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Student Typologies in Higher Education

Shouping Hu, Lindsey Katherine, George D. Kuh

Since the founding of Harvard College in 1636, American higher educa-tion has undergone a dramatic transformation. College education has long passed the time that only a small number of individuals from elite back-grounds could have it. American higher education today is in a stage of universal access where a diverse student population enrolls in a wide range of types of institutions of higher learning (Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2002).

American higher education can justifi ably claim to be a resounding success for its wide reach to students of different backgrounds and accom-plishments in knowledge discovery, as it is widely considered to be the center of the international knowledge system (Altbach, 1998). It is also facing some persistent criticisms, one of which is the uneven quality of undergraduate education. For example, the National Commission on the Future of Higher Education (2006) was “disturbed by evidence that the quality of student learning at U.S. colleges and universities is inadequate and, in some cases, declining” (p. 3). In Academically Adrift, Arum and Roksa (2011) reported that a large proportion of students on American campuses—at least 40 percent—showed little, if any, gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing ability. Not surprisingly, these disturbing fi ndings reignited the national conversation about the quality of undergraduate education. Clearly there is a need to better understand college students, what they do, and what they gain from the college expe-rience. Such information is needed to design and implement programs that promise to enhance student experiences and improve student learn-ing and personal development.

This chapter reviews various student typologies developed over time and the stability and change in American college students’ characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors the typologies reflect.

5NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH, Assessment Supplement 2011, Winter 2011 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ir.413

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH • DOI: 10.1002/ir

6 ASSESSMENT SUPPLEMENT 2011

One way to understand the college student experience is the genera-tional approach, which examines the characteristics and attitudes of cohorts across different periods in history. For example, Strauss and Howe (1991) argued it is important to use a generational approach to under-stand social transformation as a generation may share similar dispositions, views, expectations, and needs. Terms such as baby boomers, generation X, and millennials convey powerful images that characterize different genera-tions according to who they are and what they do. Others have asserted that knowing about these patterns can help faculty and staff better under-stand the current generation of students and modify policies, programs, and practices tailored to their needs (Coomes and DeBard, 2004).

Another way of viewing cohorts of college students within and across time periods is the typological approach (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000). The operating assumption of this approach is that it is possible to identify distinctive groups with a student body that shares many similarities, the composition of which distinguishes them in meaningful ways from other student groups on the campus or across the postsecondary landscape. With this knowledge, faculty, staff, and scholars can better understand and predict how various groups of students may take advantage of learn-ing opportunities or behave when encountering or experiencing different aspects of college life, inside and outside the classroom (Kuh, 1990; Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000). Although typological approaches do not focus on the process or implications of developmental changes common to traditional-age students, comparing college student typologies from different historical periods can reveal both the similarities and differences of college students over time. This chapter reviews the typologies of col-lege students developed so far and examines the continuity and change of college student characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors the typologies refl ect.

Student Typologies: Past to Present

Researchers have long used student typologies to study college students. Astin (1993b) pointed out that “it is virtually impossible to carry on a meaningful conversation about American college students without invok-ing taxonomic language” (p. 36). Moreover, peers influence most aspects of college student development (Astin, 1993a; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991, 2005). One’s friends and affinity groups can be especially influential in both the quantity and quality of time that students use in college in studying or socializing (Clark and Trow, 1966; Kuh and Whitt, 1988). Flacks and Thomas (2007) stated that “going to college affected students’ values and orientations in many ways, but these effects had much to do with the social worlds students created. These subcultural worlds, rooted in shared social background, were crucibles for collective and individual identity and for the crystallization of attitudes and interests that shaped

STUDENT TYPOLOGIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION 7


the life course of many participants” (p. 184). The clustering of attitudes and behaviors that make up a student type, the basis for a student typol-ogy, can lend insight into the potential circle of people students tend to spend time with and help explain peer effects on college outcomes (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000; Kuh and Whitt, 1988).

