"For the First Time in the History of Modern California, the State’s Best-Educated Citizens Are the 50-Somethings Rather Than the 20- or 30-Somethings"

"Yet private institutions like USC cannot simply pick up the slack left by the public ones. First, even with generous aid packages, they cannot hope to match the public universities on access for students from poor or what are sometimes called 'non-traditional' backgrounds. Second, even taken collectively, private universities do not operate on the same scale. A big majority of enrolled students attend public institutions. 'There is no private solution to this issue,' says Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute. 'There must be a public solution.'"

The Economist reports on the decline of public higher education in California.