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Higher Education Systems, Types of

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Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions

Synonyms

Supranational, national, and subnational structure of higher education; Sector-wise organization of higher education institutions

Definition

The structure and organization of higher education institutions within a specific political and geographical setting.

Introduction

All higher education institutions around the world are embedded in some type of national or subnational system. But this has not always been the case. By the end of the eighteenth century, the then existing higher education landscape consisted of a small number of in essence self-standing universities that were not governed and organized in an integrated way by state authorities. In the middle of the nineteenth century, most of the world’s universities were located in Europe (in total 98 universities), while most of the non-European universities could be found in the USA (Rüegg 2004: 3). Most of these universities were denominationally anchored, homogeneously organized institutions with hardly any specific...

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Jungblut, J., Maassen, P. (2017). Higher Education Systems, Types of. In: Shin, J., Teixeira, P. (eds) Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_21-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_21-1

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