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SUNY is facing devastating funding cuts that threaten to dismantle the University, as the state tries to cut its way out of its budget deficit. But the big question we’ve been asking on newspaper editorial pages and in radio and TV news interviews is: Why cut SUNY, an entity that produces much more revenue than the state invests and that serves as a major engine of economic growth?
You know the score. SUNY’s budget has been cut by $148 million this year. Plus the state ordered SUNY to freeze $109.4 million in revenues the University collects from dormitory fees, food services, bookstores and other payments. In total, SUNY has lost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, making it one of the hardest-hit state agencies. If the crisis on Wall Street continues, SUNY faces the possibility of even deeper cuts.
I said it at the Fall Delegate Assembly, and it bears repeating here: Unless these funds are restored, we’re in the fight of our lives. The University has already been cut to the bone and is now looking at being cut into the bone.
It’s time that New York’s elected leaders rethink these cuts to SUNY and view state support to the University as an investment in the future economic health of the state, rather than as a drain on the state’s finances. Restoring state support to the levels in the original 2008-09 budget is a good start.
That’s why we’re calling on the governor and SUNY administrators to give the University the funding it needs to keep SUNY’s economic engine humming.
We’re making the point that in a number of regions across the state, SUNY is the economic lifeline. For example, UAlbany contributes $3 billion annually to the local economy. Upstate Medical University generates more than $2 billion in economic activity for the Syracuse region. The University at Buffalo leaves a $1.5 billion economic footprint. SUNY Binghamton’s economic impact is $673 million. If SUNY campuses are forced to slash their budgets, the repercussions would be far-reaching — not just for these communities — but for the state economy as a whole.
The effects of these draconian budget cuts are already being felt, perhaps even on your campus. Some campuses are planning to limit future enrollments, increase class size, reduce course offerings, and cut the ranks of full-time faculty through attrition. Others say they will delay purchases of supplies and equipment, a basic necessity in today’s technologically driven world.
Without additional funding, we’re warning that SUNY campuses will be unable to retain the faculty needed to teach advanced courses — the type of courses that students need to graduate on time. That would hurt working families whose children attend SUNY, who would be forced to pay thousands of dollars more for a SUNY degree that takes five or more years to complete.
We’re appealing to parents of high-school students looking to SUNY for an affordable, high-quality college education and telling them their children — even though they are qualified — may find the doors to SUNY closed. Without adequate funding, SUNY will be unable to retain the faculty needed to teach them.
We’ve criticized SUNY’s administration and its board of trustees for failing to respond to the latest $96 million budget reduction, likening their inaction to Nero fiddling while Rome is burning.
Well, now is no time for you, our members, to be sitting on the sidelines either. We need you to be proactive by joining in this campaign to rescue SUNY. Whether you took part in any of our regional advocacy training sessions or not, I strongly urge you to get involved. Join your colleagues on your campus when they meet with state lawmakers in their district offices. Talk to the owners of businesses you patronize and tell them how cuts to SUNY would hurt their bottom line.
We need you to go to our Web site to send the governor a fax that urges him to reverse these cuts, and to encourage parents, students, businessowners and all concerned New Yorkers to do the same.
Tell them that SUNY is the solution to the state’s economic woes. Emphasize that SUNY is a major engine that drives the state’s economy, responsible for educating the next generation of New York’s workforce with the skills needed to retain and attract employers. Eighty percent of the students who graduate from SUNY remain in New York to live and work. Tell lawmakers that if those students are forced to study elsewhere, New York will suffer a brain drain that will hamper its efforts to bolster the economy, and we will lose the tax revenues generated by working college graduates.
Tell them New York needs a strong SUNY system now, more than ever.