Market Watch Jillian Berman Sept. 19, 2017 Excerpt: Why colleges give students the hard sell Students and parents typically have an incomplete understanding of the power dynamic between colleges and students during the application season. Most colleges aren’t actually super-selective and many have become more eager to accept students and offer discounts, as the number of students graduating high school has slowed over the past few years. How colleges aggressively use big data to target potential students - MarketWatch The number of high school graduates has slowed, whatever that means? If that means fewer high school graduates then it means big changes for higher education.