Assessing the Alignment of Preparatory Year Program Vision, Mission, and Goals Statements with First-Year Student Success Principles

Abstract

Using student development theories to develop and deliver first-year students programs is critical to ensure program quality and to understand students actual needs (Cubarrubia and Schoen, 2010; Upcraft & Gardner, 1989). The majority of Saudi universities established the Preparatory Year Programs for firstyear students in 2005 or beyond. This study answers the following four research questions: 1) For each university, to what extent do the Preparatory Year Programs' vision, mission, and goals statements align with the Seven Principles of Students' Success in the first-year of university?; 2) What common key elements cited in the Seven Central Principles of Students Success are most often included in the Preparatory Year Programs' vision, mission, and goals statements?; 3) For all Saudi public universities, what is the format and frequency of the Preparatory Year Programs' vision, mission, and goals statements?; and 4) How do the Preparatory Year Programs' vision, mission, and goals statements compare or contrast in content between universities, according to geographical location, size, the Preparatory Year Programs' date of establishment, and gender? This study used the nine steps of Content Analysis (CA) developed by Neuendorf (2002) to assess the alignment of the Preparatory Year Program's vision, mission, and goals statements with the Seven Central Principles of Student Success advanced by Cuseo (2014), and to also explore universities trends in developing the Preparatory Year Programs' students. The nonrandom sampling process, purposive sampling, was utilized for all 28 Saudi public universities. The Unit of Thoughts (UT) extracted from the vision, mission, and goals statements was counted, coded, and used to assess the alignment extent. A pilot study was conducted on seven Preparatory Year Program's (25%) to test the codebook and coding for reliability, validity, and consistency, which resulted in 100% agreement between the researcher and two coders. The descriptive statistics were then reported. The Self-Efficacy (S.E.) Principle was cited the most in the vision, mission, and goals statements; also, the Social Integration (S.I.) Principle in the second level of alignment. Preparing students for university study was the common format and frequency of vision, mission, and goals statements associated with the seven principles. Furthermore, this study found that different universities, founded in different regions and under different conditions, have similar mission and vision statements; with this, each university or Preparatory Year Program should have a unique need and identity, and its students should have different needs. The study's finding suggests that the Preparatory Year Programs may articulate and develop its vision, mission, and goals statements based on the Students Success Principles, Students' Development Theory, and First-Year Theory to create a shared vision toward better understating of the programs components.