for financial aid, child care, weekend classes and
counseling.

Arapahoe Community College performed a mail survey of
2000 randomly selected households in its service area.
(Voorhees and Hart, 1985). The study occurred in response to
an institutional desire to merge the marketing and planning
functions. Results indicate that three-fourths of the
respondents would be interested in enrolling in college level
courses; that business and computer science were most often
chosen: that the older the respondent, the more likely the
choice of traditional liberal arts courses; that the
preferred time was early evening and weeknights; that career
counseling was rated as the most important support service.

George Dixon (1986) surveyed adult part-time students at
North Carolina State University in an attempt to describe the
demographic characteristics of part-time students, to
determine their motivations, to identify their perceived
barriers to higher education, and to determine any
relationships between their reported motivations and the

perceived barriers. He found that these students are

39

demographically similar to the country at large: white,
middle class, relatively young. Dominant motivations were
goal-oriented: to earn a degree, or get a promotion or better
job, to prepare for a career change. Perceived barriers
included lack of time and other responsibilities, but there
was no correlation between motivation and perceived barriers.
Those who really wanted to go to school would find a way.
There is plenty of room for the institution to make things
easier, however: such efforts as flexible scheduling of
counseling will enhance the institution's reach among these
students and the population not represented in the sample.
Brenda Rogers, Kevin Gilleland and George Dixon (1988)
surveyed adults, 25 years and older, enrolled part-time in
credit courses but not in degree programs. They sought to
identify the motivations of these students and whether the
motivations are related to socio-demographic variables.
They, again, found goal-oriented motivations most common,
even though these subjects were not enrolled in formal degree
programs. Older adults and those with higher incomes were
found to be less likely to be contemplating career change;
females were more likely to be motivated by the prospect of
job change than were males. The researchers believe that the
motivations revealed should lead the institution to realize
that academic advising is critical even to part-time,

supposedly non-degree seeking students.

Although there may be studies in progress involving

40

adult students, especially as colleges and universities
recognize the market to be tapped there, this researcher has
not found any literature that distinguishes between groups of
students primarily on time of attendance. Most studies
distinguish on the basis of age and other demographic

factors.

CHAPTER I I I

DEEIQE_AND_HEIHQDQLQ§I.

23:2911.

The purpose of this study is to compare perceptions of
the institutional image of a college between two groups of
older students--those who attend in the light of traditional
day programs, whatever part-time arrangements they have made

for doing so, and those who attend the evening programs.

331111

This research consisted of the administration of a
survey questionnaire to two groups of students: older adults
who are attending classes during the day, and older adults
who are attending classes in the evening. Each group was
asked to respond to bipolar semantic differential adjectives
describing the "ideal college" and the actual conditions at
Grand Rapids Junior College.

-The questionnaire was designed to follow Huddleston and
Karr (1982) and Struckman-Johnson and Kinsley (1985). Both
of these studies looked at institutional image perceptions at
one institution--the first among potential students visiting

Bradley University and the second among the various publics

41

42

of the University of South Dakota. Neither study was
restricted according to age. The sets of bipolar adjectives
included some which were appropriate to a residential
college. These sets were modified for the nature of a two-
year, urban, commuter, community college.

The survey was pretested with evening and day adult
students during the summer session of 1989. The pretest
revealed the length of time needed to complete the
questionnaire and identified ambiguities in the structure of
the questionnaire and in same particular items included.
These were modified to correct for the problems uncovered.
The questionnaire was then‘modified from its original typed
format to allow for printing in keypunch compatible fashion.
This was done in order to make the processing of the data
more manageable.

The questionnaires were administered late enough in the
semester so that students were comfortable with the campus
and their courses. While this could have introduced a halo
effect among those who have "stuck it out" for so long, it
was also an effort to eliminate the rather strong sentiments
of fear and uncertainty (and complaints about parking) that
occur early in the semester. The period of actual
presentation of the surveys included a week of bizarre early
snow and a week of lovely Indian summer days; the researcher
has assumed that weather related biases during the answering
of survey questions were thereby somehow balanced out.

