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Fifty years ago this month, California promised a low-cost, high-quality university education for every qualified high school graduate in the state. But that promise — inflated by growing populations and academic aspirations — expanded beyond the state's willingness to pay for it.
What went wrong? How did the university system that was long the envy of the world suddenly become the focus of angry street protests, overcrowded classrooms, soaring tuition and a monumental debate over whether the state can ever make good again on its groundbreaking mission?
While the recession turned a slow-brewing problem into an instant crisis, a Mercury News analysis of California's higher-education mess reveals that many factors drove the inevitable and ugly collision between the university system's ambitious and uncoordinated growth and the state's declining ability and desire to pay for it. Among the most critical:


  • Plummeting state support: Since 1990, state spending per student has dropped by half in inflation-adjusted dollars. While the state paid about 90 percent of a student's education 40 years ago, it now pays 69 percent for CSU students and 62 percent for those in the UC system.



  • No guaranteed funding: Unlike K-12 education, universities are not guaranteed a steady stream of funding. In the last 40 years, higher education's piece of the state's spending pie has been sliced in half — even while enrollment has jumped 21/2 times.



  • Continued expansion: In the past eight years, despite declining state support, UC added a new campus, seven new schools and at least 45 new programs. Cal State added a campus, many new science centers, and even a Ph.D. program — adding a research emphasis that was not part of its original mission.



  • Little coordination: While university systems in several other states must seek approval for spending and expansion plans, there is no oversight body in California with the formal authority to play such a role. UC and Cal State are often