FOR the past decade, analysts of higher education have foreseen a time coming when almost every high school graduate would expect to enter an institution of higher education. The trends were dear: Just as high school education at the turn of the century was something for a small but increasing part of the youth population, so was higher education 40 years later. Getting everyone to graduate from high school (the high-school “drop-out” problem) was a leading concern of educational and other policy makers in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, and the effort to get almost every high school graduate at least to enter college seemed to be a leading concern of educational and other policy makers in the later 1960’s. California had led the way, but the rest of the country was not far behind.