Average age of undergraduates is 24. Fifty-six percent are women. Over half of CSU students are non-white. A California state prison guard with a high school diploma and six years of experience earns more than a Ph.D. Associate Professor at a California State University with six years of experience. Unless this trend is changed, state spending will hit zero in 2010.
Higher education is the driving force behind California's economy.
The promise to make a degree affordable and accessible is the smartest investment this state ever made. But now that promise is in trouble. The CSU system will add the equivalent of 100,000 full-time students by 2010. The system's 22 campuses are already short of space. Even the best projection shows that 58,000 of the new students will not be accommodated in 2010.