Changing Emphases in the USA

Abstract

This chapter examines the federal government's challenge to America's long-established system of higher education quality assurance through voluntary self-regulation. The American experiment in voluntary self-regulation of higher education is entering a new phase that might well spell its demise. Historians may ultimately conclude that United States (US) higher education became overbuilt in the 1960-70s. In defending the cuts and dwindling support, people point to the perceived ineffectiveness of higher education. Not only were large numbers of institutions constructed to serve the baby-boomers, but new types of institutions were started to open higher education to all segments of American society. Associations for self-regulation reflected perfectly the nineteenth-century American political culture that held that centralized power was to be feared. Higher education in the US is expected to fulfill a great variety of needs. Moreover, within a changing global context, it is supposed to position the nation to maintain ascendancy in the world order of things.