America, Still on Top.(U.S. higher education)(Cover story)

Byline: Vartan Gregorian (Gregorian is the president of Carnegie Corporation of New York.)

One of the great strengths of U.S. higher education is that it grew by informal design. Following the 1862 Morrill Act, which gave federal land to the states to found colleges, the states created not only universities but also state, junior, city and county colleges, some of them two-year. Without a formal national plan, there emerged a template for public higher education--affordable schooling for all, close to home, paid for by both state and federal governments. Today American higher education is a more than $200 billion enterprise, enrolling nearly 18 million students in almost 4,000 public and private colleges and universities.

Elsewhere, higher education grew in a much more top-down manner. In communist societies from the Soviet Union to China and throughout most of Asia and Latin America, a central bureaucracy ran universities, and often still does. Typically, these systems have been unprepared for changing expectations, as even the most remote and repressed populations have begun to develop--via the media and the Internet--a perception of how the other half lives. Many view education as a way to get their fair share. When they see countrymen returning with degrees from the United States or Europe and getting the best jobs, they begin to demand quality improvements in their own universities, for which resources are often lacking. The result is a growing gap between expectations and reality. That's one reason that after a falloff following 9/11, the United States has regained its status as the destination of choice for international students.

To catch up, countries in Europe--not to mention Asia, Africa and Latin America--have welcomed a proliferation of private universities, including "virtual" online entities. But many of these institutions are of questionable legitimacy. In the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, private colleges are springing up rapidly, but most are "universities only in name," run out of flats and thus quite literally "a cottage industry," reported the local Tribune newspaper. Faculty is also an issue: in many countries, professors are poorly paid and institutions rely on temporary adjuncts, lecturers and part-timers.

Providing poor-quality schools will likely backfire, because students are increasingly unwilling to accept substandard fare. In an era of global brand awareness, everyone wants the "right name" on clothes, cars and diplomas, too. In China, students at second-tier schools have been known ...