My point is that while a state school can look like a great deal on paper, the logistics of actually graduating can make it a lot less attractive. This changes year by year, with little notice, and is getting much worse very quickly.
I moved to the Bay area in 1996 and had a job that allowed me to meet a LOT of college students and recent graduates. Every single person who went to CSU or UC had the same story, and it was what you mentioned above: required classes offered once a year that were oversubscribed, the five-year plan, and costs. These days, the same problems are there, but as you say, they're worse. UC costs a lot more and now students talk about the
six-year plan. They have to take basic classes like Chem 101 over the summer because now it's not just 300-level major classes that aren't offered frequently enough. So not only do they lose earnings because of extra time in college, they also have to increase their loan burden because they can't work full-time in the summer.
The obvious solution is to add sections of CHEM 101 and ENG 358 to meet demand. I mean, that solution is blindingly painfully obvious to an eight-year-old. So if the colleges aren't doing it, it's a deliberate choice that has nothing to do with contracts (because they could just hire another adjunct or, gasp, a tenure-track assistant professor).
