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INTERNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION

The Global Higher Education Race

John Aubrey Douglass
John Aubrey Douglass is senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Address: Center for Studies in Higher Education, South Hall Annex, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-4650, USA. E-mail: douglass@berkeley.edu.

The United States pioneered the idea of mass higher education, reaping tremendous economic and social advantages. Now much of the world has embraced this model on its own political and cultural terms. The higher education race is driven by the idea that education will increasingly play a decisive role in national economic competitiveness and socioeconomic mobility. As a result, higher education has become a major global growth sector. Despite significant differences among nations and regions in the structure and culture of their academic enterprises, certain similarities in policy approaches and trajectories are creating, in turn, dramatic enrollment and program growth.

Yet in the midst of this global trend, America has entered a period of stagnant higher education access and graduation rates. This downturn is perhaps not fully understood throughout the world or in the United States.

Access in the United States
Overall, the United States still retains a lead in the number of people with higher education experience and degrees, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). But about the younger age cohort, a different story emerges. On average, the postsecondary participation rate for persons aged 18 to 24 in the United States was approximately 34 percent in 2005, down from around 38 percent in 2000.

In the United States, more students today are part time, and more are attending two-year colleges. The wealthiest students are in the four-year institutions. Students from lower- and even middle-income families are now more likely to attend a two-year college, less likely to earn a bachelor's degree, and now take much longer to attain a degree than in the past. This appears as an alarming trend, although with complicated causes that do not lend themselves to easy policy solutions.

In contrast, within a comparative group of fellow OECD countries, many nations are approaching and a few have exceeded a 50 percent participation level of their younger age group in postsecondary education. Another difference lies in the fact that some 45 percent of all students in the United States attend two-year community colleges, whereas most students in the European Union (EU) are enrolled in programs that lead to a bachelor's degree.

One reason for the US lag is that in 2004 it ranked only 19th in secondary school graduate rates, possibly an optimistic estimate. When compared with other industrialized nations, the United States ranked only 14th in the percentage of the population that enters postsecondary education and then completes a bachelor's degree or higher. As a result, the United States is one of the few OECD nations in which the older generation has achieved higher tertiary education rates than the younger sector.

In some states—such as California, the first state to invest in a comprehensive approach to mass higher education—access to postsecondary education for the traditional age cohort has declined significantly over the past two decades. In 1970, some 55 percent of all public high school graduates in California moved directly to tertiary education, among the highest rate in the nation; in the year 2000, the rate was a mere 48 percent, with the vast majority going into community colleges, most as part-time students and most destined never to attain a two-year let alone a bachelor's degree. This has occurred in an economic environment in which demand for a labor pool with postsecondary training and education is expanding.

One 2006 study estimates that by the year 2022, one in three new California jobs generated will require an associate degree, bachelor's degree, or higher. Jobs requiring higher education are already growing faster than overall employment in the state.

Observations on Competitors
Within the EU, the push to increase participation rates in higher education transcends national borders. So important is the expansion of universities for EU nations that many countries are now integrating degree standards (like the American model) under the 1999 Bologna declaration. As of May 2005, 45 signatory countries joined the Bologna process.

In Europe, the rhetoric regarding markets and deregulation does pervade much of the talk about how to advance participation rates. However, governments by and large are launching reforms and creating bureaucratic regulatory regimes focused on access, productivity, and quality.

Moreover, government plays a heavier hand in Europe than in the United States, in part because of historical and cultural differences. The development of public higher education in America has largely followed an organic process of building institutions and creating self-regulated systems over a long time. On the other hand, in Europe and most of the world, until the 1960s (and arguably, later in many countries), higher education constituted an elite function transformed by governments.

Stagnation in the United States
What factors contribute to this erosion of America's once dominant position in higher education? The array of interrelated causes can be boiled down to four main factors.

As noted, one reason is the uneven quality of high schools in the United States and, in some states, real declines in high school graduation rates. Another important cause is the drop in the political interest and government investment in public higher education (where some 80 percent of all American students are enrolled). The federal and state partnership that devoted significant resources to building mass higher education in the United States throughout the last century has dissipated. This phenomenon helps generate a third cause: increased fees without adequate increases in financial aid.

With the exception of political battles in America over admissions to a few selective public universities and concerns over cost containment, American higher education remains a second-tier political issue. The crisis of the public sector—the underinvestment in public colleges and universities, which are the primary providers of postsecondary education—is not a mainstream political concern. For this and a variety of other reasons, the United States has become relatively complacent in maintaining its higher education advantage.

Author's note: This article is adopted from the author's new book, The Conditions for Admissions: Access, Equity, and the Social Contract of Public Universities.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number49/p4_Douglass.htm