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.
University of Texas, Austin, political scientist Gary Freeman placed the politics of skilled
immigration into the category that political scientists
term «client» politics, in which the benefits of particular governmental actions accrue to a small
number of groups or individuals while the costs diffuse more widely over people who may not even realize that they are being harmed.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies estimates that schools in the UK will face up to 12 per cent real
term cuts over the next Parliament while forecasts suggest pupil
numbers will increase by seven per cent, a result of rising
immigration and higher birth rates over the next five years.