This article seeks to make sense of the seeming contradiction that the number of degrees awarded annually and the attainment rate of the adult population in the US have both grown, even as the country has fallen behind many global competitors on the latter indicator. Two reports issued in 2012---one by the Pew Research Center, the other by the OECD, and analyzed in this article---confirm that US attainment rates have continued to increase in recent decades and that the number of American adults with college degrees has also increased substantially. These reports confirm the fact that a nation's demographics have often been more important than its attainment rates in determining how many people hold degrees and therefore in its ability to produce sufficient numbers of college graduates in the future. (Contains 8 charts, 2 tables, and 3 resources.)