If you are really a 1968 SU grad, then you know that is wrong. The accessibility of affordable college educations was huge for a lot of young people of your generation, and the schools popped up where the people were. But times change. State schools were a backup in the Northeast for several decades after the War. As private schools got more expensive, and technology advanced rapidly, a classical "liberal arts" education lost a lot of its value. Some state schools were early to engineering and technology, and they became a lot more attractive to high school grades starting in the 80's.
Those SUNY branches, and a lot of the regional liberal arts schools, made more sense when NY was like 25% of the nation's GDP. The nation has moved west and south, and now the college age population is shrinking. It has become a knife fight for survival for a lot of schools.
The only place I would criticize the government is in the student loan programs for the last 30 years. These encouraged kids who might not have been ready for or even appropriate for college to get degrees of questionable value. Many schools would keep these marginal students for the tuition and park them in liberal arts majors like English, Sociology and Anthropology. History and Poli Sci were not quite as bad because they were usually structured as pre-law and were generally more demanding. English should be the hardest major on campus, not the easiest, because you better be really good if you want to make a career as an English major.
I also think they should have structured the loan programs based on achievement, and discouraged kids from majors that had questionable economic value in the job market. Instead, kids went deeply into debt for low value degrees, and they also pushed the price of tuition up for everyone by creating artificial demand. Now that demand is declining, and colleges have a lot of overcapacity.
