THE STRUCTURE OF HIGHSCHOOL STUDENTS'PROSPECTIVE SELECTION OF SPECIALIZATIONS IN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The subjects are 276 highschool students including 96 freshmen, 100 sophomores and 80 seniors who want to enter college or university.They rated 20 areas of specialization in the university with 4 category scale on the basis of their interests.
The data of the rating points in 20 specializations for sophomores and seniors together, and each grade were separatedly factorized by Hotelling's principal analysis.
The results are as follows:
(1) Five factors were extracted in the analysis of the data of sophomores and seniors.
i) Natural Science (N.S.) factor which has high loadings on the Natural Science courses.This factor is considered to be the same as the Science factor (Thurstone) and the Technical factor (Darley) which are extracted in the factor analysis of interest tests.
ii) Humanities factor (H) which plots highly on the Humanities courses such as history or philosophy.
iii) Theoretical v.s.Practical.
iv) Social welfare factor which plots highly on the course of medicine or pharmacy.
v) Outdoor factor which plots highly on biology and geography.
(2) Locations of 20 specializations are plotted on the plane with orthogonal axes of N.S.factor axis and H.factor axis.In this plane 16 specializations, excluding courses of medicine, pharmacy, agriculture and art, are clustered in two groups, each of which consists of eight specializations.They are called N. S.courses and H.courses in this study.
(3) Differentiation of interest into N.S.courses and H.courses is already found amang freshmen, which is accelerated between sophomores and seniors. So most of the students are capable of making choice between N.S.conrses and H.courses without much trouble by the they face the entrance examination to the university. However, it seems difficult for them to choose only one specific course within N.S.courses and H.courses.
(4) It appears that most students are interested in the theoretical specializations such as mathematics or physics in their early period of highschool, however they become more interested in humanistic specialization as their age increases.
(5) It appears students who select N.S.courses decide their courses earlier than those who select H.courses.
(6) The data of seniors shows mathematics and literature courses locate at the two extremes when 20 specializations are located along one dimension line.From this fact it is concluded that mathematics and literature courses most characterizes N.S.courses and H.courses respectively.
Further research to investigate the transition from high school stage to university stage by a longitudinal study using the same subjects is needed.