Coping with "Tidal Wave II"

THE ENROLLMENT increases that have been labeled "Tidal Wave II" are fast approaching. California expects an additional 450,000 to 500,000 students by the year 2005. Many states in the south, west and southwest anticipate increases of 20 to 30 percent or more in the same time period. This surge of new students comes at a time when state higher education budgets are tight because of the demands of health, welfare, prisons and K-12 schools, and a reluctance to impose new taxes.

Public colleges and universities will be unable to build new campuses and hire large numbers of additional faculty members, as they did when the "baby boomers" rolled across campuses in the 1960s and early '70s. In these circumstances, states are looking for innovative and cost-effective ways to increase access to postsecondary education.

This issue of CrossTalk looks at five of these efforts: a new state university in Florida that will emphasize upper division instruction; a 1960s-style interdisciplinary liberal arts campus in Arizona; a plan to locate a new community college and a branch of the University of Washington on the same campus outside Seattle; sharing of facilities by community colleges and public high schools in Nevada; and the Western Governors University, an interstate, "on-line" university for western states.