At Attention: What Student Veteran Mission Statements Say About Public Flagships

Abstract

Expanding Wilson, Meyer, and McNeal’s (2012) work focusing on university mission statements, this study further explicates the values expressed by public flagship institutions (n = 50) through the linguistic examination of student veteran services mission statements disseminated by student veterans services offices, representing a gap in the literature. A quantitative linguistic analysis reveals only 24% of student veteran services offices feature official mission statements on their websites, these mission statements do not support extant research or the U.S. Department of Education’s guidelines for supporting student veterans, and mission statements do not directly address student veterans, evidenced by first- and third-person pronouns. Implications for student veteran support and adult learning are addressed.