ABSTRACT
With greater demand for higher education, increased opportunities for enrollment-especially in public colleges and universities-have been created. This expansion, however, has been accompanied by greater diversity of higher education settings. Although examples of nineteenth-century-like private, tural, residential liberal arts colleges still exist, schools of this type now enroll only a small proportion of college students (Gilbert, 1995). These early colleges were far from homogeneous, however, as they were founded primarily by religious groups seeking to ensure leadership for their faith's future. Thus although their purposes were similar, their curriculum, students, and sponsors were different. Today, not only are public, large, urban or suburban, commuter, comprehensive colleges and universities far more common, about one-half of all college freshmen are enrolled in 2-year colleges, and explicitly technical and vocational majors dominate undergraduate degree enrollments. The role of these colleges and universities in socialization is now combined with research and service functions that are often supported by state governments as mechanisms of economic growth and development.
