Chapter 2 “Knowledge Societies,” Agency, and New Actors

Abstract

Modern societies are built around the expansion of science and universities and the exposure of large numbers of the public to the curricula of higher education. In this sense they are relatively recent phenomena. Higher educational expansion itself has been a very recent phenomenon. Conventional wisdom held that higher education enrollments in the United States doubled every 20 years in a smooth progression (Price, 1963). New research has altered this picture dramatically. The 1960s ushered in a sea change in the expansion of higher educational enrollments in the United States – and in virtually every other society (Schofer & Meyer, 2005). The transition to mass higher education was abrupt. At the beginning of the 1960s about two million students were enrolled in U.S. higher education. Four decades later in the year 2000, this figure has risen to 14 million – a sevenfold increase (Schofer & Meyer, 2005, Fig. 5). Earlier developments, such as the G.I. Bill, show no comparable effects on enrollments to the massive changes that the 1960s brought in their wake.

Citation

Kamens, D.H. (2012), "Chapter 2 “Knowledge Societies,” Agency, and New Actors", Kamens, D.H. (Ed.) Beyond the Nation-State (Research in the Sociology of Education, Vol. 18), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-54. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3539(2012)0000018006