US university enrolment 'in decline' for first time in US history

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Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:29:14 -0700

 

 

[Zepps_News] US university enrolment 'in decline' for first

time in US history

 

 

 

 

<http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,9959,1454408,00.html>

US university enrolment 'in decline'

 

Donald MacLeod

Thursday April 7, 2005

 

Participation in higher education has stagnated and even gone into

decline for the first time in the US, a conference in Oxford heard

yesterday.

 

The unexpected development in the country that invented mass higher

education, but is now seeing its lead whittled away by European

countries, including the UK, has prompted soul searching among American

public universities and state authorities.

 

The massive expansion of higher education, which began in the 1850s, has

been based on public universities, especially the large state-wide

institutions like the universities of California and Texas, rather than

private Ivy League universities like Harvard or Yale.

 

" California has been a leader in college-going rates, but for the first

time we are seeing a decline. Is the American advantage in higher

education waning? " said John Aubrey Douglass, senior research fellow at

the centre for studies in higher education at the University of

California Berkeley.

 

Comparing the numbers getting bachelor degrees in 1972 with 1992, he

told the conference at New College that there had been a fall in white

and Asian American students and a slight rise in African American

graduates, probably due to affirmative action.

 

While some commentators have argued there is a natural ceiling on the

proportion of the population capable of going to college, Dr Douglass

said there were other factors, including a large rise in the immigrant

population of California and Texas. Poverty has increased, as has the

gap between rich and poor, and the effects have been seen in falling

graduation rates at high school, and hence the ability to go on to

university (in California only 58% of Chicano/Latino youngsters graduate

from high school). However 64% of students at Berkeley, a highly

selective institution, have at least one parent who is an immigrant. At

the same time, states have been making drastic cuts in their university

budgets, pushing more of the costs on to students in fees. Meanwhile,

the federal government has been shifting from grants to student loans.

These sort of factors are going to become increasingly pressing in the

UK and the rest of Europe as they approach American levels of higher

education.

 

In contrast, higher education enrolment has grown by more than 50% in

England over the past two decades and by 72% in France.

 

In his contribution to a book linked to the conference, Dr Douglass

points out that many EU countries have caught up or even exceeded

participation rates in the US. But what does not happen in Europe is the

high degree of mobility between institutions possible in the US, where

about 30% of students transfer to another university in the course of

their degree.

 

· Understanding Mass Higher Education, edited by Ted Tapper and David

Palfreyman, Routledge Falmer.

 

--

 

 

Election 2004

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duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation.

It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our

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of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national

life. "

Adolph Hitler, My New World Order,

Proclamation to the German Nation

at Berlin, February 1, 1933

 

 

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