ABSTRACT

The concept of postsecondary education is both more and less developed in Europe than in the United States. It is more developed because in most European countries there is a much more clearly articulated distinction between elite forms of education beyond school, that is higher education, and more popular forms, that is further education. The structure of postsecondary education in Europe often reflects the divided structure of secondary education. Nevertheless as European systems of post-school education progress towards the American pattern, in size if not in character, the idea of postsecondary education, as it is understood in Europe, is likely to shrink as more and more categories of education are reclassified as higher education. Something of this can already be seen in both England and France. The Instituts Universitaires de Technologie, established in France in the middle 1960s, have been incorporated since the Faure reforms of 1968 in the new structure of the universities.