A comparison of faculty and administrator perceptions of the merger of Kentucky's community colleges and vocational/technical institutes.

Community college education;School administration;Higher education

Jason Douglas Warren

University:University of Louisville

Department:Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Human Resource Education

关键词: Community college education;    School administration;    Higher education;   

Others  :  https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2533&context=etd

美国|英语

来源: The Universite of Louisville's Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

One of the most nationally-recognized, two-year legislative reform initiatives in the U.S. began in Kentucky with the passage of the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997 (HB1). This exploratory, cross-sectional, correlational study was administered at the 10-year anniversary of the HB1-legislated formation of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS), which originally combined 13 community colleges formerly governed by the University of Kentucky and 25 vocational/technical institutes previously governed by the Kentucky Cabinet for Workforce Development. This dissertation examined faculty and administrator perceptions of the merger of Kentucky's community colleges and vocational/technical institutes that resulted from HB1. Two research questions guided the study. The first sought to determine whether significant differences in perceptions of merger were found between Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) administrators and faculty. The second research question explored that, if there was a difference between the perceptions of the two groups concerning merger, could that difference be explained through five control variables which were gleaned from the research literature: (a) type of institutional decision-making, (b) depth of merger implementation, (c) level of involvement in merger initiatives, (d) internal versus external motivation for reform initiatives that led to merger, and (e) level of support for state postsecondary education reform initiatives that led to merger. A survey instrument was designed using information gathered from a thorough literature review. A panel of experts validated the instrument. The survey instruments were mailed to a stratified random sample of faculty ( n = 1,497) and all administrators ( N = 195) of the 16 public two-year colleges that form KCTCS. A total of 569 faculty and administrators returned completed, usable surveys and became the sample for the study. The 33.7 percent total return rate for this study was consistent within the acceptable range described in the research literature. The results of the study suggested that administrators maintained a more positive view of the merger than faculty. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the null hypothesis for the first question that there was no difference in the perception of merger, with Perception of Merger as the dependent variable and respondent status, faculty or administrator, as the independent variables. Administrators had a significantly higher mean score than faculty; therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected. Administrators maintained significantly more positive perceptions of the merger compared to faculty. For the second research question, a multivariate analysis of variance