With permission of the administration and of the

43

individual teachers (and the Michigan State University Human
Research Committee) questionnaires were handed out during
classroom sessions and collected promptly. The actual
instrmment was distributed to all students, so that the study
population--those 25 years of age or older--was not forced to
identify itself. It was generally possible for the

questionnaire to be completed in approximately 10 minutes.

maize
Sample size was 150-175 in each group. A large enough

number to provide non-random data was needed, and, at the
same time, administration of the survey had to be manageable
within the time allotted and with the number of students
available on campus, in classes offered both day and evening.
Most students approached were quite willing to complete a
questionnaire, especially if the process were going to
shorten a lecture by fifteen minutes. Students also seemed
to appreciate the need for data and to be intrigued by the
ambiguously stated research topic: "looking for differences
between older students who come in the day and older students

who come in the evening."

W

Questionnaires were administered in day and evening
sections of Political Science 110, a course required in all
degree programs, and in English 101. In this way, a wide

variety of older students were included. Students not

44

seeking degrees were included by administration of the
questionnaire in Computer Applications 101, a course which is
widely taken by students seeking further training without a
degree, as well as by degree-seeking students. All of these
courses are available in the day time or in the evening (as
well as on weekends). The Computer Applications courses tend
to have a greater proportion of older students enrolled, in
both the day and the evening sections, perhaps because of a
greater perceived need for adults to be retrained in
technology but not in English. Students select these
sections purposefully (no one is put in a time slot against
his/her own wishes).

Subjects in 100 level courses only were surveyed. Since
the results were to have an outside marketing purpose, the
focus of the study was on beginners. Attitudes of students
in 200 level courses would be more appropriately investigated

in a study whose focus is retention.

Wham

The survey appears to repeat on two sides of a sheet of
paper. One side asks for responses about an "ideal" college
and the other side about the "real" situation at Grand Rapids
Junior College. A difference in perception of the
institution's image between day and evening students might
not be meaningful by itself. Suppose that night students as
a group were more likely to identify the College as having a

less superior academic reputation than day students perceive.

45

Is it necessary to work to change that image perception among
night students? What if the responses on the "ideal side”
show that the desired academic reputation is equally less
superior? That is, perhaps night students want a college
that is not too "hard" and feel they have found it. Working
on a change, in that case, might be a mistake. In order to
provide useful data for these types of questions, a
"satisfaction score” was constructed for individual
questionnaires by finding the difference between the "ideal"
score for one set of bipolar adjectives and the "real" score
for the same set.

The utility of the study is in the determination of
"where to begin" in considering changes to enhance the image
of the college in the day or in the evening. Statistically
significant differences between the two groups in the study
are an indication of underlying "real" differences.

An open-ended question on the bottom of the
questionnaire provided an attempt to explore some of the
possible reasons for any differences in perception that may
be noted in the study. This question was worded "Please tell
why you feel this way about Grand Rapids Junior College."

Responses were read by the researcher.

We.

The data was analyzed with non-parametric statistics
appropriate for the nominal data (sex, employment status,
etc.) and for the ordinal data. Nominal data was tested with

46

 

the Pearson Chi-square: ordinal data was tested with the
Mann-Whitney U test.

See Appendix A for a sample of the questionnaire used.

22§&:££££_£2112HEE

The open-ended question provides seme measure of the
thought processes of the students surveyed, to the extent
that the answers reflect real and operational feelings and
decision making. Unfortunately, these answers also reflect
the willingness of the subjects to sit still and write a
coherent statement, in the face of the alternative
possibility of leaving for the next class or other more
desirable activity.

In order to obtain more thoughtful consideration of the
factors involved and the differences in perception discovered
once the data was analyzed, several day and evening older
students were interviewed by the researcher after the data
had been collected, keypunched and analyzed. Results of the
questionnaire portion of the study were presented to each
interviewee by the researcher. An interview lasting
approximately twenty minutes was conducted in which the

interviewee was asked to consider reasons for the results.

CHAPTER IV

mum

This chapter contains an analysis of the data developed
in the administration of the questionnaire regarding older
adult students' perceptions of the college experience. The
data collected can be broken into three categories:

1. msasures of the image of Grand Rapids Junior College

on the part of day older students and evening older

students

2. measures of satisfaction based on the difference

between the perception score on the various factors of

the "ideal" college and the perception score of the
student's real experience at Grand Rapids Junior College
on the part of the day older students and evening older
students

-3. reports of demographic characteristics.
Three hundred twenty-six surveys were collected. These
were approximately evenly divided between day and evening

students. See Table 1.

47

48

Table 1: Number of Surveys Collected

Primary Number of

Time—Mia.

Day 156

Evening 165

No entry 5

Total 326
In! IDIIIIHIIQD'S In!!!

