Advising styles preferred by African-American students enrolled in a two-year commuter college

Administrators, faculty, and researchers have assumed that advising needs and preferences for advising styles are similar across student population segments and do not consider the relationship of student attributes or the institutional setting to academic advising. Crookston (1972) presented two advising styles--developmental advising, which reflects a concern for the student's total education, and prescriptive advising, which is primarily focused on formal academic matters. In order to better understand the preference for advising relationships among college students, a model of developmental advising was formulated by Winston and Sandor (1984b). However, because of the increased numbers of special student populations such as women and minorities, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which advising styles are received and desired by most students.