Originally Posted by ultramarina
Are there numbers on this anywhere? I'm not intending to sound challenging. I'm just interested in the hard numbers...

I'm interested in them, too-- the problem is that I don't think that anyone in a position to pay for the study WANTS to know or publish them. I'm not usually much of a conspiracy theorist, but in this instance, it would seriously damage the machine to be honest about this situation, I think anyone can see.

If one assumes that population growth has resulted in a doubling of the graduating high schoolers in the United States, and that the top three quartiles are being encouraged to immediately apply to colleges (yes, as in plural), I'm estimating that 3X is a highly conservative estimate of the increase from a timepoint during the Reagan administration.



Remember, that was pre-ADA, it was also at a time when manufacturing jobs were plentiful and well-compensated (well, relative to today, anyhow), and therefore, there was not a national push toward higher ed to begin with.

I think that the shift has been fairly gradual.

I do recall that of my 300 graduating classmates, only 2/3rds planned any kind of higher ed at all-- and I went to an "excellent" public high school. A few of my classmates went on to Ivies, but they were solidly UMC and up. The rest of us sort of accepted that Brown or Harvard were probably pipe dreams, no matter whether or not we could get IN.

(For the reason that Dude mentions-- it would have bankrupted our parents.)

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.