The College Sorting Machine

The number of bachelor's degrees expressed as a percentage of 22-year-olds increased from 22% in 1981 to 37% in 2008. The country was also becoming steadily more efficient at getting the best students into college over that period so that the greater size of the college population didn't mean a markedly less able population. College brings people together at the time of life when young adults are beginning to look around for marriage partners. For the prospective members of the new upper class who don't find a marriage partner as an undergraduate or at grad school, the names of the schools they attended give them badges that signal their status to prospective mates.