A Factor Analysis Study on the Mission Characteristics of Taiwanese Community Colleges

Abstract

There is a certain degree of assumption that a mission statement reveals the utmost vision of an organization in terms of what it seeks to become and who it wants to serve. To examine the general public’s identification of the stated missions of the Taiwanese community colleges, a national survey was conducted to assess people’s knowledge of institutional missions of these colleges. Four hundred twenty-one effective responses were received, and data were analyzed mainly by exploratory factor analytic methods. Six factors, including “Human and Social Capital Enhancement,” “Value and Action Construction,” “Individual and Community,” “Personal Learning and Growth,” “Society and Culture,” and “Public Participation and Action” were extracted, and these factors indicated that perspectives regarding missions of community colleges in Taiwan might greatly divergent. The Pearson Product-Moment correlation coefficient was used to investigate the relationships between missions identified and socio-demographic characteristics. The data showed that age, income, knowledge of community colleges, and enrollment experiences possessed significant degrees of association with the factors extracted. More research with different methods was encouraged to further study people’s perception of the community college model in Taiwan in order to enhance its accountability.