Considerations on the American academic system

Abstract

The American academic system of the twentieth century is unique by virtue of its large size, the wide variety of its substantive activities and the quality of their performance, as well as for the dispersion of authority throughout the system as a whole. In the following paper, we touch upon the unity of this highly differentiated system and show how, despite the dispersion of authority, the various sectors of the system maintain effective contact with each other. We shall attempt to explain why a society often charged by critics with being concerned primarily with material things supports such a costly system of higher learning. In the numbers of persons of the relevant age classes who participate in the American system, it exceeds at present, and has for a long time, any other country in the world.1 In the numbers of units classed as institutions of higher education, it is likewise unique, as well as in the numbers of teachers and research workers. It contains many of the largest universities in the world. In quality it contains some of the very greatest in the history of universities, and in the range of dispersion of quality of what is taught and discovered, it is likewise exceptional. Few countries possess universities which are the equal of its greatest, while in those countries whose universities are as poor as many of the poorer American institutions of higher education, e.g., India, the Philippines or the Latin American countries, there is none which remotely approximates the peaks reached by the most eminent American universities. Few countries have such a dispersed system of authority in their higher educational system. Japan and the Philippines each has a larger proportion of independent private universities but the number in America