Abstract
This study determined whether two dimensions underlie the typology of college student subcultures developed by Clark and Trow. Students’ perceptions of their academic programs and their non-academic lives, the number of times they interacted informally with faculty members, and the number of extra-curricular activities in which they engaged were predictor variables in a stepwise discriminant function analysis. Two statistically significant functions were produced. The first, comprising primarily students’ interest in their non-academic lives, was labeled “Non-Academic Interest;” the second, with level of interest in the academic program and amount of interaction with faculty as the principal contributors, was labeled “Academic Interest.” Centroids for the four groups, relative to the functions corresponding to the two underlying dimensions of the Clark-Trow model, fell into quadrants consistent with the model’s typology. While the results generally confirm the validity of the two constructs underlying the conceptual scheme, there are also indications that the “Involvement with Ideas” dimension is not totally satisfactory for discriminating among the groups. The results suggest that a distinction needs to be made between ideas that have utilitarian value and those with esthetic appeal.
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