Higher Pursuits

Higher education in the United States is an optional final stage of formal learning following secondary education. Higher education, also referred to as post-secondary education, third stage, third level, or tertiary education occurs most commonly at one of the 4,627 Title IV degree-granting institutions, either colleges or universities in the country. These may be public universities, private universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or for-profit colleges. Higher education in the United States is loosely regulated by a number of third-party organizations that vary in quality.High visibility issues include rising tuition and increasing student loan debt, greater use of the Internet, competency-based education, campus sexual assault, cutbacks in state and local spending, the adjunctification of academic labor, and student poverty and hunger.According to the National Student Clearinghouse, US college enrollment has declined for seven consecutive years. Enrollment is projected to continue declining or be stagnant for the next two decades. This decline, partially attributable to falling birth rates and fewer foreign students, amounts to 2.6 million fewer students from the peak year of 2010–11.Strong research and funding have helped make America's elite colleges and universities among the world's most prestigious, making them particularly attractive to international students, professors and researchers in the pursuit of academic excellence. Other countries, however, are now offering incentives to take away researchers as funding is threatened.The United States higher education system has also been blighted by fly-by-night schools, diploma mills, visa mills, and predatory for-profit colleges.According to Pew Research Center and Gallup poll surveys conducted in 2017, public opinion about US colleges has been declining, especially among Republicans and the white working class. The higher education industry has been criticized for being unnecessarily expensive, providing a difficult-to-measure service which is seen as vital but in which providers are paid for inputs instead of outputs, and which is beset with federal regulations which drive up costs, and with payments not coming from users but from third parties. In 2018, a Pew survey found that 61 percent of those polled said that US higher education was headed in the wrong direction.Unlike the tertiary education system of the UK and Australia, American education is unique in the world to place strong emphasis on Liberal Arts education in its higher education curriculum.
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