Mechanism Of Changes In American Higher Education Structure

The development of higher educatin is a process of structural changes in higher education. What is structure? How to analyze the Mechanism of structural changes in American higher education? In the study, we introduce the structuration theory to regard the structure as the virtual order composed by the elements of rule and resource. Rule is split into normative and explanatory ones; resource is split into allocative and authoritative ones. Structure is both restrictive and initiative. Structuration is the process of social reproduction in which actors use the structural elements to routinize structural order and initiatively remodel structural order. Therefore, the second part is to interpret the theoretical basis and construct the analytical model.There is a similar trend of higher education in the world, but different process in different countries. How is about the US? The third part is to investigate the structural changes in American higher education from the perspective of statistics. Firstly, the horizontal and vertical changes based on the scales of institutions and students; secondly, the capital sources and expenditure changes in public and private institutions and students in different hierarchies; thirdly, the inter-state regionalization of American higher education structure. The statistics of higher education helps to analyze deeply the structural changes in Amercian higher education.What are the institutional features of American higher education in different stages? The fourth part is to deeply analyze the institutional features and underline causes of structural changes in American higher education. Though structuration is a dynamic process, only the changes of structural principle can result in the institutionalization of structure. Base on this, structural process can be divided into:single structure (1636-1860s); the formation of modern structure (1860s-1945); Modern complex structure (1945-now). Before Civil War, it is characterized as vague boundary of public and private colleges; till the World War Two, it is the important stage of structuration not only in the institutionalization of public and private but also hierarchical degrees; after World War, it is the expansion and adjustment in the established modern structure of higher education.From the perspective of economics, politics and education philosophy, the fifth part analyzes deeply the mechanism of structural changes in American higher education. The first is the market mechanim:maket demands are the wind indicator of structural changes in AHE (American higher education); market competition is the catalyzer of structural changes in AHE; market returns are the driving force of structural changes in AHE. The second is the public choice:Trustees Board set the base of public choice of AHE; coordinate organization promote the public choice of interest groups; government integrates the direction of public choice. The third is the academic logics:control model based on the academic and administrative power; based on the regulation of epistemology and political philosophy; value selection based on the elitism and equal opportunity. The innovations of the study is to define the structure of higher education from a totally new perspective, explore the history of structural changes in AHE, then deeply analyze the mechanism of structural changes in AHE, and finally construct the mechanism model of structural changes in higher education, which helps to differ the features of a nation’s mechanism of structural changes in higher education. However, the study is shortage for the comparative study between China and US due to space limitations, which is the fllowing study to be done.