Reflections on the Transition from Elite to Mass to Universal Access: Forms and Phases of Higher Education in Modern Societies since WWII

Reflections on the Transition from Elite to Mass to Universal Access: Forms and Phases of Higher Education in Modern Societies since WWII Forthcoming in Philip Altbach, ed., International Handbook of Higher Education, Kluwer. 2005. Martin Trow Introduction This chapter seeks to reflect and update a set of concepts, first introduced over 30 years ago, regarding the transformation of higher education (Trow, 1973). 1 The ideas of this original essay, as nicely summed up recently by British author John Brennan (2004), illustrate three forms of higher education: (1) elite—shaping the mind and character of a ruling class; preparation for elite roles; (2) mass—transmission of skills and preparation for a broader range of technical and economic elite roles; and (3) universal—adaptation of the ‘whole population’ to rapid social and technological change. Table 1 (p.63) provides a useful summary of these stages of higher education development. Brennan observes that “While these may not capture all of the nuances of current higher education debates, they nevertheless appear to be remarkably prescient of some of the key issues that we face as we embark in the UK on the move, in Trow’s terms, from mass to universal higher education . It should also be emphasized that Trow never saw these distinctions as empirical descriptions of real higher education systems, rather as models or ‘ideal types’ to aid our comprehension of such systems. And a further point to remember is that although he saw these forms as sequential stages, he did not regard it as inevitable that the later stages would completely replace the earlier ones. In particular, he saw definite possibilities of examples of elite forms surviving in the mass and universal stages.” 2 Three decades later, this chapter revisits some of these concepts and models, exploring the question of their continuing usefulness in understanding modern systems of higher education, so much larger, more diverse and complex than the systems the earlier paper addressed. And it raises the question of whether and where those concepts would need to be modified to illuminate