The student revolts of the late 1960s were caused in part by the French government's failure to plan for a sudden explosion in the number of university students as a result of the postwar baby boom. The number of French university students skyrocketed from only 280,000 during the 1962-63 academic year to 500,000 in 1967-68, but at the start of the decade, there were only 16 public universities in the entire country. To accommodate this rapid growth, the government hastily developed bare-bones off-site faculties as annexes of existing universities (roughly equivalent to American satellite campuses). These faculties did not have university status of their own, and lacked academic traditions, amenities to support student life, or resident professors. One-third of all French university students ended up in these new faculties, and were ripe for radicalization as a result of being forced to pursue their studies in such shabby conditions.