It used to be easier to get into colleges, this has certainly been detrimental to gifted education. Which is really sad to me, because obviously, the college standards for admission have ruined the lower education. With the current college situation, I can't see how gifted education can improve ideally.
I was wondering where you got this data.
I know that there are plenty of good colleges that are not meeting their quotas and would be happy to have a higher number of qualified applicants. My understanding from something I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education a while back is that the real problem is that students are focusing all their efforts on the biggest name colleges (which may not actually providing the best education, but have a lot of prestige) rather than on colleges that are good fits for the student and can still give them an excellent education. They are not applying to these schools, not because they are not good, but because they are not famous. So there are kids who don't get into any of the big name schools and get frustrated while, meanwhile, a college that would have been a good fit for them doesn't make its enrollment goal because the student and the college never knew about each other.
Anyway, I'd be interested to hear where you got your information.
