ABSTRACT
Access to higher education is in its fourth stage of evolution in the United States: (1) from the colonial period through the Civil War college access was limited, although there were proposals for a new generation of public colleges; (2) between the Civil War and World War II, the nation’s systems of public and private nonprofi t colleges developed, but there was still limited access; (3) from World War II through the 1980s was a period of mass access owing to the return of veterans, followed by the enrollment of their children (Trow, 1974); and (4) the current period, which is characterized by movement toward universal access (Altbach, 2010). This period of transition to universal access-when all adults are encouraged to attain some type of postsecondary education-coincides with U.S. engagement in the global economy and growing inequality in wealth and educational attainment (Freidman, 2005). In the earlier period of mass higher education, the discourse on access focused on structural solutions to meeting demand, like master planning and formula funding in states (e.g., Halstead, 1974), while federal policy focused on student fi nancial aid (e.g., National Commission on the Financing of Postsecondary Education, 1973). The shift to market systems of higher education in the United States and other developed countries has altered public fi nance (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997), including the use of accountability mechanisms and trade-offs of state appropriations for increased institutional autonomy.
