This author states that American higher education ignores about 90 percent of the environment in which it operates. Colleges change admissions requirements without even informing high schools in their service areas. Community college graduates are denied access to four-year programs because of policy changes made only after it was too late for the students to adjust their studies accordingly. Most important, the enormous shifts in pre-K-12 education caused by the No Child Left Behind Act are totally unknown to higher education's leaders. There are also several demographic factors that New Englanders have ignored. First and most important, the decreasing birth rate in three New England states means that, unless young families of childbearing age start moving into New England in droves, the region's population will get older and smaller very quickly. A second factor is the "net" of people moving in and out of a state. During the 1990s, four New England states saw more people move out than in. Many of New England's low-income and minority citizens are not participating in the American Dream, and the number of college-goers in the region known around the world as a center of higher education is lower than one would expect, especially in Vermont.