What do recent trends toward increasingly ambitious educational expectations and rising college completion rates mean for the stratification of higher education? This article shows that the odds of achieving expectations for a bachelor's degree increased across 15 cohorts of young adults, and to a lesser extent, for expectations to attend…

Tests Myrdal's predictions about racial attitude change, using responses to questions on school desegregation from 16 surveys. Finds that, although there has been a 30 percent increase in tolerance of school desegregation since 1954, cohort and education subgroups maintain consistent differences among themselves, and regional differences dissipate…

For every American birth cohort, 1905-80, social background effects declined at higher grade levels. However, in the 1980s, as tuitions rose and public college funding declined, social background became more important for college entry than for high school completion. Findings challenge the "selective attrition of the disadvantaged"…