Howard Rose

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to question the validity of community colleges' occupational goals for graphic arts programs in the United States. To accomplish this, a statistical investigation was designed to either accept or reject the hypothesis of the thesis, which was: If a community college's educational objective in a graphic arts program is to prepare the student for a specific occupational area and level of occupation in the graphic arts industry, then upon successful completion of the program, a personnel director of a graphic arts firm would hire the student for that area and level of occupation for which he was trained. Approximately 100 community colleges in the United States were contacted. The survey included those schools awarding an Associate of Arts, an Associate of Science, or a diploma/certificate in graphic arts. The directors of the graphic arts programs were asked about the occupational positions that the school's curriculum prepared students for after graduation. They were asked to select the positions from a list sent to them. Another question asked of the community college directors concerning graduates of their program was about the positions that the majority of their students had entered upon graduation. The responses were checked on the same list of occupations. These two lists should correlate highly if the occupational goals of the program were accurate in relation to actual conditions and manpower requirements. The school catalogs were also obtained from the directors. The majority of the graphic arts programs were summarized into three representative programs: one program for the technical aspects of printing, one program for the technical/management aspects, and one representing all the one to one-and-a-half year certificate programs. The occupational goals for each of the three programs were kept separate. The three programs were shown to a random sampling of printing firms across the country. The personnel directors were asked what occupational positions graduates of the three curricula are qualified to fill. They were then asked to check the occupation from the same list presented to the community college directors. Ideally, the lists from the community college directors and the personnel directors should be the same. If this is true, then the hypothesis is true. If there is a significant difference between the responses, then the hypothesis is false, showing that the goals of community college programs are not realistic and valid. The conclusions of the research were contrary to much of the published information on community college graphic arts programs. Using Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and a significance level of 0.05, the hypothesis was accepted. That is, students were in general being hired for those positions professed to be occupational goals of the curricula. This was true for all three representative programs.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Education, Higher--Aims and objectives; Technical education--Curricula; Printing industry--Job descriptions

Publication Date

5-1-1975

Document Type

Thesis

Department, Program, or Center

School of Media Sciences (CIAS)

Advisor

Noga, Joseph

Comments

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works. Physical copy available through RIT's The Wallace Library at: T65.R6

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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