@inbook{e255eb2be36f4d5790fc3e22ede6580c,
title = "The specificity of American higher education",
abstract = "The possibility-and potential pitfalls-of an {"}Americanization{"} of European higher education are widely discussed. This paper argues that it is important to base comparisons and considerations of possible emulation on a stronger understanding of the specificity of American higher education. It stresses the importance of seeing this as a system with highly differentiated institutions and complex contextual relations. The present paper also summarizes dramatic changes that have transformed American higher education in recent years, and others that are beginning to transform it further. This shows the system to be internally dynamic and also influenced by important external conditions (including matters of finance, public policy, and new technology). The U.S. system is only understood well if analysis locates specific patterns in relation to these structural transformations. Such specificity should inform future comparative research.",
author = "Craig Calhoun",
note = "Funding Information: gain education commensurate with that wealth). The 15 percent of students who attended the country's most elite private institutions could expect to earn 84 percent more on average than those who had not graduated from college. The 45 percent who attended the next tier of still somewhat selective private colleges and leading state university campuses could expect an earnings boost of 52 percent. But, those who graduated from the rest of the country's colleges and universities could expect, on average, no net earnings gain compared to those who did not complete college. The differences remained significant even when controlled for father's education, race, and region. This pattern has changed in two crucial respects (though there is no new study with comparable data to document changes precisely). First, the gap between the average earnings of college graduates and the rest of the population has widened. This is a result of both credentialism and of the disappearance of well-paid (especially unionized) manual jobs in favor of often poorly paid service sector work. This means that less prestigious colleges may pay off better than before compared to failure to attend college. 4 Second, however, there has been an increasing inequality in earnings of college graduates which has increased the advantage of elite education compared to nonelite. This operates independently of choice of major (though of course some majors also result in higher earnings; Kominski and Sut-terlin 1992). Rewards flow very disproportionately to those at the top of most lines of work (Frank and Cook 1995). These top positions go disproportionately to graduates of about 10 percent of America's colleges and universities (and indeed, disproportionately to the most prestigious within that 10 percent). The shift away from educating elites--either those of inherited position or those who aspired to become elites through entering learned professions--has thus happened in most of the higher education sector, but not in its most prestigious institutions. Beyond status differences, of course, there are also different niches, mandates and missions. Some colleges are 100 percent residential, others house none of their students. Some enroll mainly 18-22 year-olds, others cater heavily to adult students. Some specialize in specific fields, others offer a wide variety. Probably the biggest distinction is between schools that emphasize {"}general liberal arts education{"} and those that specialize in terminal bachelor' s degrees in direct preparation for specific careers. This reflects a long-standing (but recently accelerated) pattern in American higher education. Many {"}practical{"} subjects that were not taught in universities in Europe have been important to colleges and universities in the United States. Since the Civil War, many universities have had this as a central part of their mission. These have ranged from elite private institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University (both founded in 1865) to the broad range of public universities supported in part by federal land grants following the Morrill Act of 1862. Technical education in agriculture, engineering, and a variety of other fields, thus, has long been the province of American universities. Funding Information: II that higher education really became a mass phenomenon in the United States. Returning veterans supported by special government funding (the GI Bill) flooded American colleges and universities, helping to spark expansion even in relatively hard times. On a smaller scale, the same thing happened after the Korean War. But more dramatically, the veterans of both wars (and their generational cohorts) produced a sustained baby boom. This, combined with economic growth and advancing technology, led to an explosion in demand for higher education during the 1960s. New colleges and universities were founded and existing ones expanded. In 1947, there were 2.3 million students in U.S. colleges and universities, up from 1.5 million before the war; by 1994, the number was 14.2 million. The proportion of young adults graduating from high school rose from less than 7 percent at the turn of the century to half at the end of World War II, peaked at 77 percent in 1968-1969, and though it has fallen back remains over 71 percent. The proportion of these high school graduates going on to college rose from 45 percent in 1960 to 65 percent (exclusive of vocational and trade schools) in the mid-1990s. Some 43 percent of high school graduates go to four-year schools and another 22 percent to two-year colleges. Well over a million bachelor's degrees are granted each year. To offer these higher levels of education, the number of faculty grew from 246,000 in 1949-1950 to nearly a million today. Graduate education grew commensurately. As late as 1920, only 615 Ph.Ds were awarded in the United States. Today more than 43,000 are awarded each year (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1976; National Center for Educational Statistics 1996, 1997). Both the educational meaning and job market value of college degrees changed, as did the relationship of higher education to social class and social policy. Funding Information: ica--including those owned and operated by states--have private endowments of at least several hundred million dollars. So do perhaps 30 colleges whose missions focus overwhelmingly on undergraduate education. In addition, privately funded foundations (e.g., the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation) are major sources of financial support for research and sometimes for the development of new academic programs. Their combined inputs into university budgets far outstrips that of the National Science Foundation.",
year = "2000",
language = "English (US)",
isbn = "0762306793",
series = "Comparative Social Research",
publisher = "JAI Press",
pages = "47--81",
booktitle = "Comparative Perspectives on Universities",
address = "United States",
}