It will become increasingly difficult for college-bound students of the future to get into top schools, according to a study by Gordon Winston, co-director of Williams College Project on the Economics of Higher Education.

Here is some of his reasoning.

• Schools which already enroll the best and the brightest compete for talented students, rather than money.

• This is demonstrated by the fact that in 1990-91 the average four-year private college or university spent $10,600 to educate each student -- but got back only $3,400 in tuition and fees.

• Unlike profit-seeking businesses, colleges do not take excess demand as a signal to expand, since that would leave less subsidy available per student -- undermining the institutions' efforts to attract the very best.

• Although college enrollments are expected to increase by 10 to 30 percent over the next decade, private schools -- which currently spend two or three dollars for every dollar they recoup through tuition -- have powerful incentives not to expand.

Nor are the best state-supported universities in an expansion mode, since legislators are in no mood to provide more and more in student subsidies.

So Winston forecasts that it will become ever harder for students to enter top-ranked schools, public or private, and that a handful of elite schools will further distance themselves from the rest. This also suggests that as competition for college slots heats up among students, racial preference policies will become increasingly unpopular.

Source: Peter Passell, "Long Lines Outside the Best Colleges are Likely to Get Longer," New York Times, May 1, 1997.