Trends indicate that Texans will enter community colleges seeking the skills and competencies needed to survive in today's highly technical work environments. Nursing and allied health occupations are expected to account for 54,500 of the projected 10.3 million jobs available in the Texas workforce in the year 2000. The educational trend prompted by the need for a quality workforce in Texas, mandates that community colleges establish institutional goal priorities among major constituent groups to maintain program effectiveness.

This study examined the current and preferred importance of institutional goals of the Southeast College Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) program of the Houston Community College System as perceived by four major constituent groups (advisory board members, college administrators, faculty, and final semester students) via the Community College Goals Inventory (CCGI) survey instrument. Respondents rated 90 goal statements comprising 20 goal areas using a five-point scale: 1 indicated "of no importance", and 5 indicated "of extremely high importance.".

Vocational/technical preparation was perceived to be the most important current goal area among the faculty and administrator constituencies. General education was perceived to be the most important current goal area among the student and advisory constituencies. The faculty constituency indicated that intellectual orientation should be the most important goal, the students felt that general education should be the most important, and the administrators and advisory board constituencies indicated that vocational/technical preparation and faculty/staff development should be the most important goals respectively.

A one-way analysis of variance and Scheffe's post hoc test were employed to determine if and where significant differences occurred in the current and preferred importance of goal areas among the groups, alpha was set at 0.05. The analyses found that: (a) the students and administrators disagreed significantly regarding the current importance of community services, vocational/technical preparation, and counseling and advising, and (b) the student and advisory constituencies had significantly different perceptions regarding the preferred importance of faculty/staff development. The t-test for repeated-measures determined that significant differences were common within all four groups regarding the current and preferred importance of accountability, faculty/staff development, humanism/altruism, innovation, college community, and intellectual environment goal areas.