Issues Confronting American Higher Education

The American system of higher education — massive, decentralized, and diverse —faces a number of critical issues in the years immediate ahead. This paper considers four of those issues — the impact of demographic change; the long-term implications for higher education of the national movement to reform secondary education; the growing interest in the character and quality of undergraduate education; and the role of universities, especially research universities, in economic development — and suggests a few of the directions American higher education may take in response to them.