New York University professor Anne Matthews has written a book entitled Bright College Years: Inside the American Campus Today which sheds some interesting light on the higher education industry.

• Higher education employs some 2.5 million people -- more than the auto, steel and textile industries combined.

• While there were 2.4 million students on campuses in 1946, that number has grown to 9 million people who attend 2,125 four-year institutions full-time -- 595 of which are private and 1,530 public.

• Institutional endowments total more than $100 billion -- with 60 percent of the total belonging to just 50 schools.

All but about 50 of the most elite schools are increasingly desperate for marginal or even unprepared students, she reports. Institutions are not only lowering standards, they are discounting tuitions and sending bounty hunters abroad in search of wealthy students.

• The four courses with the highest enrollments are American studies, basic composition, remedial math and statistics.

• It takes students an average of almost six years to earn a baccalaureate degree -- and half who matriculate will not graduate.

• An estimated 20 percent of college graduates work in jobs that do not require a college degree and one-third of Domino's pizza-delivery drivers in the Washington, D.C. area have bachelor of arts degrees.

Source: George F. Will, "The Education Bubble," Washington Post, March 31, 1997.