ABSTRACT
This chapter primarily draws on neo-institutional and comparative perspectives to explain the global transition from elite to mass higher education and the development of a schooled society. It explores how the schooled society has transformed the workplace, complicating the three competing paradigms of human capital theory, credentialism, and credential inflation. The chapter argues that universal systems of higher education are not simply responding to stakeholders they are shaping the experiences, expectations, and demands of society itself. It examines how governments act in the schooled society by drawing briefly on American work before moving to regional and comparative literatures. The chapter provides a cursory review of policy frameworks that exist in the schooled society. It focuses on the China higher education system is highly centralized and responsive to a communist party authority that appoints a party secretary to administer alongside a university president.
