Gaining entrance to a four-year college or university, particularly a selective institution, has become increasingly competitive over the last several decades. We document this phenomenon and show how it has varied across different parts of the student ability distribution and across regions,...

A few months ago, Congress overruled the peer review process of the National Science Foundation. A congressional aide looked over the list of NSF grants, decided that 31 of them had titles unworthy of funding, and a conference committee voted on May 21 to cut off those grants. The cuts were made...