Access is probably dropping due to cost increases, although actual enrollment may be steady or increasing as some students who may have chosen to forego college in the past now attend college because bachelor’s degrees are increasingly becoming the minimum credential in many jobs.
For those who are not tightly constrained or shut out by cost, it is not really harder to get into a college, but the fewer choices available due to increasing selectivity at some of them means that many students will have fewer choices than they would have had in the past.