ABSTRACT
An Emerging Field of Research and Policy PHILIP G. ALTBACH
Higher education has become a vast twenty-first century enterprise, central to postindustrial globalized economies everywhere. More than 100 million students study in at least 36,000 postsecondary institutions worldwide. In most countries, higher education has become a large, complex enterprise, comprising large academic systems, nonprofit and for-profit private institutions, and an array of specialized schools. As universities and other postsecondary institutions have grown, they acquire elaborate administrative structures in need of major expenditures of public and, often, private funds. Moreover, higher education has become big business. Academic institutions employ thousands of people and educate tens of thousands-or in some cases hundreds of thousands. Degrees in a multiplicity of specialties from ancient history to biotechnology are offered. In 1971 Eric Ashby characterized the American academic system as offering “any person, any study,” in describing its diversity and scope. Martin Trow analyzed the progression of higher education from elite to mass and finally to universal access (2006). In the industrialized nations, at least, mass access has been achieved, and a few countries-first the United States and Canada and, recently, South Korea, Finland, Japan, and many others-enroll upwards of 70 percent of the relevant age group. Many others, mainly in Europe and the Pacific Rim, educate half or more of the age group. Developing countries lag behind, and the main growth in the coming decades will be in this part of the world (World Bank 2000).
