Date of Award
2001
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine students' expectations of and satisfaction with academic experiences provided by private career colleges. Trends in student expectations and satisfaction levels at private career colleges were identified using the USA Group Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) database for private career colleges for the years 1997, 1998 and 1999. In addition, differences in perceived importance and satisfaction levels based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, grade point average (GPA), and employment status were identified. Means and standard deviations were calculated in each of the categories by year for all 21,409 students to determine both students' ranks of importance and satisfaction with the academic experiential categories. Based on this study, Instructional Effectiveness was the most important category to private career college students. Instructional Effectiveness was also the category ranked as most satisfying to private career college students in 1997 and 1998. Five factorial ANOVAs were run for each importance category and each satisfaction category totaling 115 factorial ANOVAs on a sub-sample containing 4,500 student records randomly selected by SPSS. In sum, it was found that: females placed greater importance value than males on the majority of academic experiences; students 25 and older were satisfied to a greater degree than students 24 and under; minority students were found to be as satisfied with their academic experiences as White/Caucasian students; students with no credits earned were more satisfied than students who had been in college and had GPAs, regardless of the numeric value of the GPA; and in all categories there was an increase in student satisfaction in the year 1999. It is recommended that further expectation and satisfaction level research be conducted based on gender, age ethnicity and students with GPAs of 2.99.
Recommended Citation
Huggins, Tammi, "Student Expectations And Satisfaction Levels In Private Career Colleges" (2001). All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 866.
https://scholars.indianastate.edu/etds/866