According to the passage, what has made America’s system of higher education a great success?

The decentralization, diversity, academic freedom and shared governance that have evolved over the past two centuries have made America’s system of higher education one of the most accessible and democratic in the world. Today educators from around the globe are turning to U.S. institutions of higher learning for inspiration.

November not only marks the publication of Toni Morrison’s eagerly anticipated eighth novel, Love, but it is also the tenth anniversary of her Nobel Prize for Literature. Morrison is the first black woman to receive a Nobel Prize, precedented in literature by only two black men: Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, poet and novelist, in 1986; and Dereck Walcott, the Caribbean-born poet, in 1992. But Morrison is also the first and only American-born Nobel laureate for literature since 1962, the year novelist John Steinbeck received the award.