"Current commentary about the US higher education system is steeped in crisis rhetoric of impending doom. High costs, exploding debt, and a digital tsunami supposedly will combine to disrupt and sweep away many of the nation's higher education institutions, or change them beyond recognition. In...

We use the NLS-72 and ELS:2002 data sets to evaluate changes in the college matching process. Rising attendance rates at four-year institutions have not decreased average preparedness of college goers or of college graduates, and further attendance gains are possible before diminishing returns...