One of the most cited typologies is that of Clark and Trow (1966), who used two primary dimensions of students to develop their typology: identifi cation with the college and involvement with ideas. They com-bined these orientations to create four dominant student groups: aca-demic, collegiate, vocational, and nonconformist. Both academics and collegiates identify strongly with their college and are loyal to the institu-tion. While academics prefer intellectual matters and academic work, col-legiates are less interested in academic work and embrace the social aspects of college life. Students in the vocational group view college as a stepping-stone to a good job and tend not to take part in many college-sponsored activities. Nonconformists identify more with off-campus groups and issues related to art, literature, and politics.

The interest in college students and their experiences was sustained throughout the 1960s and 1970s, attracting the attention of many noted sociologists and social psychologists (Flacks and Thomas, 2007). Unsur-prisingly, a few typologies of college students were developed during that time, including those put forth by Newcomb, Koenig, Flacks, and War-wick (1967), Keniston (1965), Tabor and Hackman (1976), and Katchadourian and Boli (1985), as summarized by Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000). As an extension to the summary of major typologies by Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000), Table 1.1 presents an expanded summary with results from some recent studies.

Another notable college student typology was developed by Horowitz (1987), who studied college students and student subcultures from a his-torical perspective. She distilled four student types that correspond well to Clark and Trow’s typology: outsiders, college men/women, new outsiders, and rebels. Outsiders were serious about academic work, whereas college men/women were more interested in the social life in college. New outsid-ers, serious about academic work, were more concerned about job oppor-tunities after college, and rebels were concerned about social issues on and off campus (Horowitz, 1987). While it seems plausible that these four major types of student groups would continue to exist, it is also likely that their numbers and relative infl uence would wax and wane as changes occur in the larger society.

In 1993, Astin used factor analysis to create groupings from the responses of twenty-six hundred students to sixty items from the annual Cooperative Institutional Research Program survey. It resulted in seven groups: scholars, leaders, hedonists, status strivers, social activists, artists, and uncommitted. Those groups were quite similar to those described in the other typologies. In fact, Astin (1993b) concluded that there was


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considerable stability of the major types over several decades, as we depicted in Table 1.1.

Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000) introduced a typology based on the quality of effort students expended in educationally purposeful activities and linked the resulting student types to student self-reported gains from college. The data set used for their study included over 51,000 under-graduates from 128 institutions in the form of responses on the Coll e ge Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ). Using factor analysis and then cluster analysis, they found that ten major groups emerged from this study: disengaged, recreator, socializer, collegiate, scientist, individualist, artist, grind, intellectual, and conventional. Most of the groups repre-sented in Kuh, Hu, and Vesper’s (2000) activities-based typology share certain characteristics of the groups identifi ed in past typologies (Table 1.1), supporting Astin’s (1993b) conclusion of stability over time in stu-dent subgro u ps. The innovative feature of Kuh, Hu, and Vesper was that students’ types are linked to patterns of behaviors and self-reported outcomes.

Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003) used data from the Nationa l Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which included 40,479 responses from ran-domly selected senior students, to create a psychographic typology. The analyses used factor analysis to reduce twenty student-initiated engage-ment items to a more manageable fi ve factors (student-faculty interac-tions, experiences with diversity, academic effort, out-of-class experiences, and integrative activities), followed by a k-mean c luster analysis using the previously computed factor scores. The cluster analysis resulted in eight clusters, or types: unconventionals, collegiates, vocationals, convention-als, grinds, academics, maximizers, and disengaged. The unconventionals group was new to recent typologies and included students with below-average social and academic activity but who often interact with people who have diverse perspectives and backgrounds. The number of part-time students has increased in recent decades, resulting in part-time students being overrepresented in this group. This may also in part explain the emergence of the unconventionals group (Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh, 2003; Hu and McCormick, 2011).

Hu and McCormick (2011) extended the recent work on behaviorally anchored typologies by using student responses to items from the NSSE and other data from the 2006 cohort of the Wabash National Study of Lib-eral Arts Education (WNSLAE). They used a k-means cluster analysis to produce seven groups of student types based on the fi ve different bench-marks used by NSSE. The seven types were academics, unconventionals, disengaged, collegiates, maximizers, grinds, and conventionals. Outcome variables such as grade point average (GPA), objective measures of learn-ing outcomes, self-reported gains, and persistence from fi rst to second year of college were available from the WNSLAE study. This allowed researchers to use a linear and logistic regression to illustrate relationships



between the student types and various important college outcomes. The results also support the hypothesis that certain groups are more successful in college because they spend their time on educationally purposeful activities including academics. Moreover, the more engaged students were more likely to persist to a second year at the same institution. However, GPA varied little across the different types, with the disengaged group, with by far the lowest GPA, being the only exception.