One section of the data collected on the questionnaire
was the student's reaction to the descriptors of the college
characteristics in terms of his/her own experiences at Grand
Rapids Junior College. The analysis of these reactions gives
a description of the institution's image in the way that
Huddleston and Karr (1982) and Struckman-Johnson and Kinsley
(1985) did.

Listed in Table 2 are the average scores for each
college image factor, for both evening and day attending
older students. Precision is limited by the small number of
degrees of freedom inherent in the type of data collected.
However, the image profile constructed (see Figure 1) is

nevertheless suggestive of useful descriptions.

49

Table 2: Institutional Image of Grand Rapids
Junior College--Day and Evening

 

Factor ‘ Day Evening
3:2I1__522I£__
Academic Reputation 2.6 3.0
Enrollment (size) 2.9 3.2
Attractiveness of campus 3.5 3.7
Expense 4.2 4.6
Well-known/Unknown 2.7 2.8
Personal atmosphere 3.0 3.2
Distance from home 2.6 2.5
Preparation,further sch. 2.5 2.9
Placement service 2.7 3.6
Concerned faculty 2.5 3.0
Recreational opportunities 3.5 4.0
Support services 2.7 3.5
Safe campus 2.5 2.9

In Figure 1, on the following page, there is a diagram
of the college image components, similar to what Struckman-
Johnson and Kinsley (1985) call an image profile. In both of
these two previous studies and in the current research,
respondents see the institution in question in a generally
positive light. This may be related to a human tendency
towards cognitive dissonance rather than to any absolute
measure of the status of a college image. Nevertheless,
perceptions are the closest thing we have to reality. The
older students at Grand Rapids Junior College see the
institution as "pretty good” but not "very good" (2 or 3 on a

scale of 1 to 7) on most characteristics. Nearness to home

50

Institutional Image Profile

Figure 1:

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51

and concerned/involved faculty rate perhaps the best
(approximately 2 1/2). It is interesting to note that "cost"
rates approximately 4 1/2 (closer to inexpensive than
expensive, but not quite as "good" as the other factors) for
the group as a whole: the profile on this component diverges
from the reasonably straight line of the other components.
This, despite the fact that the tuition at Grand Rapids
Junior College is one of the highest of all the state's two

year colleges.

BMW

The hypothesis in this study is that there would be a
difference in the perceptions of the institution's image on
the part of the day older students and the evening older
students. A perusal of Figure 1 will show more similarities
than differences! However, there are some differences which
are analyzed in greater detail below. Evening students
perceive a lesser academic reputation, less effective job
placement service, less concerned faculty, fewer recreational

opportunities, fewer support services, and less safe campus.

I v . a r t ns
For each characteristic of a college included in the
questionnaire, students were asked to rate their ideal

college, and, on the reverse side of the paper, their real

52

experience. A "satisfaction" variable was constructed by
computing the difference between the "ideal" rating and the
"real" rating for each characteristic, for each subject.
The students were in two groups: ‘day attenders and
evening attenders. Only students 25 or older were asked to
respond. (Those younger were asked to return blank
questionnaires.) The null hypothesis to be tested was:
There is no difference between day adult students and

evening adult students on measures of satisfaction about
the college experience.

The Mann-Whitney U test was used to test the difference
between the two groups. Significance was assumed if the
probability of such difference occurring randomly was less
than or equal to .05 (p 5_.05).

The null hypothesis was proven false in its general
statement: there are significant differences between the two
groups in the degree of satisfaction with four of the college
image factors which were measured in this study. All four of
these differences were in the same direction: evening
students were less satisfied than day students about these
factors. The three sub-hypotheses will be discussed in the

appropriate sections below.

0 - ' a t I e
Several of the satisfaction variables developed from the

"two-sided" questionnaire produced differences which were

53

statistically not significant. These included:

academic reputation

enrollment (size)

attractiveness of campus

expense

well-known/unknown

atmosphere (personal/impersonal)
distance from home

preparation for further schooling
recreational opportunities

In developing a marketing plan for a large college with
both day and evening components for older students, knowing
which factors elicit similar responses from older day and
older evening students might also be useful. These are

presented in Table 3.

