This report explores some of the complexities involved in setting, maintaining, and judging standards in higher education, and examines the interactive effects that the standards of schools and colleges have on each other, with special emphasis on the implications of selective college admission practices. Focus is on whether current standards are really as low as feared and whether local and state attempts to raise them have met with success. The report is organized into four focal points at which the standards within any particular segment of the educational system can be set and evaluated. First, the level of preparation of students when they enter a program determines what kind of curriculum can be offered. Second, what students learn will be determined by what content is offered to them and also by how it is offered. Third, standards are both set and reflected by procedures for judging student progress. Fourth, the level of mastery students have achieved when they are certified as having completed the program is an important indicator of the standards in effect. Additional discussions include college outcomes assessment and the difficulties in their measurement, and the determination of institutional quality. Contains 86 references. (GLR)