Academic departments exert a powerful influence on students by recruitment of distinctive personality types into academic disciplines, and by a socialization process in which departments reward students for the display of attitudes in accordance with the norms of their disciplines. This study examined the differential patterns of student growth within the theoretical framework of Holland's theory of occupational choice using data on 2,036 students from the 1986 and 1990 surveys of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program. Holland classifies people into six personality types based upon their distinctive patterns of interests, attitudes, and competencies, and proposes a model of six types of environments that attract, reinforce and are dominated by each personality type. It was predicted that students would show differences dependent on their involvement in different academic subenvironments classified according to Holland's model. This study strongly supported Holland's theory, showing wide variation in students' self-reported patterns of growth over a four-year period as a function of the specific academic subenvironment within the institution. Results support the use of Holland's theory to examine the contribution of different instructional approaches to students' development. Tables give statistical data and a description of the model academic subenvironments of Holland's theory. (Contains 37 references.) (PRW)