Joseph Stetar

In Search of a Direction: Southern Higher Education after the Civil War

THE SOUTH did not share in the enormous expansion of American higher education in the years following the Civil War. Nationally, higher education enrollments grew over five-fold in the decades following the War. In 1870 there were 62,000 students in colleges, universities, professional, normal and teacher colleges in the United States. By 1890 the total higher education enrollment was 157,000 and by 1910 had risen to 355,000.1 Multipurpose institutions with programs characteristic of the leading twentieth-century universities began to appear in the East, West and Midwest. No such development was evident in the nineteenth-century South where colleges struggled to remain alive. Left virtually destitute by the War and lacking students, buildings and assets, college leaders clung more to romantic dreams and were unable to share in the bold expansion experienced by other regions.

State Power in Legitimating and Regulating Private Higher Education: The Case of Ukraine

The explosive growth of private higher education following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 was one of many assaults against state monopolies and authority. In its epiphenomenal corollary, questions were immediately raised throughout the Ministry of Education and Science as to the raison d’etre for private higher education; is it a dangerous competitor that will spawn chaos? Or if it is to exist, how must it be regulated (Stetar and Pohribny 1999). However, soon after 1991 the relationship between the state and Ukrainian private higher education became much more complex than the issue of existence or nonexistence. While Ukrainian private higher education made initial gains in legitimacy outside of the state legal and political structures, it has since become subsumed under state-imposed strictures to maintain a status of legitimacy. However, these state-imposed strictures paradoxically delegitimate even as they legitimate private higher education in Ukraine.

Education Reform in Montenegro: Public and Private Tensions

A small state with a population of approximately 650,000, Montenegro is unable to support complex and multiple systems of higher education. Currently there is one state institution and two private institutions. Higher education in Montenegro saw a growth of private universities over the last 15 years; however, Montenegro is a relatively poor country, and there is scarce support for any efforts to direct public monies to stimulate or support a private higher education sector.