Britain is on the verge of a stage of development in higher education from which the United States is emerging; the former, many believe, is about to move from Olite to mass higher education, while the latter is in transition toward universal access to varied forms of post-secondary schooling. Britain is in fact a long way, even in numbers, from a mass system of higher education. A recent report on comparative national enrollment rates indicated that the proportion of the age group 18 to 22 enrolled in all forms of higher education in the United Kingdom in 1968-69 was 13.5%. By comparison, the proportion of the age group 18 to 23 enrolled in the United States was 35%. (Cerych, 1972) A British commentator was correct in saying that if there are 835,000 students in higher education in 1981, which is the estimate of the Department of Education and Science (widely criticized as much too low), Britain will still not have a mass higher education system on the scale of the United States. (Scott, 1970) Neither will mass higher education have arrived if the Labour party's proposal to provide for at least one million full-time students in 1980 succeeds. It has been suggested that it would take 1,500,000 students in Britain to approach the present scale of mass higher education in the United States and certain other countries. (Crampin and Armitage, 1970) EXPANDING THE RESERVOIR OF STUDENTS Such numbers may not be reached for a long time, but the reservoir of students qualified for some form of higher education may be expected to grow materially. By 1981 a quarter of the age group is expected to leave school with one or more A-levels. This would represent a substantial increase in the pool from which most entrants to higher education come. Even this supply of students will be considerably smaller than it could be, for there are probably many capable young people who do not sit for A-levels, or who fail them. * This paper was prepared with the assistance of Margaret Fay and the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.