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Acknowledgments

Whatever value one finds in this monograph owes much to the insistent and insightful world-class reviewers of its drafts: Dennis Carroll, Paula Knepper, Drew Malizio, Ann Mullen, and Jeffrey Owings of the National Center for Education Statistics, Karl Alexander of the Johns Hopkins University, Alberto Cabrera of the Pennsylvania State University, Aaron Pallas of Michigan State University, and Vincent Tinto of Syracuse University. They all gave generously of their time and care, and were delightfully uncompromising in their requirements for improvement. One is blessed by such teachers. In the final analysis, they are collaborators.

Earlier versions of Parts I and III of this monograph were presented as research papers at the 1998 Forum of the Association for Institutional Research (Part I) and the 1998 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (Part III). On these occasions, colleagues from both organizations poked, prodded, and encouraged the completion of the more embracing story-line contained in these pages. I am indebted to them as I am to the challenges and proddings of Lawrence Gladieux and Scott Swail of the Washington office of the College Board, where I was privileged to serve as a visiting fellow in 1998.

Thanks, too, to my colleagues Jim Fox, Harold Himmelfarb, and Joe Teresa for their readings of a very rocky first draft, and for questions that told me where second thoughts and greater clarity were necessary.

Smaller pieces of the analysis, along with some of the "tool box" recommendations, have been aired previously in the general and trade press, and I thank Change magazine, University Business, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Washington Post for bringing these messages to broader publics than this more technical version will reach.

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Executive Summary