Not sure what you mean by society is making the UC’s seems harder to get into, the plain facts are that all the UC’s and many of the CSU’s are harder to get into even from 4-5 years ago.
My oldest son graduated last year from UCD so he applied for 2013. At that time, UCD had around 56,000 Freshman applicants with an enrollment target of around 5,000 Freshman. For Fall 2018, there were 77,727 Freshman applicants for around the same number of Freshman spots.
My other son is a current student at SDSU. When he applied for Fall 2014, there were around 57,000 Freshman applicants and this year there were over 68,000 applicants.
The continued increase in applicants for both the UC’s and CSU’s have resulted in lower acceptance rates for all these schools along with an increase in competition for the highly sought after majors such as Computer Science/Engineering/Biology/Psychology etc…
Applicants are applying to more schools and schools that once were considered safeties are no longer a guarantee. There is definitely a school out there for any student wanting to go to a college, but applicants need to apply widely, do thorough research and be flexible on their types of schools they are targeting.
Being a CA resident has some great advantages especially with the number of excellent colleges within the state but you have to be smart on targeting the schools where you have the best chance of being admitted.
This might be of interest to you : http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2070343-californian-parents-justified-feeling-bitter-their-kids-are-shutout-of-the-uc-system.html#latest