This book evaluates the threats—real and perceived—that American colleges and universities must confront over the next thirty years. Those threats include rising costs endemic to personal services like higher education, growing income inequality in the United States that affects how much families can pay, demographic changes that will affect demand, and labor market changes that could affect the value of a degree. The book also evaluates changing patterns of state and federal support for higher education, and new digital technologies rippling through the entire economy. Although there will be great challenges ahead for America’s complex mix of colleges and universities, this book’s analysis is an antidote to the language of crisis that dominates contemporary public discourse. The bundle of services that four-year colleges and universities provide likely will retain their value for the traditional age range of college students. The division between in-person education for most younger students and online coursework for older and returning students appears quite stable. This book provides a view that is less pessimistic about the present, but more worried about the future. The diverse American system of four-year institutions is resilient and adaptable. But the threats this book identifies will weigh most heavily on the schools that disproportionately serve America’s most at-risk students. The future could cement in place a bifurcated higher education system, one for the children of privilege and great potential and one for the riskier social investment in the children of disadvantage.