Abstract
This paper argues that rising institutional inequality is a component of individual-level inequality in the United States because U.S. higher education provides a diverse group of students with unequal access to different kinds of institutions. Using latent profile analysis, we classified all public and private nonprofit higher education institutions in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 into seven categories. We held these categories stable over time and allowed institutions to move between them. “Good value” institutions were scarce and tended to limit access through selective admission. Only Subsidy Reliant institutions that were directly supported by government appropriations regularly provided good value seats to a racially diverse group of students. Yet the number of institutions in the Subsidy Reliant category declined markedly over time. The resulting system offered access to many students but provided limited opportunity to secure a good value seat.
Highlights
Countries with sufficient resources tend to develop high participation systems of higher education (Cantwell et al 2018; Marginson 2016a)
The purpose of this paper is to explore the organizational dimension of higher education stratification in the U.S context
Our latent profile analysis (LPA) identified seven categories of higher education institutions in the U.S We describe the financial characteristics of these seven categories in Figure 1 and the student characteristic in Percent of education and related (E&R) expenditures from net tuition
Summary
Countries with sufficient resources tend to develop high participation systems of higher education (Cantwell et al 2018; Marginson 2016a). By definition, such systems enroll a large share of the population in postsecondary education (Trow 1974). To some extent, growing participation is driven by the (real or perceived) economic benefits of higher education in the form of higher wages and improved standard of living (e.g., McMahon 2009). A high participation system rests on a social rather than an economic basis (Schofer and Meyer 2005). The chance to enroll in higher education becomes taken-for-granted. The number of students swells because it becomes normative—even obligatory—to pursue higher education (Cantwell et al 2018; Marginson 2016b)
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