The Four-Year College Myth - Neil Swidey, Boston Globe

Census data from 2005 tell us that only 28 percent of American adults have a bachelor's degree. As for how many adults took the "traditional" path and received their BA within four years of high school, some rough number crunching of federal education data shows that the percentage dips to below 10 percent. By definition, that's no longer traditional. It's radical, and it makes you wonder why we still call them four-year colleges.... If you add up the undergraduate students at all of the Ivy League colleges, you get about 60,000. Then compare that with the roughly 40,000 undergraduate students just at Ohio State University's main campus. Or the 6.6 million students in community colleges across the country.