ABSTRACT
American higher education has experienced massive expansion in the 20th century, especially over the last 40 years. In 2000 there were approximately 4,200 institutions of higher education in the United States and its territories, enrolling about 15.3 million students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2003). These institutions included 2,450 four-year colleges (enrolling approximately 9.4 million students) and 1,732 two-year colleges (with about 5.9 million students). The diversity of this large enterprise was extraordinary, ranging from two-year colleges providing mainly vocational training and preparing students for further education to large research universities offering a variety of education and research. As the majority of high school graduates in the United States attended colleges, the differentiation of educational attainment increasingly went beyond the dichotomy of college graduates versus non-college graduates. This reality encouraged differentiation among college graduates, with one dimension being college quality. 1