Table 3: College Image Factors Receiving Similar
Scores from Day and Evening Students

 

Satisfaction p

gagiable

Academic Reputation 0.083
Enrollment size 0.696
Campus attractiveness 0.255
Cost 0.309
Well/unknown 0.906
Personal atmosphere 0.171
Distance from home 0.834
Prepare further sch. 0.060
Recreational opport. 0.065

54

fiimiflsanfliffsrensea

Four of the satisfaction variables demonstrated
significant differences between the day and evening groups.
The differences between the groups on the effectiveness of
the placement service and on the degree of faculty
concern/involvement were both significant at the p < .05
level. The differences between the groups on the amount of
support services and the safety of the campus were both
significant at the p < .01 level. In all of these four
cases, the direction of the difference was that the evening
students are less satisfied than the day students. These
variables are presented in Table 4.

The null sub-hypotheses to be tested by these
measurements were the following:

Sub-hypothesis 1: There is no difference between day

adult students and evening adult students on measures of

campus safety or campus attractiveness.

Sub-hypothesis 2: There is no difference between day

adult students and evening adult students on measures of

satisfaction with support services.

Both of these null sub-hypotheses were proven false by
the measurements collected. Evening students were found to
be less satisfied with campus safety, although not with
campus attractiveness. Evening students were found to be
less satisfied with support services in general and with the
career/job placement service in particular.

One finding not stated in the null hypotheses is that

evening students are less satisfied with the concern and

55

involvement of faculty. In the post-survey interviews, all
those interviewed were unsurprised by this finding and able
to articulate possible reasons: evening faculty is composed
of full-time faculty who are tired and not doing their best,
or of part-time faculty who, whether tired or not, don't know
exactly how to be teachers, how to organize a class, keep the
content moving or on track, how to respond to students with

questions or problems.

Table 4: College Image Factors Receiving
Significantly Different Scores from
Day and Evening Students

 

Satisfaction p
Variable

Placement Service 0.020
Faculty 0.034
Support Services 0.001
Campus Safety 0.004

In presenting this data, the typical inclusion
would be the "mean" of all the scores collected. In
this case, the data is non-parametric: it has no
fixed zero point and the intervals between

incremental scores are not known to be consistent.

56

The medians are the appropriate measures of central
tendency and z scores the measure of the spread of
the data. The scores were not normally distributed.
The Mann-Whitney U test takes all this into its
process and provides a value for P that is the best
indicator of a statistically significant difference
between the day and the evening groups in this

research project. (Siegel, 1956, pp. 116-126)

In the answers to the open-ended question at the
bottom of the survey, students responded with mostly
positive comments about the quality of the school,
the helpfulness of the teachers, the closeness to
home and the fact that the courses met their needs.
Negative comments included the lack of parking and
some wishes for better content. There were no
comments to indicate that as a group evening students
are any less satisfied with anything than day
students are. In reference to the lower level of
satisfaction with support services in general and
with the placement service specifically, it is worth
noting that most campus offices close early in the
evening, before the classes are finished, and that
students who come at night rarely have extra time to
seek out services. In reference to security, one
must note that it is dark in the evening for most of

the semester: security personnel staff the evening

57

sessions until classes are over. One of the comments
referred to evening faculty as "slack" and wished for
greater professionalism. However, most comments gave
credit for faculty who "care about you": both in the

day and in the evening.

MW

Each respondent to the questionnaire was asked to
complete items describing demographic characteristics of
self. These items appeared at the bottom of the first page;
most respondents appeared to easily complete them.and then
move on to the second side.

The null sub-hypothesis to be tested in this section was
stated as follows:

Sub-hypothesis 3: There is no difference between day

adult students and evening adult students in likelihood

of employment.

This sub-hypothesis was also proven false. Older
evening students are more likely to be currently employed
than older day students and have higher family income than

the day students. These results are presented in the

sections below.

- ' n' icant
Five of the items demonstrated no significant

differences between the two groups. These were gender, age,

58

marital status, distance of the college from home, and
existence of children. These results are also useful to know
for marketing planning purposes. For example, this
researcher has observed a tendency for some planners to
expect women to be able to come to college in the day time
when the children finally go to school, and men to be likely
to be the student body after work. This study demonstrates
that there is no difference in the proportions of adult men

and women during the day or during the evening.

: S c' comme

Although the data show no significant difference in age
between the day group and the evening group in the research
sample, it is important to repeat that only students 25 years
of age or older were asked to complete the survey, and then
to report the kinds of numbers that were encountered in the
presentation of the survey. As described in Chapter 3,
questionnaires were presented to day and evening sections of
the same courses. In order to achieve a sample size of 157
for day students, 1796 students were approached. In order to
achieve the sample size of 169 for evening students, only 350
students were confronted. This is a contrast of 48% students
25 orolder in the evening sections, and only 9% in the day
sections. The differences presented in this study are based

on controlling the entry criterion for age.

