Mass Higher Education: Some Perspectives From Experience in the United States. L'Enseignement Superieur de Masse: Quelques Perspective Ouvertes par L'Experience des Etats-Unis.

Overview & Synopsis

Policies for higher education are under active consideration in most countries. A major issue in such policies in the seventies will be the setting up of structures adapted to a stage of development that has either been or is at the point of being reached in most countries, that of transition to mass higher education. To discuss a number of major issues related to policies for the future development of higher education systems, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) organized a Conference on Future Structures of Postsecondary Education, that took place in Paris in June 1973. Higher officials responsible for education policy, including a number of ministers, attended the conference together with teachers, administrators and participants from trade union and professional organizations. The central concern of the conference was to examine mass higher education in its main patterns and characteristics and to identify alternative policy measures for facilitating the overall structural transformation of the system toward meeting its new objectives in the context of social and economic development. After the introduction, the document contains discussions concerning dimensions of higher education in the United States, education and career choice, and what the highly educated do and what they earn. Tables and charts contain information related to the text. The French text constitutes the second half of the document. (Author/PG)