Higher education in the US may be characterized by the complexity and plurality of forms of organization, governance, management, financing, and property. Higher education institutions serve the industry. In this sense, community colleges are not less linked to businesses than major research universities. Financial flows in the higher education industry, including educational loans, governmental grants, and returns on endowments are plentiful. As in any other industry, organizational complexity, unclear nature of the final product, and significant financial flows serve as necessary grounds for corruption. Few authors address corruption in the US higher education industry. Their works often lack cohesive theoretical frameworks, synthesis, and carefully thought out policy implications, but nevertheless would be of high interest for policymakers, managers, and theorists. Policymakers, university administrators, and business managers will appreciate good description of forms of cooperation of industries and universities as well as problems that such cooperation creates or exacerbates and some of the prescriptions, offered by the authors, whereas theorists will find wealth of material on which to build some concepts and theories of social and ethical responsibility versus commercialization and perhaps even some interesting niches for possible corrupt activities in higher education.

Higher education in the US may be characterized by the complexity and plurality of the forms of organization, governance, management, financing, and property. The Ivy League universities and those trying to replicate them, or so-called `wanna be' universities, coexist with numerous large public institutions, four-year colleges and community colleges. While the former are actively involved in business-driven projects in research and services, the latter are quite distant from these processes. Nevertheless, all of them serve the industries, primarily by training professionals for these industries. In this sense, community colleges are not less linked to businesses than major research universities. Carnegie Foundation classifies several leading private and public universities in the US as research universities. These institutions typically offer a wide range of baccalaureate programs, and are committed to graduate education through doctorate and research, including externally funded research (Carnegie Classification, 2009). Curriculum in community colleges is tailored to meet the demands of specific industries and more often, local labor markets. Financial flows in the higher education industry, including educational loans, governmental grants, and returns on endowments are plentiful. As in any other industry, organizational complexity, unclear nature of the final product, and significant financial flows serve as necessary grounds for corruption. Few authors address corruption in the US higher education industry.

While corruption in the American higher education may be pervasive, scholarly work on this issue is lacking. This situation is quite characteristic of the studies of higher education corruption worldwide. Case studies and small scale surveys with a low response rate remain major tools to assess corruption. The reliability of surveys and interviews is undermined by the sensitivity of the topic—corruption remains illegal. There are some methodologies that allow approaching the issue of corruption and measuring it (Besançon, 2003; Kaufmann and Kraay, 2003; Bellver and Kaufmann, 2005; and Osipian, 2007a), including legalistic (Kaufmann and Vicente, 2005; Zimring and Johnson, 2005; and Osipian, 2008f) and economic ones (Rose-Ackerman, 1978 and 1999). Nevertheless, issues of conceptualization, theorization, operationalization, and measurement of education corruption remain largely unresolved. This article comments on the major works done on corruption in the American higher education sector, including the methodological tools used by the researchers, and also offers some methodologies with which this problem may be addressed in future researches.

The FedUni Journal of Higher Education, American Higher Education, Ivy League universities, Business-Driven Projects, Baccalaureate Programs, Diploma Mills, Microeconomics, Cynicism, Education Corruption, Monetary Transactions, Peer Evaluation, Gross Domestic Product, GDP, Public Health Policy, Business Ethics, University Commercialization, Hospital Management, Intellectual Property Rights, Commercialization.