Colleges Gird for Children of Baby Boomers

The great rush of students will begin as a trickle, the merest rivulet. Then, if the dire predictions prove true, that trickle will surge inexorably into a torrent.

Cries of alarm are echoing through academia, for the beginning of that trickle is only two years away, sitting in 10th-grade classrooms across the country.

They call it Tidal Wave II, the children of the baby boomers, the new generation of high school graduates who threaten to swamp colleges with a staggering rise in new applicants. In California it could spell an end to the promise of a college education for every student who wants one, and make for bitter competition to enter the state’s prestige universities.

California expects to be hit with the brunt of the wave--a 43% increase in high school graduates over the next 10 years. One projection anticipates an increase to almost half a million new graduates here by the year 2009, up from 275,000 last year. That at a time of some of the sharpest educational cutbacks in the state’s history.

The student glut will also be felt in other parts of the West. Nevada anticipates a daunting 71% increase in high school graduates. Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Alaska and Colorado all expect major surges in college applications. Texas is bracing for a 22% rise in high school graduates at the end of the next decade.

Though not as dramatic, the numbers are expected to rise elsewhere as well, particularly in Florida. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, which compiles such figures, predicts that the number of high school graduates nationwide will increase to 3.3 million in the year 2008, up from 2.5 million last year.

In California the student wave could jar the heretofore unshakable credo that nearly everyone with the ability can find a place in college. That principle was outlined in the Master Plan for Higher Education, the sweeping guidelines executed in 1960 as the baby boomers were making their way into the college ranks.

The essence of the system was three tiers of higher education, with those from the top academic ranks offered spaces in the University of California. Others had the option of Cal State universities or the two-year community colleges as an entry point. California residents did not pay tuition, only modest fees, and the cost of education was paid mostly by taxpayers.

But with a greater share of state tax money now going to prisons, and with that share expected to rise as California invests more in its penal institutions than its universities, the ethic of college for everyone is in jeopardy.

“We will break the social contract that higher education has had with the citizens of California, “ said Theodore R. Mitchell, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. “It will create ruthless competition for fewer spots, and those spots will go to the traditional winners.”

Those winners are the brightest students and the affluent who have traditionally enjoyed the most options. The losers, say academics who have begun preparing for the new era, will be the poor and minorities for whom college was often possible only because of California’s insistence on wide access.

And that has begun to raise questions of fairness. Some critics say California was willing to keep its system of colleges and universities healthy and cheap until minorities began to occupy a larger share of the lecture hall seats. The criticism is that there is now a wavering in the long-held tenet that paying for education is a necessary investment in the state.

“Now the state is saying it is no longer its responsibility, but a shared responsibility,” said Tomas Arciniega, president of Cal State Bakersfield. “The policy shift is a pretty dramatic one.”

There has been almost no public debate on the subject in California. Educators and legislators say the reason is simple enough: The present fiscal crisis in the state allows neither the time nor the inclination for long-term planning.

“In two or three years, this is going to be the dominant issue, but now it’s hard for people to see it coming,” said Patrick Callan, director of the Higher Education Policy Center, a San Jose-based research organization. “Nothing long term is going to be addressed during this recession, but the problem is going to be impossible to ignore in a few years.”

One of the chief architects of the current system was Clark Kerr, president emeritus of the University of California. Like others, Kerr bemoans the fact that so little is being done to plan for “Tidal Wave II,” a term he coined.

The problem is money, he said, and not much is happening by way of advocacy for higher education in the battle for a depleted supply of tax dollars.

“There is a battle of knives going on out there, and higher education has no knife,” he said. “It (higher education) is going to have to look harder than it has for other sources of funds, and there aren’t many.”

Kerr and others have come to view the battle for educational dollars as basically a fight between colleges and prisons. Because of the way the state’s budgetary system works, only a small portion of the monetary pie is discretionary. And within that, the two major items are higher education and prisons.

A recent study by the California Higher Education Policy Center showed that the Department of Correction’s share of the state’s general fund has escalated from 2.6% to 7.7% over the last decade. That puts prisons at little more than a percentage point below what is now being spent for the UC and Cal State systems combined. The report warned that if the “three strikes” law is implemented, even more money will be siphoned away from education and into the prison system.

“It is inconsistent with the current realities of state finance to simultaneously advocate for the ‘three strikes’ law in its present form and the preservation of accessible and affordable public colleges and universities,” the report concluded.

There seems little doubt that student fees--which have become informal tuition in California--are destined to increase. Within the last four years, fees have risen sufficiently to take California out of the bargain-basement range and into the realm of being merely competitive.

UC undergraduate fees have jumped from $1,634 per year to more than $4,000. Cal State fees have doubled in the last four years, to $1,584. But they will probably climb higher and, in the process, put schooling out of the range for many on the lower end of the economic scale.

There is, of course, some skepticism that the alarming estimates being bandied about may not come to pass, or that the demographics may somehow change and diminish the problem.

