ABSTRACT
Around the year 1900 Switzerland had about as many universities as did the much more populous Japan. But for the period of transition to the era of mass higher education since the 1960s Japan exhibited a much greater propensity to establish new universities. As in Germany, Swiss Protestantled regimes battled with the Catholic church regarding influence over education. Given varying traditions but similar remolding of all three countries into industrial societies, it is not surprising that their systems of higher education varied so much as to the way in which they accommodated technical education. In contrast to the United States, where the GI bill and other programs stimulated higher education expansion in the 1940s, Japan, Germany, and Switzerland failed to experience any significant increase in higher education scope and enrolment before the 1950s.
