The American system of higher education exhibit many signs of success: comprehensiveness in the dimension of teaching, amazing results in the research. At the same time, displays numerous paradoxes and worrying trends. Trying to contextualize them, the article starts in a exploratory and descriptive approach, examining the "four floors" of the system. Next, we indicate the ways of its massification, after World War II. In the endings of the century, the American society is surrounded by a combination of economic decline and widened inequality. These vectors help to understand the contradictions of the growth of higher learning and the paradoxes of American education, in a broadest sense. Apparently, increasing coverage seems to live with declining inclusion and signs of strangling.
United States of America; Development; Higher education; University; College
