This morning I came across this article regarding the state government spending on higher education. This raises some interesting questions since I have seen other articles like this acknowledging that more minorities (ethnic, sexual, and gender) are obtaining degrees; however, the value of said degrees are also decreasing. This brought up a few issues, for me:

Can more people have access to higher education without lowering admission standards?

Do lower admission standards correlate with lower quality education at any given institution? 

Is our society over saturated with BAs and MAs? Is the saturating equal, i.e., are all parts of the country inundated with job seekers holding higher education degrees?

I do not have the answer to any of these questions, but it would be very useful to see a well researched study addressing these questions; a long with others that can help legislators better fund universities, and assist universities in using their funds more wisely.