59

Table 5: Age of Respondents in the Day and

Evening Research Groups

 

0.242

Day Evening
Students Students 2
Mean 32.44 33.11
Maximum 65 59
I of cases 154 153

Table 6: Demographic Descriptors Demonstrating

Similarity Between Day and Evening Students

 

 

Demographic Number of Responses p
DESEELPtor ._D§Y E!£i__NQn£

Gender 156 165 5 0.185
Age 154 153 22 0.242
Marital Status 154 165 7 0.382
Distance from home 154 165 7 0.548
Preschool Children 106 117 103 0.372
School-age children 120 135 71 0.184
Post H.S. Children 85 106 135 0.519

W

The family income response and the presently employed

(yes/no) response were significantly different at the p <

.001 level. The evening group demonstrated higher family

income and reported a greater likelihood of being employed

60

than the day group.

Table 7: Demographic Descriptors Which are Different
for Day and Evening Students

 

 

Demographic Number of Responses p
Descriptor L032. Eye, None

Family Income 145 156 25 0.000
Currently Employed 152 162 12 0.000

It is not at all evident why the evening group is so
much more likely to be employed and to have greater family
income. Anecdotally, this researcher has observed a high
likelihood for day students to be employed: research has
shown, now, that the likelihood is even higher among evening
students. Perhaps the better paying jobs exist during
daytime hours; thus those people are the ones attending in
the evening. It will be a subject for further research to
determine the reason(s) for this difference, and what impact,
if any, there should be on the design of services. It could
impact the institution's enrollment for example, if the
institution's image is such that prospective students think

there is no financial aid for evening students because the

61

image includes the idea that evening students make enough
money so as not to need help. The income variable is
presented in Table 8, and the likelihood of employment data
is presented in Table 9.

In the post-survey interviews, those students
interviewed felt that greater employment logically leads to
higher income; the difference seems to be that those who come
in the evening are not only employed more often than not, but
in full-time, better paying day jobs. Day older students may
be not working at all, surviving on grants and loans, or
working only part-time, perhaps at minimum wage, whether with

financial aid or without.

Table 8: Family Income Reported by Day and
Evening Students

 

Day Evening
Iggome anew
$0-10.000 38 10
$10-25,000 52 48
$25-50,000 40 74
> $50,000 15 24
Total cases 145 156 *

* 25 missing cases

62

Table 9: Likelihood of Employment by Day and
Evening Students

Day Evening
lo e ? tu Stude t
Yes 109 146
No 43 16
Total cases 152 162 *

* 12 missing cases

Interim

After the data for this research project had been
collected and analyzed, several students were interviewed
individually. These students were currently either primarily
day attending or primarily evening attending. Some were
surprised at the aggregate research findings; some were not.
Further interpretations of the results and possible reasons
for their feelings are discussed in Chapter 5. What is most
interesting to note, however, is that the most articulate of
these interviewees are those who have attended per; day and
evening classes. Having seen the College in both the light
of day and the darkness of evening, they are more able to
speculate on the observations and judgements of the students

who make up the research results.

CHAPTER V

Men

The primary purpose of this study was to determine
whether there are differences in institutional image
perception between older students attending college in the
evening and older students attending college during the day.
Only students 25 years of age or older were considered for
inclusion in the sample populations. Classes were identified
which offer sections in the day or in the evening; the survey
instrument was presented, completed, and collected in these
classes. Data was collected in the Fall semester, 1989.

Differences between the groups might lead to
institutional planning for change on the factors found to be
subjects of difference in levels of satisfaction with the
perception of the institution's image between the day and the

evening attending older students.

Degign and Procedure

A questionnaire was designed to determine differences
between a student's perceived "ideal" college and perceived

"real" experience at Grand Rapids Junior College. Students

63

64

responded to thirteen descriptors of the college experience
on Likert-type scales and then also to some demographic
descriptors. On each Likert-type item, students were asked
to respond to the bipolar adjective descriptors by checking
an interval from 1 to 7 on both the "ideal" side of the
questionnaire and the "real" side. A difference score was
constructed by subtracting the "real" from the "ideal" score.
The Mann-Whitney U test was used to test for statistically
significant differences between the older day students and
the older evening students. The differences in the reported
demographic descriptors were tested by means of the Mann-
Whitney U test for ordinal data or the Pearson chi-square for
the nominal data.

