The development and current status of market mechanisms in United States postsecondary education

Market forces are powerful in U.S. postsecondary education. Such forces were employed when the first postsecondary institutions were established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and many present day forms can be traced to these early beginnings. Over recent years public university revenue shares in block-grants from state governments have declined, thereby destabilizing the institutions. The universities have compensated by increasing shares from grant and contracting organizations and from students. The end result has been that expenditure shares for instruction have declined while shares for research and for administration have increased. Internally, these changes in "resource dependencies" have lead to the redistribution of internal university power, loss of "community", and ever-higher charges to students