| Summary: | The purpose of this study was to identify indicators of quality for liberal arts colleges and universities as defined by internal and external constituents, and to compare the results of this study with those of two-year public institutions. The internal constituents included college and university presidents and faculty, and the external constituents consisted of officers of Chambers of Commerce and the Kiwanis International, representing business and industry. A survey instrument of 70 items was sent to the constituents of 148 institutions accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. A total of 592 surveys were sent with an average response rate of 56.93%. The study was limited to Baccalaureate (Liberal Arts) Colleges I and Baccalaureate (Liberal Arts) Colleges II according to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. There were 57 survey items identified as indicators of quality by agreement of all respondent group means. The highest ranked indicator of quality was faculty commitment to teaching. The Analysis of Variance revealed close agreement by constituents on 17 of the quality indicators. There was close agreement also that three of the survey items were not indicators of quality. Fisher's Multiple Comparison test revealed that various constituents rated some survey items significantly higher than all other groups. The items that presidents, faculty representatives, and Chamber of Commerce officers each rated significantly high indicated the unique perspective of each constituent group. The Kiwanis officers responded similarly to the Chamber officers but did not rate any survey items significantly higher than other groups. Internal constituents rated seven items significantly higher than external constituents. These items centered mainly on faculty characteristics. External constituents rated three items higher than internal constituents. These survey items focused mainly on curriculum issues that related to the community and real-world problems. Seventeen conclusions were drawn from the study and implications for practice were formulated in areas such as faculty teaching, student interaction, learning outcomes, institutional effectiveness, external constituents, goal setting, advertising, and recruiting.
|
|---|
