England has a 'pre-qualification' system of higher education admissions, where applications and offers are made to young people before exam results are received. While in most cases offers are conditional on achieving a grade target in A Level exams, recent years have seen an exponential growth in 'unconditional offers', where the offer of a place…

The authors evaluate the extent to which economic factors underlie the expansion of Japanese college applications. Findings indicate that "marginal investors" respond to shortrun economic factors--including direct costs, household liquidity, and probability of entering a large firm--that govern higher education. Educational quality has…