Consider a
partial list
of developments since just
World War II: a broad national decline in denominational loyalty, changes in ethnic identity as hyphenated Americans enter the third and subsequent generations after immigration, the great explosion in the number
of competing secular colleges and universities, the professionalization
of academic disciplines with concomitant professional formation
of faculty members during graduate education, the dramatic rise in the percentage
of the population who seek higher education, the sharp trend toward seeing education largely in vocational and economic terms, the rise in government regulation and financing, the great increase in the complexity and cost
of higher education, the development
of a more litigious society, the legal end
of in loco parentis, an exponential and accelerating growth in human
knowledge, and so on.