The emergence of the U.S postsecondary institution as a central economic, social, and cultural institution during 1915-1940 is traced. The complexity of the functions of education in the egalitarian and technocratic society of the United States is also addressed. Attention is directed to: developments during and after World War I, the expansion of collegiate business education in the decade following the war, the new status of urban universities in the 1920s, curriculum reform between the world wars, the middle-class culture on the campus, discrimination in college admissions, the expansion of the public junior college during the interwar period, higher education during the Depression, and the question that arose at the end of the 1930s about whether higher education should be a privilege or a right. Between the world wars, U.S. colleges and universities responded to different interests, some petitioning for unlimited expansion of the curriculum and student body and others calling for restriction of their mission and preservation of the status quo. Debates about the curriculum focused on the balance between cultural and practical subjects in undergraduate study. Debates about admissions focused on the relative importance of intelligence and of background in the selection of a self-conscious elite. (SW)