Community College Students' Perceptions of Educational Counseling, Its Value, and Its Relationship with Students' Academic and Social Integration into the Community College.

This dissertation investigated community college students' perceptions about educational counseling, its value, and its relationship with academic and social integration into the college environment. In an attempt to explore students' perceptions, a quantitative study was conducted at four California community colleges. The survey was distributed to over 22,000 community college students, and 1,746 students responded. Statistical analysis of the survey responses yielded the following findings: (a) historically underrepresented populations of college students such as students of color, first generation college students, English language learners, and poor students reported higher satisfaction and value of holistic counseling and higher levels of academic and social integration; (b) students with high educational goals and institutional commitment and students who intended to transfer were more satisfied with counseling, placed greater value upon holistic counseling, and were more academically and socially integrated; (c) students with higher levels of counselor contact reported a higher value of holistic counseling; however, integration findings were more nuanced; (d) students meeting with the same counselor appeared to be the strongest predictor of counselor satisfaction and value of counseling; and (e) there were few statistically significant relationships between demographic variables and outcome variables. Interpretations in light of prior literature as well as implications and recommendations for policy, practice, theory, and future research are discussed.