The questionnaire was administered in the Fall semester
of 1989 to both day and evening students, yielding a combined

sample size of approximately 310.

findings.
The most interesting finding of the study is that there

were very few differences between the day group and the
evening group within the confines of the study.

Once the entry criterion was set for age 25, the age of
the two groups was virtually the same, as was the proportion
of males and females. There was no statistically significant
difference in marital status, nor in numbers and ages of
children. There was also no difference in distance traveled

from.home.

65

On the Likert-type scales probing the perceptions of
various college characteristics, there were no statistically
significant differences in the perceptions of the two groups
as to academic reputation of the college, the enrollment
size, the attractiveness of the campus, the expense of
attendance, the general reputation (was it well-known or
unknown), the atmosphere (personal or impersonal), the
distance from home, the adequacy of preparation for further
schooling, and the availability of recreational

opportunities.

Where there were differences between the two groups in
the perception of these characteristics, the evening students
appeared to be less satisfied. Evening students perceive the
Grand Rapids Junior College Placement Service to be less
adequate than their "ideal" Placement Service and the Faculty
of Grand Rapids Junior College to be less concerned/involved
than faculty at the "ideal" college. Both of these
differences were statistically significant at the level of p
< .05. Evening students were also less satisfied with campus
safety and with general support services. Both of these
differences were statistically significant at the level of p
< .01.

In the demographic descriptors, the evening group was
‘more likely to be employed and had greater family income.
Both of these differences were statistically significant at

the level of p < .001.

66

5229513112111

The major conclusion from this study is that there is
very little difference between the older day and older
evening students on the items measured in this study. The
differences that were statistically significant were that
evening students are less satisfied with the placement
service and the concern/involvement demonstrated by faculty,
and less satisfied with perceived campus safety and with
support services in general. It is not possible to conclude
that these factors should be modified; it can be concluded
that these four factors are somehow perceived as less than
desired by evening older students, as contrasted to day

attending older students.

Evening students were more likely to be employed and had
higher family income than day students in this study. It is
not possible to draw a conclusion as to the reasons for this
disparity from the data collected in this research. One can
conclude that for the population included in this study there
are no differences in number of children, marital status, or
distance driven from home; there are also no differences in
gender proportion between the day and evening groups, or in
age (after they entry criterion of 25 years was met). One
cannot, however, conclude that there are no differences in
needs for services between the two groups--the numbers of

children may be the same, but the difference in need for

67

child care, for example, between evening and day, was beyond

the scope of this study.

Minna

During the post-survey interviews, students were able to
express some reasons behind the significant differences that
were discovered in this study. The difference in
satisfaction on the issue of concerned/involved faculty was
the most clearly addressed and unanimously stated. The
significant difference that was discovered was that older
evening students are less satisfied in their perception of
faculty than older day students. It should be noted that in
many cases, the faculty perceived are the same people both
night and day. In other cases, evening faculty have
interesting day jobs and an affinity for the subject taught
at night--one might even assume more enthusiasm for a course
taught once as a special duty than one taught all day.
However, both day and evening students feel that faculty are
more tired and less caring at night, less able to devote
individual attention to students. In addition, there is a
perceived short-coming in the ability to organize and handle
a class; these teachers are more likely to be thought of as
amateurs. Thoughts expressed in interviews included these:
"They [evening teachers] don't know the study habits of
students--what they'll do and not do--like read their

assignments." "Adjunct faculty has a tendency to go over the

68

head of the student." "Adjunct professors may be more
articulate, less used to evening students' lack of
background." Perhaps the most revealing (this researcher's
favorite) comment: "Evening students are older and
grumpier." '

This researcher's own observation is that
everybody is less "sharp" at night. Evening faculty
is composed of day faculty teaching overtime, or
people with other day responsibilities who teach only
at night. These adjunct faculty may be less likely
to think of teaching as a supportive profession, and
possibly more likely to think of classroom presence

only, simply a job to be done.

The issue of campus safety was also reasonably clearcut.
It's dark at night and the security guards are not as
obvious. "I never see one walking around the parking ramp
where they ought to be." Students apparently consider the
parking ramp a dangerous place, despite the lack of evidence
to support this. "The guards should go around it on scooters
so everyone can see them." "Reality may be the same for day
and night, but people have more concern at night."