The typologies described so far were mostly based on students attend-ing four-year institutions. Given that a large proportion of college students enroll at two-year institutions, it makes sense that there would be interest in classifying students at these schools. Bahr (2010) recently developed a typology of community college students based on student course taking and enrollment behaviors that yielded six groups: transfer, vocational, drop-in, noncredit, experimental, and exploratory. Students in the transfer group took a large number of credits that can be used for transfer pur-poses, while vocational students took courses with nontransferable voca-tional credits. Drop-in students took very few credits, and students labeled as noncredit are those who took more no-credit courses. In the experi-mental group are students who took a low course load, stayed in college for shorter periods, and had lower course success rates, and in the explor-atory group are students who took nearly a full course load but had lower course success rate. Bahr’s typology described a wide variation of student enrollment behaviors in community colleges and is a good addition to the typological research on American college students. Bahr’s subsequent work on community college student typologies is presented in Chapter Three in this volume.

Continuity and Change in College Student Typologies

This brief review suggests that college students can be classified into dis-tinctive groups at different points in time, and these groupings share some characteristics within and across the groups. Students have been grouped by similarities in preferences and predispositions (Clark and Trow, 1966), values and attitudes (Astin, 1993b), and activities, behaviors, and out-comes (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000; Hu and McCormick, 2011). The more recent typology studies based on student activities and behaviors are con-sistent with other research showing that students learn and develop from their engagement in educationally purposeful activities (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000; Hu and McCormick, 2011; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991, 2005). The desirable outcomes associated with student engagement are represented by self-reported gains, direct assessment of learning gains, GPAs, and persistence (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000; Hu and McCormick, 2011). The results also suggest that engagement in a wide range of activi-ties, such as that characteristic of intellectuals in Kuh, Hu, and Vesper’s study or maximizers in the Hu and McCormick study, benefits students



more than narrow emphasis on a single activity, such as social interaction with peers (socializers), sports and recreation (recreates), the arts (artists), or even academics (grinds).

There are strong similarities in the recent college student typologies, even in comparison to results from previous decades. When Clark and Trow’s typology is used as the reference point, the features of their aca-demics are mirrored by the intellectuals in Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000) and maximizers in Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003) and Hu and McCor-mick (2011). We can also see a collegiates group in recent typologies simi-lar to that in Clark and Trow’s typology. In addition, the group of students who tend to value primarily academic work was refl ected in the grinds group in many typologies, including Tabor and Hackman (1976), Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000), and Hu and McCormick (2011). The fi ndings of Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003) and Hu and McCormick (2011) seem to follow the results of previous literature in the fi eld, with similar student types. In addition, the studies complement the Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000) fi ndings by not only identifying similar types of student groups, but adding a component to the research that connects these groups with student outcomes. All three studies contain the grind, collegiate, conven-tional, and disengaged groups.

Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh’s (2003) and Hu and McCormick’s (2011) academic group was a similar student group to many other researchers of past typologies: comparable to Astin’s (1993b) scholar, Katchadourian and Boli’s (1985) intellectual striver, Tabor and Hackman’s (1976) scholar, and the academic in Clark and Trow’s (1966) research. The Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003) results included a vocational group, as had Clark and Trow (1966), and was similar to the careerist found in Tabor and Hack-man (1976) and Katchadourian and Boli (1985). Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000), Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003), and Hu and McCormick (2011) also found a group of students they labeled the disengaged.

Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003) and Hu and McCormick (2011) added another important distinction: the emergence of the maximizer and the unconventional student groups. Nine percent of the student popula-tion in Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh’s (2003) study and 10 percent of the popu-lation from Hu and McCormick’s (2011) study were maximizers. This group is highly engaged in all of the measured outcome areas. In addition, Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003) found them to be typically traditional-age, full-time students who were more satisfi ed overall with their college expe-rience than the other groups. The unconventional group (11 and 17 per-cent, respectively) was almost at the opposite end of the engagement spectrum, with below-average social and academic activity; it also con-tained a large percentage of part-time students (Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh, 2003; Hu and McCormick, 2011).

In addition, recent typology research indicated that in general, the presence of student types was not directly related to institutional



characteristics, which is consistent with Pascarella and Terenzini’s (1991, 2005) observation that rather even numbers of most student types are found in all types of four-year colleges and universities. Only Zhao, Gon-yea, and Kuh (2003) found a slight variation in this, with collegiate and maximizers overrepresented at liberal arts colleges and Kuh, Hu, and Ves-per (2000) fi nding that individualists were overrepresented at highly selec-tive colleges. There were also slightly larger proportions of intellectuals and artists at small colleges and scientists at research universities (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000). In general, nontrivial numbers of all the groups identifi ed in this study appear to be present at all types of schools, including the disen-gaged and grinds, who do not put forth enough effort on the right things, such as activities that will help them acquire the skills and competencies they need to succeed after college (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000).

Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000), Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003), and Hu and McCormick (2011) provide some insight into the nature of typology-based student groups from the 1990s. For example, some distinctive stu-dent types were discovered. The disengaged group, who had substantially below-average scores in all types of college activities, is a distinctive group not obviously represented in previous typologies. These are students who benefi t substantially less from college in learning outcomes, achieve less academically, and are less likely to persist (Hu and McCormick, 2011). Given the increasing concern on student learning outcomes and low grad-uation rates in colleges and universities, the disengaged group apparently warrants more attention from both researchers and policymakers. Another group, the recreators, who make up a tenth of all undergraduates, also rings true. Although their overall effort was about average (due in large part to their high sports and exercise factor score), they did not report the gains from college that most other groups did (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000). Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000) suspected that many recreators may use sport and exercise to connect with peers and manage to stay in col-lege, even though they may benefi t less from college.

Student backgrounds help explain some of the differences across stu-dent types. Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh (2003) found that the maximizers tended to be typically traditional-age, full - time students and were more satisfi ed overall with their college experience than the other groups. The recently documented unconventional group included students with below-average social and academic activity, but who often interact with people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds (Hu and McCormick, 2011; Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh, 2003). Another useful insight from the Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000) study is the likelihood that some student group membership may be infl uenced by the combination of one’s psycho-social developmental stage and amount of college experience. Previous typologies infer group membership to be stable over the college years. Kuh, Hu, and Vesper (2000) found that the largest groups for fi rst-year students were the conventionals, disengaged, and socializers. However,



the proportions of students in these groups drop sharply from the fi rst year to the sophomore year, suggesting that students in these types may leave school following their fi rst year or successfully manage the psycho-social challenges common to the fi rst year of college, modifying their pat-tern of engagement that places them in a different student group in later years (Kuh, Hu, and Vesper, 2000).

Implications of Student Typologies

One window into understanding student success in college is to determine how students spend their time. One’s peers significantly influence what students choose to do and what they avoid. And how students spend their time—student engagement—is directly related to what they gain from attending college. Therefore, academic administrators, faculty members, student life professionals, institutional researchers, and others would be wise to become familiar with the nature of the various student types that exist at their school.

Most campuses have students who look like the kinds of students described in recent studies. These typologies can be used to identify the students who are likely to exhibit educationally purposeful engagement patterns (for example, intellectuals, scientists, maximizers, and individu-alists) and those who gravitate toward activities linked to much less desir-able outcomes (for example, recreators, socializers, unconventional, and disengaged). Institutions could also use these student typologies to see what proportion of their student body exhibits behaviors and outcomes aligned with the espoused values and stated mission of the institution (Zhao, Gonyea, and Kuh, 2003).

