Description and Prediction of Diversity Among Junior Colleges

Diversity in student characteristics at 79 junior colleges was examined. An attempt was made to predict each of 22 student characteristics on the basis of factor scores developed by Richards, Rand, and Rand from published information. Freshmen at the 79 junior colleges were shown to differ widely from each other in level of academic input, major goals in attending college, plans and aspirations, features that made the college attractive to them, degree of influence exerted by others, and significant out-of-class achievements. Most of these differences were related to one or more of the factor scores, but the multiple correlations were too low to permit the substitution of one set of data for the other without a significant loss in accuracy. Implications for characterizing junior colleges, for the naming of factor scores, and for junior college research are discussed.