.Dissatisfaction with the career/job placement service
and support services in general was usually seen as a single
issue by the interviewees. Despite some evening hours, these
services are perceived as simply not available at night.

"You have to take time off frem work and get here in the day

69

time." "Evening students expect more, maybe want a job after
only one class." "Bookstore never stays open long enough for
night students--a week or two isn't enough." An expression
of overall shortcomings, perhaps coloring one's feelings
about everything: "You get a break in a night class--can't

even get any food!"

Struckman-Johnson and Kinsley (1985) identified an
"alumni worldliness" factor in analyzing differences between
potential students, current students, and alumni, in their
study of institutional image. Alumni evidenced somewhat less
enthusiastic perceptions of the factors that made up the
institution's image, apparently because their experiences in
the real world tempered some of their responses, especially
on scale items relating to jobs. Evening students in this
study may be showing some of the same real-world tempering.
They wish for better, and perceive somewhat less magic in the
college experience.

Another question to consider is why did Huddleston and
Karr (1982) find differences in perception between image and
reality on nine factors out of twelve? In their study, the
differences were computed between the "ideal" and the "real"
rather than between different groups of students. While
their study is not completely parallel to the current
research, it is interesting to speculate on why only four
factors of the institutional image profile turned up

significant differences here. One thought expressed by an

7O

interviewee is that Grand Rapids is a very conservative area.
"This place is pretty much straight down the line." That is,
people may tend to make an overall judgement about something,
then carry that value in their heads.- All subsequent sub-
judgements (judgements on factors that make up the whole)

deviate only slightly from the internal overall position.

Wm

Some years ago, Leon Festinger stated a theory that has
now become common parlance. That is his idea of cognitive
dissonance. The idea is that a person faced with the need to
accept or tolerate a situation not to his/her liking
eventually adapts; one's perception becomes modified in some
way so that it isn't as bad as one had thought. The fox
thought the unreachable grapes were sour; the person
undergoing cognitive dissonance finds meaning, utility,
possibly even pleasure, in a previously negatively perceived
situation. A student who for whatever reasons did not want
to attend a certain college and lands there anyway, will
sooner or later, if remaining there, come to see it as an
acceptable place. The day and evening older students at
Grand Rapids Junior College all had similarly acceptable
perceptions of most of its image factors. It is possible
that greater variety in original perceptions was tempered by
something like cognitive dissonance so that the measurements
of perception within the groups had regressed toward some

standard degree of acceptability.

71

AW
Based on the findings, however limited, of this study,

the administration of Grand Rapids Junior College might find
a positive effect on the institution's image would result
from.taking action in several areas. First, some kind of
training for evening faculty in the "handling" of their
classes (not in communicating content) could result in a more
positive perception by the evening older students of the
concern/involvement demonstrated by faculty. Second, it
would be useful to determine whether evening students really
find the support services of a poor quality or simply don't
know these services are available to evening attenders. If
the former, it will be appropriate to improve these services.
If the latter, "advertising" might help. Third, the image of
campus safety in the evening needs to be addressed. Do
statistics show that the campus is less safe during the dark
hours than during the day, or do people just feel that way?
The answer to this question will determine the action to be
taken: improve safety in some way, or provide reassurance
that safety is not a problem (or is not a greater problem in

the evening than during the day).

MW

In many ways, this study has raised more questions than
it has answered. Among them are: are there differences
between groups of older students who attend predominantly

residential schools as well as between the groups of commuter

72

students here described? Are there differences between the
youngest of the students studied in this project and the
oldest?. Are there differences between groups who have passed
through various life-cycle events and those who have not?
Given the noticeable lack of differences between the day and
evening groups studied here, does anything a college does
make a difference? Perhaps there are emotions within the
students that lead to perceptions of satisfaction.

The evening students were less satisfied with some of
the college image factors; they were, as a group, also more
likely to be employed and had higher family income. Another
study might consider the possibility of interactive effects
of these demographic factors: are those who are "making it"
likely to expect more of the people they encounter (faculty)
and of a service they consider necessary to the hunt for
success?

‘ This study was conducted only at Grand Rapids Junior
College. Other studies which involve other commuter or
residential schools might be productive in detemmining
whether there are any other significant differences in
perception among various groups of older students. This
study was also limited to first year level students. This
researcher was attempting to measure the institutional image
perception of those entering the college. A study which
attempts to measure the perception of those who stay for
several semesters and compare it to the perception of those

who drop out could prove very helpful in the ongoing effort

73

to improve retention.

