America's State Colleges

Abstract

In 1987 there were 3,389 recognised colleges, universities, and other postsecondary institutions in the United States.1 This number includes a wide variety of institutions ranging from the most eminent universities to small community colleges and two-year technical institutes; it does not include some 6,000 to 7,000 vocational schools operated as private business organisations. The leading private universities such as Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Leland Stanford University, Yale University and Johns Hopkins University, and the leading public universities such as the Universities of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, and the Universities of Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas, are well known. Several private liberal arts colleges which award first degrees only or concentrate on undergraduate education, such as Oberlin, Williams, Dartmouth and Bryn Mawr are also well known. But of the remaining institutions, about 3,000 are not well known. Perhaps no segment of American higher education has remained more obscure than its state colleges. The title of a book written two decades ago, Colleges of the Forgotten Americans ,2 provides, now as then, an apt description of these institutions. In general, state colleges are four-year institutions offering a wide range of programmes leading to bachelor's degrees and most of them offer master's degrees; a few offer training leading to the doctorate but those that do so are not regarded primarily as institutions of advanced learning and award only a few doctoral degrees each year. With few exceptions, they do not offer programmes in law, medicine or dentistry. Although the term "state colleges and regional universities" identifies these institutions more precisely, historically they have been known as "state colleges" and the latter term is still used widely, in part to differentiate the colleges from other types of state universities. In fact, the term "college" appears in the name of only one out of four of these institutions; a few are called institutes but most are now called universities, although graduate education and research are not a major responsibility for most of them. State colleges have largely defined themselves in that almost all belong to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, while the leading state universities and land-grant universities are members of the National Association of State Universities and LandGrant Colleges.