ABSTRACT
American colleges and universities are like snowflakes, with structures that appear similar to the casual observer, though in fact no two have been found to be exactly alike. Degree-granting institutions can be tiny; the Byzantine Catholic Seminary reported a total enrollment of 11 for fall 2009, and the Southwest Institute of Technology enrolled 21. At the upper end of the scale is The Ohio State University; with over 55,000 students on its main campus alone, the school is larger than 36 of Ohio’s 50 largest cities (maps-n-stats.com). Research universities, technical and community colleges, religious institutes, liberal-arts colleges, and trade schools all have unique facets that require different organizations of administrators and leaders. Even within a particular sector and among institutions of similar sizes, administrative authority may be maintained centrally or decentralized to the academic units. Higher education institutions are complex structures that branch and connect, each forming a distinctive administrative pattern. This chapter examines these unique structures that make up the landscape of American higher education.
