by Zoë Pollock
Anya Kamenetz measures it:
In 1900 about half a million people worldwide were enrolled in colleges. A century later the number was 100 million. According to a 2009 report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 150 million students are now enrolled in some kind of education beyond high school, a 53 percent increase in less than a decade. That number represents more than one in four college-age young people worldwide. The growth has touched even the most impoverished and war-torn countries.
Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, has 5 percent of its population enrolled in higher education, and this is the lowest participation rate on the planet. UNESCO concluded that there’s no foreseeable way that enough traditional universities could be physically built in the next two decades to match the demand. Young people worldwide are caught between the spiraling cost of college and an apparently bottomless hunger for it.
The Dish 