Profiles of African American College Students’ Educational Utility and Performance: A Cluster Analysis

Abstract

African American students’ beliefs about the value of getting a good education have long been debated. The present study demonstrates that African American students hold a variety of perspectives about the value of education, and that certain types of beliefs naturally occur in students with certain academic performance records. Cluster analysis was used to identify five clusters of 126 African American college students with differing profiles on Idealistic Educational Utility, Context-Specific Educational Utility (CSEU), and grades. These clusters were then related to Racial Ideology as measured by the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity. Results suggest that there are some high-achieving students with low levels of CSEU who tend to be somewhat nationalistic. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for our understanding of the diversity of African Americans’beliefs about educational utility.