Although campuses cannot substantially alter who matriculates, they can predict which students are likely to act in ways similar to one of the contemporary student types. Academic advisors can use this information to review with their advisees how they are spending their time and encour-age recreators and socializers to try some different activities on occasion. Residence life staff can do the same. This information can also be shared with instructors of fi rst-year seminars, and perhaps assignments can be created that better involve unconventionals and the disengaged in more productive activities. It is imperative that administrators and researchers collaborate in order to take the natural next step: using the results pre-sented in the literature to guide and inform practice.

As campuses become more diverse and added pressure is placed on increasing persistence and graduation rates, using institutional research to understand the students on the college campus becomes increasingly important. Institutional researchers can use data from national surveys such as NSSE and CSEQ and student record data and use appropriate statistical methods to generate student types and examine how these types are predictive of students’ success. In order to use this information



to benefi t the institution, programs and policies can be created and imple-mented in an effort to promote student engagement in activities that will bolster their learning and personal development.

Thus, although student typologies came into vogue in the higher edu-cation literature more than a half-century ago, their relevance, if systemat-ically updated with valid, reliable data, can continue to inform policies and practices. In the absence of such information, we are only guessing as to the characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors that defi ne who our stu-dents are and why they benefi t from college in different ways.

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Arum, R., and Roksa, J. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Association of American Colleges and Universities. Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2002.

Astin, A. W. What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993a.

Astin, A. W. “An Empirical Typology of College Students.” Journal of College Student Development, 1993b, 34, 36–46.

Bahr, P. R. “The Bird’s Eye View of Community Colleges: A Behavioral Typology of First-Time Students Based on Cluster Analytic Classification.” Research in Higher Education, 2010, 51, 724–749.

Clark, B. R., and Trow, M. “The Organizational Context.” In T. M. Newcomb and E. K. Wilson (eds.), College Peer Groups: Problems and Prospects for Research (pp. 17–70). Chicago: Aldine, 1966.

Coomes, M. D., and DeBard, R. “A Generational Approach to Understanding Stu-dents.” In M. D. Coomes and R. DeBard (eds.), Serving the Millennial Generation. New Directions for Student Services, no. 106. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

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Horowitz, H. L. Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Hu, S., and McCormick, A. C. “An Engagement-Based Student Typology and its Rela-tionship to College Outcomes.” Paper presented at the annual forum of the Associa-tion for Institutional Research, Toronto, May 2011.

Katchadourian, H. A., and Boli, J. Careerism and Intellectualism Among College Students: Patterns of Academic and Career Choice in the Undergraduate Years. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985.

Keniston, K. The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1965.

Kuh, G. D. “Assessing Student Culture.” In W. G. Tierney (ed.), Assessing Academic Climates and Cultures. New Directions for Institutional Research, No. 68. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.

Kuh, G. D., Hu, S., and Vesper, N. “‘They Shall Be Known by What They Do’: An Activ-ities-Based Typology of College Students.” Journal of College Student Development, 2000, 41(2) 228–244.



Kuh, G. D., and Whitt, E. J. The Invisible Tapestry: Culture in American Colleges and Universities. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1. Washington, D.C.: Associ-ation for the Study of Higher Education, 1988.

National Commission on the Future of Higher Education. A Test of Leadership: Chart-ing the Future of U.S. Higher Education. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Edu-cation, 2006.

Newcomb, T. M., Koenig, K. E., Flacks, R., and Warwick, D. P. Persistence and Change: Bennington College and Its Students After Twenty-Five Years. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 1967

Pascarella, E. T., and Terenzini, P. T. How College Affects Students. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.

Pascarella, E. T., and Terenzini, P. T. How College Affects Students. (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

Strauss, W., and Howe, N. Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069. New York: Morrow, 1991.

Tabor, T. D., and Hackman, J. D. “Dimensions of Undergraduate College Performance.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 1976, 61, 546–558.

Zhao, C., Gonyea, R. M., and Kuh, G. D. “The Psychographic Typology: Toward Higher Resolution Research on College Students.” Paper presented at the annual forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Tampa, Fla., May 2003.

SHOUPING HU is professor of higher education at Florida State University.

LINDSEY KATHERINE is a visiting assistant professor of higher education at University of Southern Mississippi.

GEORGE D. KUH is Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of higher education at Indiana University Bloomington.