1960S' DREAM MAY BE 2010'S NIGHTMARE FOR STATE CAMPUSES.

Byline: Economist Newspaper Ltd.

THE early 1960s was a hopeful time, and it was then that California devised its system of higher education. The state would provide education after high school for ``every Californian who could benefit.''

Now that bold dream is proving too expensive.

Total state spending on higher education is running at $6.6 billion a year. By 2010, the cost of providing such education for all who might benefit will come, by one estimate, to $17 billion. But the state has no more money to spend.

Already, around 250,000 would-be students have been turned away because the fees are too high or classrooms too small.

By 2010, when the state may have another 10 million people - a high proportion of them young - a million would-be students may be kept out.

These are the findings in a study just issued by the Rand research center in Santa Monica. Several earlier studies have sounded similar warnings, but the author of this one, Michael Shires, is far more explicit about the lack of money and the growing pressure of numbers.

Higher education in California consists of nine separate University of California campuses, which take the cream of the student crop; 22 state colleges, which take the next layer down; and 106 two-year community colleges, which will accept anyone seeking education beyond high school.

In order to avoid rivalry and specify the scope of teaching, the ``education mission'' for each level is carefully spelled out in law. The success of the three levels over the years is widely considered the foundation of California's economic advances and its leadership in technology.

At present, about 10 percent of California's general fund (the state's principal operating budget) goes to higher education. That share will fall.

The prison system, which now absorbs about 9 percent of state money, is admitting new felons so quickly that by 2010, Shires reckons, it will suck in 20 percent of all state revenues.

At the same time, health and welfare services will have to expand for a growing and aging population.

All those state functions, with the addition of elementary education, now absorb about 78 percent of the available annual revenues; by 2010, Shires sees the figure rising to 91 percent.

This will leave higher education to share a mere 9 percent of state money with all general government operations, including fish hatcheries, forest-management and the running of the governor's office.

The California Higher Education Policy Center has been searching for solutions. First, the Center wants no more new construction or even major repairs; money should be spent on essential maintenance only.

Campuses, it says, should be used more: there should be classes in the evenings and on weekends, and full academic sessions through the summer.

Students should also be pushed through more quickly. At present, some take as many as six years to get a degree.

The Center wants high schools to offer one or two college-level courses for college-bound students to get them started early. It also proposes serious consideration of a three-year college program for a BA, rather than a four-year one.

The state's ``Cal Grants'' for poor but gifted students might also be expanded, says the Center, so that more such students would be able to attend expensive private colleges, which have more space. But this goes back to that ever-shrinking pot of money.

A certain amount of rationalization is needed. Teachers may have to carry heavier loads; classes with low attendance must be ended; research must be consolidated in specific campuses, not undertaken on a whim in any college.

Contraction of this sort is already occurring. At the University of California at Los Angeles three graduate schools - architecture, education and social welfare - have already been ``disestablished,'' with parts of their material moved to other courses.

The University of California at Davis has saved $50 million a year by closing down its geography department and cutting back its education department.

Could technology come to the rescue? Classes could be linked cheaply over the Internet; but, for the moment, teachers and students seem to feel there is no substitute for the face-to-face encounter between professor and amanuensis, whatever it costs.