United States: changes in higher education and social stratification

Higher education in the United States has expanded dramatically and in various directions, unhampered by centralised government regulation. The expansion is described as stratified, characterised by increasing enrolments in lower-status institutions and by the solidification of institutional hierarchies. The expansion also created a second tier of higher education focused on vocational and semi-professional training through increased vocationalisation of community colleges and the creation of exclusively vocational schools. These changes were accompanied by a range of government policies aimed at improving access of disadvantaged groups to postsecondary education. To track the change in equality of access to higher education over recent decades, the authors examine the likelihood of entering various types of postsecondary institutions for different gender, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. They find persistent inequality with respect to socioeconomic background, but notable improvements in access to postsecondary educational opportunities for women and African Americans. Show less