Vol. 1, No. 2, March 1996

 

Demographic Characteristics and Planned Majors of Students Enrolled in New Century College, PAGE and Linked Courses

---

 

Over one-quarter (27%) of George Mason's freshmen take part in GMU's Planned Alternative to General Education (PAGE) (5%), linked courses (14%), and New Century College (9%). The PAGE program is the longest standing of the three programs. It was developed by faculty in 1982-83 and offers interdisciplinary and sequenced courses leading to an overview of the arts and sciences. The linked courses join an introductory course in one discipline (i.e.,sociology, philosophy, etc.) to an English composition course and promote community and student understanding of the thinking, writing and reading processes. New Century College, leading ultimately to a BS or BA in Integrative Studies, is the most comprehensive of the three programs examined here.

Anticipated Majors

Freshmen who enroll in linked courses and PAGE are more likely to be undecided about their academic major than other freshmen who enroll at GMU. Nearly all (99%) of NCC freshmen identify their major as a BA in Integrative Studies.

Additionally, all three programs (PAGE, linked, NCC) tend to attract BA, more often than BS, majors. For example, among fall 1995 freshmen, 24% of freshmen intend to earn a BS degree, while only 18% of those in linked courses and 22% of those in PAGE intend to earn this degree. Similarly, 22% of freshmen intend to earn a BA degree while 27% of linked courses students and 29% of PAGE students thought they would earn this degree. And nearly all NCC freshmen plan on earning a BAIN rather than a BSIN.

Age of Students

Freshmen enrolled in NCC, linked courses or PAGE tend to be younger than freshmen in general at GMU. For example, 99% of freshmen participating in one of these three program are under the age of 23, whereas, 96% of fall 1995 freshmen fell within this age category.

Ethnicity

Differences in the ethnicity of students enrolled in these three curricular programs were found. For example, African Americans, who make up 11% of the freshmen population, enroll in higher proportions in the linked courses (16%) than they do in NCC (12%) or PAGE (11%). Asian Americans, on the other hand, tend to be underepresented in all three programs. For example, while 17% of freshmen are Asian American, only 10% to 12% are in each of three curricular programs. This finding may be related to the fact that Asian Americans are more likely to major in the sciences and BS fields and thus, less likely to enroll in these programs as shown in the previous section. Native Americans and other ethnic groups are not shown.

Gender

GMU has traditionally consisted of a greater proportion of women than men in the student population. This is also true for 1995 freshmen in which 56.5% are female and 43.5% are male. Both the linked courses and NCC enroll men and women in approximately these proportions, but the PAGE program is comprised of 66% freshmen women compared to 34% men in the fall semester of 1995. (See figure 4 at right.)

Summary

All three curricular programs described here tend to attract younger freshmen. The linked courses, PAGE and NCC are more likely to enroll more BA than BS students. Linked courses attract the highest proportion of undecided majors (53%) and African American students (16%) while PAGE attracted the greatest proportion of women (66%).

Institutional Assessment will continue to monitor these and other related trends over the next semesters.