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[quote]
The population in public schools has been growing much more rapidly. Also, most of the elite privates do not expand very much at all. A quick comparison of acceptance rates in the past decades show that privates have been attended by less and less of the overall population as their acceptance rate goes down.
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<p>I would think that the elite privates would consider their decreasing acceptance rate evidence of their increasing quality. And not just the result of an increasing US population coupled with the elite privates refusal to expand. But of course the elite privates expand with time. They love to trumpet that fact too:</p>
<p><a href="http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/05/22/daily63.html%5B/url%5D">http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/05/22/daily63.html</a>
<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513607%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513607</a></p>
<p>Some stats I've found:</p>
<p>Total Number of Public Degree-granting institutions:
in 1950: 641
in 1985: 1,326
in 2001: 1,713
1,072 difference between 1950 and 2001</p>
<p>Total Number of Private Degree-granting institutions:
in 1950: 1,210
in 1985: 1,829
in 2001: 2,484
1,274 difference between 1950 and 2001</p>
<p><a href="http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/dt243.asp%5B/url%5D">http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/dt243.asp</a></p>
<p>This one interesting too:
<a href="http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/dt173.asp%5B/url%5D">http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/dt173.asp</a>
All came from here:
<a href="http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/lt3.asp%5B/url%5D">http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/lt3.asp</a></p>
<p>The UPenn study also discusses the possible explanations for their results:</p>
<p>"This change in educational background may reflect a difference in the characteristics of the entry- level hires in each period: Although the pool of four- year college graduates from which these corporations typically hired did not in fact shift toward public institutions over this period,23 on average, hiring practices may have shifted toward public university graduates. The change in educational background may also reflect a change in the attributes of those who were promoted after being hired: On average, Ivy League graduates may have had a much higher rate of promotion in the earlier period. It is impossible to tease out the answer from these data,24 but it is reasonable to conclude that the erosion in the importance of an elite alma mater and the shift toward public institutions more generally was the result of changes in corporate practices and not demographics. </p>
<p>Does the above finding indicate that corporations became less elitist and more open to students from all levels of society in this period? The results for second degrees suggest an even greater change. There is something of an increase in the proportion of second degrees among these executives by 2001, and the decline in the percentage that came from Ivy League institutions was much greater than for first degrees. (Most of these degrees are MBA or law degrees, and there are only five Ivy League law schools and six MBA programs.25) A more accurate story about changing access to these top executive jobs, therefore, might be as follows: In 1980, an Ivy League undergraduate education played a central role as a gatekeeper to a Fortune 100 executive career. By 2001, graduates from public institutions had greater access to executive positions, especially those with advanced degrees. A simple explanation for the change, possibly a cynical one as well concerning the role of elitism, is just that the Ivy League represented a smaller share of the population of graduates over time, especially in the exploding area of professional degrees where the scale of Ivy League programs was particularly small.</p>
<p>23 In the 1950s, when the 1980 executives would have been hired, four-year graduates from public institutions were equal to 34 percent of the graduates from private institutions. That figure rose only to 35 percent by 1970, when the 2001 executives would have been hired. See Table 243 Degree Granting Institutions by Control and Type of Institution, Digest of Educational Statistics, National Center for Educational Statistics: Washington, D.C. 2002. 24 There are other possible explanations as well. The preferences of the students may have changed,, e.g., interest in corporate jobs disproportionately eroding in Ivy League institutions during the latter period. 25 Princeton and Brown have neither a law school nor a business school. Dartmouth has a business school
but no law school."</p>
<p>Wonder if the author will expand on this work in the future or not. <a href="http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/faculty/cappelli.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/faculty/cappelli.html</a></p>