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Higher Education Systems and Institutions: United States of America

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Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions

This entry begins with an overview of the organization of the public and private sectors of higher education in the United States. From there, it considers the dynamics of the system in terms of governance and basic financing patterns both system-wide and within individual institutions and an overview of the major internal constituencies, including faculty, students, and administrators. We conclude with a look at new developments, including the evolving focus from access to degree completion, concerns regarding college affordability, heightened accountability pressures, and growing competition among colleges to enroll students.

Basic System Organization

The higher education system in the United States is primarily composed of some 4600 corporately autonomous degree-granting and 2500 certificate-granting public and private institutions that receive some financial support from the federal government (Snyder et al. 2016). The American system is federal in nature (Duryea and Williams 2000;...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education Leadership, Management and Policy, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ, USA

    Martin Finkelstein & Robert Kelchen

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  1. Martin Finkelstein
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  2. Robert Kelchen
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Correspondence to Martin Finkelstein .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Jung Cheol Shin

  2. CIPES, Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Pedro Teixeira

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Finkelstein, M., Kelchen, R. (2017). Higher Education Systems and Institutions: United States of America. In: Shin, J., Teixeira, P. (eds) Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_381-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_381-1

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