“I would just be cautious on the projections,” said state Sen. Gary Hart, widely viewed as a friend of education.

But Peter Hoff, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs for the Cal State system, said there is no reason to disbelieve the estimates because these are students who are already in the pipeline attending the state’s public and private schools.

“In this case I tend to believe the numbers,” he said. “I think they’re there.”

UC officials have not yet decided how to react to the tidal wave, but there is clearly a growing concern, particularly since there seems to be no way to finance the kind of changes that took place with the adoption of the 1960 Master Plan. At a meeting of UC Regents in September, Provost Walter E. Massey indirectly raised the specter of changing the long-held policy that provides automatic admission to UC campuses for students in the top 12 1/2% of each graduating class.

“One of the most difficult questions we have to ask is, ‘Can we afford any increase in students at all?’ ” he said.

The potential surge in students also worried the Cal State trustees. “We would be doing better to get 50,000 students marching in Sacramento than what we are doing now,” said Trustee William D. Campbell, voicing his frustration about the level of state funding to colleges.

How the problem will be resolved is still in doubt. In the 1960s, the influx of baby boomers prompted a bricks-and-mortar response. New campuses were opened at both ends of the state. But now, that kind of approach is virtually out of the question because, as matters now stand, there is no money. The only new Cal State campus is expected to be on the old Fort Ord near Monterey. UC plans to locate a campus near Fresno, but under the present timetable, construction is still a decade away.

Without money, educators are looking at other ways to deal with the problem. Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz said he hopes a special commission on the revision of the state’s constitution may direct more money to colleges by freeing up cash now earmarked to other uses by law. But that is far from a certainty, and the commission itself is only in its formative stages.

Kerr, for his part, said part of the solution might be a rethinking of when and how students actually begin their college education. He said those who can should begin earning college credits even before they leave high school, thus alleviating the demand for entry-level courses.

“The biggest waste in education is the last year of high school,” Kerr said. “One thing I support most strongly is that preference be given to students who use their last year in high school for advance placement courses. A half year of college work could be accomplished in high school.”

Stephen Sample, president of the University of Southern California, said in a recent interview that the tuition for public colleges and universities must be increased dramatically, along with much more aid for the truly needy. If that is not done, he said, the UC system in particular will continue to be “a massive subsidy program for the rich.”

Sample said that kind of “subsidy program” is one of the reasons why California’s public higher education programs, and UC in particular, are suffering.

“We’re watching one of the best higher educational systems in the world go down the tubes,” he said.

David Davenport, president of Pepperdine University and chairman of the 70-member Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities, contends that private institutions can be a part of the solution.

He said that if the money were forthcoming from the state in the form of portable grants that could be used anywhere, private schools could accommodate thousands of students.

“We determined there were 15,000 to 20,000 spots that exist now or could be created,” said Davenport. “Some have excess capacity while other have a greater percentage of out-of-state students that could be transferred over to make room for more California students. That’s at least the size of one or two campuses, so we could be a part of the solution.”

Davenport, like Sample, said the cost of tuition is going to have to move closer to the actual cost of education, supplemented by more scholarship money. And he, like some public educators, said the Master Plan may have to be revisited.

“It’s pretty clear that the Master Plan is breaking down,” Davenport said. “My guess is that we need a second Master Plan for this second wave. Some educators and legislators are going to have to sit down and see what the framework of a second Master Plan might be.”

STUDENT WAVE

The number of high school graduates--and the demand for space in U.S. colleges--is expected to surge in the next decade, especially in the West. This map shows each state’s anticipated change in graduates between this year and 2005. Over 30% ALASKA: +33% ARIZONA: +46% CALIFORNIA: +43% COLORADO: +33% DELAWARE: +32% FLORIDA: +51% NEVADA: +71% NEW HAMPSHIRE: +36% WASHINGTON: +32% 0 to 30% ALABAMA: +0% ARKANSAS: +4% CONNECTICUT: +19% GEORGIA: +29% HAWAII: +16% IDAHO: +4% ILLINOIS: +12% INDIANA: +1% KANSAS: +11% MAINE: +8% MARYLAND: +30% MASSACHUSETTS: +22% MICHIGAN: +7% MINNESOTA: +20% MISSOURI: +8% MONTANA: +16% NEBRASKA: +6%NEW JERSEY: +14% NEW MEXICO: +20% NEW YORK: +11% NORTH CAROLINA: +17% OHIO: +2% OKLAHOMA: +2% OREGON: +18% PENNSYLVANIA: +14% RHODE ISLAND: +22% SOUTH CAROLINA: +4% SOUTH DAKOTA: +7% TENNESSEE: +17% TEXAS: +21% VERMONT: +16% VIRGINIA: +24% WISCONSIN: +13% Decrease D.C.: -9% IOWA: -3% KENTUCKY: -5% LOUISIANA: -13% MISSISSIPPI: -5% NORTH DAKOTA: -12% UTAH: -2% WEST VIRGINIA: -21% WYOMING: -12% Sources: Western Interstate Commission for Higher Eduction