Starting about a year ago, my school's college counselors gravely informed us that because of demographics, this year would be the hardest ever to get into college.   According to the Times, however, the number of high schools seniors is going to peak in about two years, making about 99% of colleges less selective:

Projections show that by next year or the year after, the annual number of high school graduates in the United States will peak at about 2.9 million after a 15-year climb. The number is then expected to decline until about 2015. Most universities expect this to translate into fewer applications and less selectivity, with most students likely finding it easier to get into college.

Although it's certainly true that good schools have gotten more selective, there's a bit more to this trend then simply admittance percentages going down.  The first oddity is that while the elite schools have gone from incredibly selective to total crapshoot (Harvard, Yale and Princeton admit less than 10% of their applicants, despite 85% being perfectly qualified to go), the number of good, selective schools has skyrocketed.  Schools like Emory and USC, which only a decade or two ago were considered mediocre rich kid schools, have, because of their bulging endowments, been able to snatch up the best professors and students.  USC, for example, will not only offer scholarships to good students, but will just straight up hand out cash.   Also, due to the increasing financial returns to a college education, the number of objectively highly qualified students, with good SAT scores and what, has also increased due to the incentives.  This means that, from the other end, the number of good schools has to go up because there's been a downward flow in where the good students are going to school.  Add on the fact that because of applications being predominately online and most schools accepting the Common Application, it's become much, much easier to apply to a bunch of good schools, and consequently, acceptance rates have to go down. 

But while the stress and amount of work associated with trying to get into a competitive school has certainly gone up - as I can attest - the actual quality of American higher education, at the highest level, has probably gone up more.