Perception of elite and universal systems of higher education: an explanation of the empirical thresholds

Systems of higher education are usually divided into elite, mass, and universal, depending on the proportion of young people who attend college. Human experts perceive a system as elite is less than 15% of young people of the 18–21 age group attend college, and as universal if more than 40% of young people of this age group attend college. The corresponding 15% and 40% thresholds are, however, purely empirical. In this paper, we provide an explanation for these empirical thresholds – an explanation based on the known psychological 7 ± 2l aw.