Abstract
In three related articles (Part I. Higher education in the context of the education system; Part II.
Quantitative expansion and diversification of higher education; Part III. Higher education and the needs of the economy) I explained and documented some connections that need to be taken into account when assessing whether we have too many or too few university students in the Czech Republic.
The form, scale and structure of higher education is largely related to how other sectors of the education system are developed, how the role of the different education sectors is changing and how the boundaries between them and higher education are shifting. Countries with a strong tradition of secondary education and vocational education have, naturally, a slightly weaker tendency to expand higher education, more hold on the traditional "humboldt role" of universities, and a little less developed non-traditional programs and forms of higher education.
On the other hand, in countries where secondary school tradition is weaker, universities are more open to other (non-traditional) groups of students, and therefore more often offer short and vocational education and introduce new programs and forms of study. In view of the current development, we can consider the first group of countries to be Germany, which is undoubtedly the Czech Republic, while the second group of countries is represented by the United States.
Different traditions are a major reason and an explanation of why US higher education is considerably larger than in Germany, and why also a significantly larger proportion of the population has acquired higher education. Higher education development in developed countries is experiencing a demographic decline in traditional age cohorts of students.
Together with the need to develop lifelong learning systems, this leads to the development of lifelong learning at universities in a number of countries. However, the Czech Republic does not belong to these countries for the time being.