A very articulate group, not included in this study, but
anecdotally consulted by this researcher, is the college's
own faculty. Those who have taught in both day and evening
sessions are able to discern same of the differences between
the research groups and to supply some possible reasons.
Another study could explore faculty perceptions of the
differences between the institution's image in the day and in
the evening. Faculty, from long association with students,
is also likely to be able to suggest reasons behind the

students' differing perceptions.

mm

It is important to deal with the issue of image, even if
it seems one ought to deal with "substance."_ According to
Kotler (1985, p. 37) "people often respond to the
institution's image, not necessarily its reality. Publics
holding a negative image of a school will avoid or disparage
it, even if the institution is of high quality, and those
holding a positive image will be drawn to it." The research
described in this paper has outlined some of the perceptions
of Grand Rapids Junior College held by two groups of older
students. As older students are becoming a larger proportion
of actual and potential college students, it will be well to
know what their perceptions are. In particular, it should be

useful to know on what factors the evening students seem to

74

be less satisfied; this is the arena where changes in
perception will be needed, even as changes in substance have
begun. Kotler (p. 43) points out that "images tend to be
'sticky' and last long after the reality of the institution
has changed." Thus, even though support services are
available in the evening, no one seems to know it. Should
the institution decide that its image needs changing, there
are appropriate factors developed in this study for work to

begin.

APPENDIX

SURVEY INSTRUMENT

(Reduced in Size 30%)

'75

CHARACTERISTICS OF COLLEGES

Below are 13 sets of terms which may be used to describe a college program.
Please indicate, by putting a check mark on each of the scales below, where
each of these sets of characteristics rates in evaluating your ideal
college.

(1 2 3 4 5 6 .7)

Superior academic __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Inferior academic (1)
reputation reputation

Large enrollment __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Snail enrollment (2)

Attractive campus __ __, __ __ __ __ __ Unarrractive canpus (3)

Expensive __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Inexpensive (4)

Hell-known __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Unknown (5)

Personal __ __ __ __ ___ __ __ Inpersonal (6)
atnosphere atrosphere

Near to hone _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Far fro: hone (7)
Strong preparation __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Veak preparation (8)
for further schooling for further schooling

Effective career/job Ineffective career/job (9)

placement service placerent servrce
Concerned/involved __ __ __ .__ __ __ __ Uncorcerned/uninvolved (10)
faculty faculr°
Hany recreational __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Few recreational (11)
opportunities opportunities

Hany support serrices Few support services (12)

Safe canpus __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Unsafe canpus (13)
Gender 1 Male (14) 'Age __ __ (15-16)
____2 Female
Marital 1 Single (17) Family 1 0-10,000 (18)
status 2 Married income 2 10-25,000
3 Divorced ___ 3 25-50,000
4 Widowed ___ 4 50,000 or more
Distance from 1 O - 5 niles (19) Presently 1 Yes (20)
home to GRJC 2 5 - 15 miles employed 2 No
____3 15 - 30 miles
4 more than 30 miles
YES NO
(1) (2)

Do you have children in
Pre-school ages (21)
School - elementary to high (22)
Post high school (23)

76

Your revious rankings applied to your ideal college. Below, please use :he

same methods to rate your evaluation of your own experiences at Grand Rar‘ds

nor-N.
Junior College.

6 7)
Superior academic __ __ Inferior acadenic (24)
reputation reputation
Large enrollaent __ __ Small enrollment (25)
Attractive canpus ___ __ Unattractive canpus (26)
Expensive __ __ Inexpensive (27)
Hell-known __ __ Unknown (23)
yegsonal __ __ Inpersonal (29)
atmosphere atzospnere
Near to tore __ __ Far from hone (30)
Strong preparation __ __ Weak preparation (31)
for further schooling for further schooling
Effective career/job __ __ Ineffective career/job (32)
placement serVice placement seruice
Concerneofinvolved __ __ Unconcerned/uninvolved (33)
faculty faculty
Hany recreational __ __ Pew recreational (34)
opportunities opportunities
Xany support services __ __ Few support services (35)
Safe cacpus __ __ Unsafe campus (36)
Are mos: of the classes you 1 Weekdays (37)
attend at GRJC on ___ 2 Evenings
3 weekends

In your own words. please tell why you feel as you do about Grand Rapids Junior
College.

B I BL IOGRAPHY

L

4'"

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