The Worldwide Expansion of the University Curriculum: Preliminary Evidence

• In Event: 207 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. College Enrollment and Completion

Abstract

This paper describes the rapid worldwide expansion of university curricula, with evidence from professorships endowed at Cambridge, Dublin, and Harvard universities from origins to World War I. As established theories would predict, expansion is greater under conditions of economic prosperity and political decentralization. As world-society theory would predict, expansion are similar across a wide range of countries – sharply accelerating after 1960 – and expansion is especially great in countries with more enrollment expansion and more ties to world society. The trends signify the rise and institutionalization of a new model of the global knowledge society, in which all may know and all may be known.

Authors

• David John Frank, University of California-Irvine

• Matt Pearce, University of California-Irvine

• Evan Schofer, University of California-Irvine