Higher Education--long And Overwhelmingly Seen Outside The Us As An Intrinsically Public Sector Function With Limited Private Presence--has Become A Firmly Dual-sector Reality Globally. Indeed, A Third Of The World's Now More Than 200 Million Higher Education Enrollments Are In Private Institutions, A Share Higher Than In The Us. Against This New Background, We Respond To The Historically Abiding Question Of How Social Functions Are Sectorally Distributed And Engaged, Exploring Both Private-public (intersectoral) And Private-private (intrasectoral) Distinctiveness. We Discover Rich Double Distinctiveness Wherein Various Parts Of The Private Sector Differ Differently From The Public Sector. Guided And Organized By These Sectoral Concepts, Accumulated Empirical Findings--often Approaching What Provocatively Might Be Called Private Higher Education Laws-- Significantly Enhance Understanding Of The Extensive, Varied, Rapidly Changing, And Otherwise Often Vexing Terrain Under Study. The Study's Treatment Of How And Why Private Higher Education Both Thrives And Fails To Thrive Is Truly Global, Even As It Highlights Salient Regional Characteristics. Likewise, The Account Provides The Historical Sweep Vital To Understanding Contemporary Realities. Complementing Its Qualitative Thrust, The Book Mines An Unprecedented Quantitative Profile Of The World's Private And Public Higher Education--drawing Heavily On A New, Massive, Global Enrollment Dataset-- Provided By Publisher.