Issues in higher education in the United States  Higher education in the United States is an optional stage of formal learning following secondary education. Higher education, also referred to as post-secondary education, third-stage, third-level, or tertiary education occurs most commonly at one of the 4,360 Title IV degree-granting institutions, either colleges or universities in the country. These may be public universities, private universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or for-profit colleges. US higher education is loosely regulated by several third-party organizations. Within this vast estate many issues arise for government, staff and students. US college students come from three major sources: the US K-12 pipeline, adult or non-traditional students, and foreign students. Projections about future enrollment patterns are based on demographic projections about these groups. The US ranks third from the bottom among OECD nations, in terms of poverty gap and 4th from the bottom in terms of poverty rate Jonathan Kozol has described these inequalities in K-12 education in Savage Inequalities and The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. In a 1998 Brookings Institution paper "Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education," Linda Darling-Hammond stated that "educational outcomes for minority children are much more a function of their unequal access to key educational resources, including skilled teachers and quality curriculum, than they are a function of race." In 2016, the American Psychological Society added that racial bias by teachers and administrators is also a factor in student outcomes. This affects how teachers teach and administrator's discipline students. More than half of U.S. students go to "racially concentrated" schools. Twenty percent of US students are enrolled in districts that are poor and nonwhite, but only 5 percent live in poor white districts. To make matters worse, the number of school districts in the United States has been increasing, reflecting a growing race and social class divide. About a half a million high schools students are not prepared for college when they enroll and require remedial education. Adult or nontraditional students are those that do not matriculate immediately after high school graduation. This includes military veterans that use the GI Bill. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) defines nontraditional students as anyone who satisfies at least one of the following:   Foreign students have been a growing part of US higher education. However, competition from other countries, changing immigration policies, and tensions between faculty and students have reduced the appeal for studying in the US.