This site will look much better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.

Skip Navigationskip menu and banner
University of Wyoming

About Student Affairs

Conceptual Foundations: Higher Education Process

The American Council on Education identifies four major functional variables in conceptualizing the process of higher education. Published first in 1968, this model describes the following four variables.

1. Student input variables – This element of the model refers to all of the attributes that students bring with them when they enter the institution. It includes hopes, dreams, achievements, abilities, skills, knowledge, interests, and all other characteristics that comprise the character of the entering student.

2. College environment variables – When the prospective student earns the right to enter the institution and pays the designated tuition and fees, the student enters a comprehensive environment that has been intentionally designed to move the student sequentially through a series of experiences that will prepare him/her for entry into the world of work, continuing graduate study, and success in the home, community, and state. The environment includes the total milieu within which the student is immersed, and includes such diverse elements as faculty, staff, student peers, buildings and grounds, quality of instruction, support services, academic policies, etc.

3. Interaction variables – The interaction between the student and the college environment is the process by which the student incorporates all of the benefits and advantages the environment has to offer, and in turn, helps to shape the learning environment so that it will be improved for those who come later. The student is an active, not passive, agent in the teaching/learning educational process.

4. Student output variables – This variable is the sum total of all the institution’s hopes and plans for its graduates. The student, as a result of interaction with the environment, will think, feel, and behave differently from when he/she entered the college environment. The differences in how the student thinks, feels, and behaves are a statement of the institution’s effectiveness in accomplishing its mission.

Each of the four variables identified in the American Council on Education has been further defined in the research and study of student development.