Broad Access and Steep Stratification in the First Mass System: High Participation Higher Education in the United States of America

This chapter provides a detailed and extensive assessment of the United States of America’s (USA) high participation systems (HPS) of higher education. It considers the history of higher education, system development, and the present condition of higher education in the country. The USA was the first HPS and the American system remains globally influential. Higher education in the USA is a massive enterprise, defined by both excellent and dubious providers, broad inclusion, and steep inequality. The chapter further examines higher education in the USA in light of the seventeen HPS propositions. Perhaps more so than any other system, the American HPS conforms to the propositions. Notably, higher education in the USA is both more diverse horizontally, and stratified vertically, than most other HPS.