CSU is the cheaper state university system in California. It costs like $6,000 per year for in-state students. If they were waking up to the con game, more would be going there.
Today those numbers are $11.5k tuition and ~21.5k non-tuition (https://www.calpoly.edu/financial-aid/costs-and-affordabilit...) which is triple the inflation adjusted value from 1997. After 4 years (5 more likely) you're looking at > $125k in costs, which absolutely puts most people into massive loan debt. Even a part time job ($16/h) would offset barely a third of this.
CSU is just beyond expensive compared to 20 years ago.
I may speak from a perspective of ignorance here but I believe 6000$ a year is still prohibitively expensive for a lot of people, especially if they don't want to accrue debt.
Reality is almost no one pays that. Out of state and international students are just about the only folks paying tuition at CSU. Nearly everyone else is covered by the various state/federal grants, and community colleges are essentially free.
But some people in the ownership class have to get new yachts...