Resize Text: 
In the latter half of the 1990s, a series of reports bearing sober titles like “Breaking the Social Contract” and “California at the Crossroads” urged California policymakers to prepare for the imminent arrival of baby-boomers’ children at the doors of the state’s colleges and universities. If the state wasn’t ready, the reports warned, the consequences of the predicted surge in enrollments would be dire. One referred to a “hurricane” threatening “California’s historic commitment to college opportunity,” but the metaphor that came to stand for the coming generation of college students—coined by Clark Kerr, the architect of California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education—was Tidal Wave II.
Some in Sacramento dismissed the rhetoric. “I don’t know who’s calling it a tidal wave. It’s a catchy word. But it’s a poor metaphor. A tidal wave is uncontrollable,” a staffer with the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) told the San Francisco Chronicle, accusing higher education leaders of inflating the projections for their own benefit. In its analysis, the LAO concluded that enrollment would gradually increase but that college participation rates as a percentage of the population would drop, for a simple reason: Latinos, who were growing faster than any other population segment, would continue to attend college at lower rates.
The assumption that those low participation rates could not be nudged up by public policy action was sharply countered by higher education experts, as was the report’s recommendation to “manage” enrollment by increasing fees and tightening admissions requirements. “Anybody who would say, as a matter of public policy, that the participation rates among blacks and Latinos are okay is not being realistic about the needs of this state,” noted Jerry Hayward, a retired chancellor of the state’s community college system.
Pamela Burdman, currently a program officer in Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and a former higher education reporter, joins WestEd this summer as a senior project director. The initial version of this article was prepared for a book of journalistic accounts of recent developments in American higher education to be published under the auspices of The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Become a Subscriber