| The fundamental issue facing community colleges in the nineteen eighties is that of mission. Previous research on the purposes of higher education provided limited assistance in defining the alternative missions that community colleges might pursue. An alternative conceptual framework upon which to base an empirical model for formulating operational missions for community colleges was proposed to overcome the limitations inherent in the previous research. The empirical model included the development and administration of both pilot and revised versions of the Community College Activities Survey which was comprised of a comprehensive and representative list of community college activities that specified services performed, clientele served, and rationale for the activity. Factor analysis of the responses of over 1,200 respondents from various constituent groups of the Arizona community colleges, including legislators, registered voters, board members, administrators, faculty and evening students, yielded twelve operational missions for these colleges. Descriptive statistics indicated the level of support provided by each constituent group for each mission, including the willingness of each group to support the missions with tax dollars. The results indicated that community college constituents perceived of these colleges in terms of the clientele that they serve rather than in terms of the functions or services they perform. This perception explained the substantial differences between the operational missions formulated from empirical data in this study and the traditional missions that are found in the literature. The results also indicated strong support for a broad range of community college activities, primarily those associated with traditional collegiate functions and those that provide identifiable public, as opposed to private, benefits. Both the practical and theoretical implications of the results were discussed. |
