The recession has turned Americans into numbers addicts. Seemingly endless supplies of statistics--stock prices, retail sales, and the gross domestic product--offer various views about the health of the nation's economy. Higher education has its own economic indicators. Among the most important is "yield," the percentage of admitted students who send deposits to a particular college. Although determining that figure is as simple as dividing one number by another, its meaning is far more complex. Yield tells admission deans whether they have admitted the right number of applicants to meet their enrollment goals. Falling short can cost colleges significant money, and it can cost deans their jobs. To put yield in context, it is necessary to consider many factors, including: How many applicants did a college have? How many did it admit? Did it use a waiting list? How big was its tuition discount rate? Did its football team win the conference title last year? Although in some circles, yield is enmeshed with measures of prestige, "The bottom line is yield is not by itself a measure of institutional health," according to a principal with a higher-education consulting firm.