<p>Dad II:</p>
<p>As of 2005, roughly 85.5% of the total population 25 or older had graduated from high school, and 27.8% had graduated from college. In 1970, the equivalent percentages were 52.5% and 10.8%. The break really came with the baby boom. In 2005, for people 25-64 (i.e., born in 1951 or later), the high school graduation rate is around 87-89% for all age cohorts (lowest for the youngest and oldest of those groups). For people older than 64, the high school graduation rate was much lower – 79% for those under 75, and 71% for those 75 and over. The percentages of college graduates show a similar pattern – a sharp difference between pre-boom and post-boom, although the percentage of college graduates has been climbing slightly while the percentage of high school graduates hasn’t, largely due to women equalling and then surpassing men in college graduation.</p>
<p>Today, roughly half of people attend at least some college.</p>
<p>Total higher education enrollment increased substantially from 1970 to 2005, from roughly 7 million to 17 million +. That’s relevant to the subject of this thread, because Ivy undergraduate enrollment has remained roughly the same. There was some expansion in the 1970s as formerly single-sex institutions went co-ed, but that’s probably only about 1,500 of the 14,000 aggregate Ivy class size. In 1970, Ivy graduates represented about twice the proportion of all four-year college graduates than they do now, and I would hazard a guess that if you went back to 1960 it would be significantly higher than that – maybe 3% or more of all bachelor’s degree recipients.</p>