Abstract
American higher education is unique in its size and diversity and in its openness to all who gain a high school diploma. This essay describes current trends in enrollments and finance in American colleges and universities, noting recent changes in the demography of the student body that have kept enrollments constant, despite dwindling traditional college-age cohorts. The sources of the unique characteristics of American higher education lie in its peculiar historical origins and development, especially in the central state authority's and the academic guilds' weakness, the college president's relative strength, and various markets' influence on an institution that elsewhere has been largely shielded from market forces. The discussion then turns to the functional relationships among some key structural characteristics which give rise to important, if generally unrecognized, contributions of mass higher education to American society.
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