The preparation orientations of undergraduate departments.

One of the fundamental charges of undergraduate departments is the preparation of students for life after graduation. However, departments do not have a simple task in preparing students. Four potential influences act on academic departments: disciplinary goals, beliefs about educational purpose, institutional mission, and student goals. Given these multiple influences, it is reasonable to assume that departments offer multiple forms of preparation. This study proposes that the preparation orientations of academic departments have four main dimensions: one for career, one for graduate school, one for liberal education, and one for general education. It also postulates that there may be differences in the degree to which departments emphasize each of these dimensions, depending on their discipline and their institutional setting. Emphasis on the four dimensions of preparation orientation was measured via an instrument developed especially for this study and administered to faculty in seven disciplines at three different universities. The twenty-one departments were then compared using discriminant analysis. The study found that most departments ascribe to all four dimensions, although in varying degrees. The departments varied most by discipline. While professional fields differed from other disciplines primarily on their strong emphasis on careers and weak emphasis on liberal and general education, the other disciplines tended to differ from one another in their emphasis on preparation for future scholarship. Differences between institutions were less marked. Departments in the comprehensive institution tended to emphasize career preparation more and liberal and general education less than departments in the doctoral and research institutions. The study also found that faculty reported that students and institutional mission play a large role in what their departments offer. An urban mission and a focus on non-traditional and first-generation students tended to make institutions and disciplines similar to one another, despite different Carnegie Classifications and in contrast to previous research which emphasizes differences between disciplines.PhDEducationHigher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123320/2/3069000.pd