The SUNY Board of Trustees was in session Nov. 18, the same day that Gov. David Paterson called the state Legislature together for a special meeting to address the state’s budget shortfall. Although the legislative session did not produce any results, the SUNY trustees did take some controversial actions—actions met with skepticism by some legislators and opposition by UUP leaders.
SUNY trustees agreed to increase tuition by $620 per year starting next fall. Tuition will rise by $310 tuition for the spring 2009 semester and increase by another $310 in the fall—bringing it to $4,970.
And trustees passed the measure without first seeking approval from the Legislature—which controls the account where the additional funds will go—and with no assurances that the money will go to SUNY.
Gov. David Paterson has said he favors a tuition hike of $600, but wants to keep most of the estimated $75 million in revenue it would bring in to help ease the state’s financial crisis. Trustees are planning on that money as part of their proposed $2.388 billion budget request for 2009-10.
“Simply put, revenues from any tuition increase must go to the University, in full,” Smith said.
The tuition increase was part of the trustees’ ambitious “Four Pillars” plan included in their $2.388 billion budget request for 2009-10, which board members also approved at the meeting.
The “pillars” are:
• A “Rational Tuition Plan” that will increase SUNY tuition each year based on the Higher Education Price Index, which averages an increase of 3.5 to 3.6 percent annually. The plan provides students and parents with a system of “modest, annual and predictable increases,” board Chair Carl Hayden said.
• Legislative approval giving SUNY authorization to lease and sell its land, as well as enter into private-public business partnerships to promote commercial and community-based activities. The board must obtain state approval to move forward with such initiatives.
• State approval of the Management and Operational Reforms and Efficiencies (MORE) program, which would allow SUNY “enhanced administrative and operational flexibility” regarding control of income from tuition, fees and other University revenue, post-audit of expenditures, procurement and contracts, personnel and capital construction.
• “Appropriate” state aid support for the University.
Trustee H. Carl McCall said the budget’s effectiveness rests on these pillars. Without approval of all four proposals, SUNY’s budget plan will be weakened, he said.
“We have reached the point where additional cuts must reach the muscle and sinew of the enterprise,” he said. “We must stop thinking about the short term and start thinking about the long term.
We have to re-energize the state’s economic engine and we can’t do it without the state University.”
UUP President Phillip Smith questioned the trustees’ move to raise tuition without assurances that the dollars will end up in SUNY’s coffers. He strongly opposed most of the board’s “Four Pillars” plan, and said the union will do all it can to block passage of expanding SUNY’s private-public partnerships and the MORE proposal.
“We’ve told them in no uncertain terms that we will fight this tooth and nail,” Smith said to UUP chapter leaders during a Nov. 24 strategy session.
The trustees’ plan to raise tuition to replenish SUNY’s depleted coffers is flawed because there’s no telling how much of the funds—if any—SUNY will get. With the University already facing $148 million in state operating aid budget reductions, this plan does little to buffer that impact and prepare for deeper cuts expected in Paterson’s state budget plan.
“SUNY needs a plan and this is not that plan,” said Smith. “Revenues from tuition increases must go back to the University and the Trustees have no mechanism in place to ensure that will occur.”
Hayden vowed to fight if the state attempts to take dollars raised by tuition increases.
“We will not assent to the diversion of tuition money,” he said. “All of those dollars should be retained by SUNY for its students.”
On the backs of students
In the past, the state has reduced SUNY’s operating aid by the amount of the tuition increase. Paterson has said he wants to reduce aid to SUNY by 90 percent of the increase in the spring and 80 percent in the fall.
That tactic is unacceptable to UUP because it uses SUNY students and their parents as pawns in closing the budget gap, Smith told chapter leaders. State budget cuts have left the University with fewer faculty and fewer classes to teach a record number of students.
Students who may be facing an extra year of college because the courses they need to graduate aren’t offered will now have to pay more for their education, with no guarantee that their dollars are going back into the University.
“They are trying to make up the state’s shortfall on the backs of the students,” said Smith. “That is something UUP will never stand for.”
— Michael Lisi