Higher Education in USA

                           Higher Education in USA

By: Dave & Nita Anand

African American journalist and author Carl Thomas Rowan once observed: “The University is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.”

Rowan should know better since as a youth, he was raised in poor Tennessee and worked for 10 cents an hour hoeing grass and received 25 cents an hour doing hard manual labor. Determined to get good education, Rowan not only excelled by graduating from Bernard High school in 1942 as class president and valedictorian, he went on to receive higher education and became U.S. ambassador to Finland (1963-1964) and director of U.S. Information Agency (1964-1965). 

The Early Colonial Colleges

Founded in 1636, Harvard University has earned the distinction of being the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. From its colonial roots when the first college graduates were trained to become clergy, today’s Harvard graduates are more likely to head for Google or Goldman Sachs.

In addition to Harvard, there were eight other chartered degree-granting colleges in the colonies: William & Mary, Collegiate School (which became Yale), Academy of Philadelphia (University of Philadelphia), College of New Jersey (Princeton), King’s College (Columbia), College of Rhode Island (Brown), Queen’s College (Rutgers) and Dartmouth. All nine were modeled upon Cambridge and Oxford, and like their English brethren, required religious affiliation in which Puritan, Presbyterian and Baptist sects took control over specific schools while William & Mary and King’s College were influenced directly by the Church of England.

Morrill Land Act & State Education

Visionary Thomas Jefferson was the earliest advocate for the state university system; his bill for the “More General Diffusion of Knowledge” in 1779 was based on scientific exploration, wholly different and free from theological teachings and indoctrination, which laid the foundations for secularism and human rights and responsibilities we enjoy today. Jefferson also introduced “the lecture method, and the elective system” to be adopted by all colleges across the then expanding United States.

The Morrill Land Act of 1862 helped establish 69 colleges with extensive land grants and combined with private endowments (e.g. philanthropist Ezra Cornell) -- it incited “the coordination and entrepreneurship essential for the formation of research universities” to bring in the rapid growth of American higher education. By 1897, the number of higher education institutions reached 821, up from 23 in 1800. The fruition of talent and high merit thus, resulted in the rooting of democratic ideas more firmly and along with abundance of prosperity that higher education brought -- the two together fostered an aristocracy that came to be known as “Jeffersonian meritocracy.” 

America’s Golden Age of Higher Education

Three acts by Congress in the 20th century spurred enrollments into colleges and universities like no other action and which also raised the education quality to “extraordinary.”

The GI Bill of 1944 allowed some 4.4 million World War II veterans to make use of grants for earning degrees that by then had become a license to well-paying jobs in the private sector. Second, The National Defense Education Act of 1958 addressed the need for more Americans with higher skills in science and engineering to counter Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957. More and more skilled people from European countries became beneficiaries from this act.

Then in 1965, The Immigration & Nationality Act changed the student landscape of universities and colleges throughout America. The bill not only abolished national origins system and gave priority to “family reunification,” it allowed political refugees from any country and more importantly -- it permitted young Asian students “with exceptional ability” to join schools of higher education.

Many Chinese and Indian students like me (1967 entry) were lucky to gain admissions into American schools through that wave of immigration after which, the education gates remained opened since these new arrivals proved their mettle in classes and later became leaders in corporate America as well as in their mother countries to which many returned after gaining degrees and experience in the United States. All of this only confirmed what Nelson Mandela observed once: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Education Statistics

Today, the United States has a total of 4,495 Title IV-eligible, degree-granting institutions; 2,774 four-year institutions and 1,721 two-year institutions, an average of more than 115 per state. In 2006, United States Census Bureau reported that 19.5 percent of the population had attended college but had no degree, 7.4 percent held an associate's degree, 17.1 percent held a bachelor's degree and 9.9 percent held a graduate or professional degree.

The USCB survey further found that the area with the highest percentage of people 25 years and over with a bachelor's degree was the District of Columbia at 45.9 percent, followed by the states of Massachusetts (37 percent), Maryland (35.1 percent), Colorado (34.3 percent), and Connecticut (33.7 percent). The state with the lowest percentage of people 25 years and over with a bachelor's degree was West Virginia (16.5 percent), next lowest were Arkansas (18.2), Mississippi (18.8 percent), Kentucky (20 percent) and Louisiana (20.3 percent).

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 17.5 million people enrolled in degree-granting institutions in 2005, and 20.6 million are projected to enroll in 2016. The total number of degrees conferred in 2006 amounted to more than 2.9 million. By 2017 that number is expected to reach nearly 3.5 million.

Both public and private universities have endowments. A January 2007 report by the National Association of College and University Business Officers shows that the top 775 U.S. colleges and universities had a combined $345 billion in endowment assets as of 2006. Harvard University has the largest endowment amounting to $29 billion.

Rankings of Universities/Colleges

Rankings for American universities and colleges play an important role in maintaining their competitive edge over others. Some institutions excel in arts, others in science and engineering, each of which have several sub-classes such as: law, business, physics, computer engineering, etc. Considering all aspects of education and subjects -- US News has ranked the top 10 universities of 2013 as: Harvard and Princeton tied at number 1, followed by Yale (3); Columbia (4); University of Chicago (4); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (6); Stanford (6); Duke (8); University of Pennsylvania (8); and California Institute of Technology (10).

As many as 60 American universities appear in the top 100 universities in the world as per the “Annual Academic Ranking of World Universities report” published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2013. Excellence in the American higher education can be attributed to three key “diversity” factors.

First, knowledge growth rate escalated with the diversity of curriculum and its use in the private industry boosted funding for universities and colleges who forged such relationships. The opening of education gates to everyone in the World (Truman’s “universal access to higher education”), especially to ones, who could make a contribution to the American education system and gain from it, diversified the student body immensely from upper-class white male to a student culture that mixed all races, skin colors, genders, young, old, poor and rich.

The third diversity is to do with higher education delivery system and comes from advances in technology to takes us to what is being labeled as “The Virtual Classroom in an Online University” of the 21st century. Using videoconferencing, satellite broadcasts, interactive multimedia presentations, online chat room discussions, and computer exercises and tutorials – higher education is now accessible to – working adults, stay-at-home moms, city/ suburban/rural and international students via the Internet.

"The professor is moving from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side in this virtual/online learning," says Dr. Joe Boland, director of Georgia Tech's Center for Distance Learning. University education is shifting from a passive listening in the classroom to active, project-based learning made possible by interactive information technology, which leads us to what is ahead.

Virtual/online learning is better suited for the global information economy we are in. Accessing, analyzing, processing and communicating continuously using information technology tools, make people more adept at conducting business in the virtual space. One research report predicts:

“The 21st Century University will use rapidly maturing information technologies to build upon the timeless values of scholarship, collegiality, open dialogue, and intellectual integrity. Instruction will become more creative and dynamic, as college educators design new educational formats to engage an increasingly diverse population of learners worldwide participating (present) in these virtual classrooms.”

Nita Anand is Psychology graduate from Punjab University, India. A refugee from 1947 Partition of India - Dave earned his Master’s degree from Auburn University and did post-masters’ studies at the Stanford University.