UUP’s slogan, “SUNY is the $olution,” drew strength from a March public higher education symposium in Albany.

Titled “From Recession to Resurgence: Public Higher Education, The Key to Revitalizing New York,” the symposium attracted more than two dozen UUP members among a group of nearly 200. Jointly sponsored by UUP, NYSUT, SUNY, CUNY and Professional Staff Congress, the symposium supported the assertion that growing higher education can help propel the state out of its economic crisis.   

“This is an historic event,” NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan Lubin said. “We all know education is the key to our future.”

Keynote speaker Jeff Madrick, an economic analyst and the editor of Challenge magazine, warned that the current economic crisis must not sidetrack government’s investment in higher education.

“We must not panic in this state of emergency. It’s time to build the foundation for funding education,” he said.

Madrick maintained that making college more affordable, especially for lower-income people, will improve the economy by raising incomes which, in turn, grows tax revenues.

Senate Higher Education Committee Chair Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Queens) said the amount the state has invested in public higher education has diminished despite the proven economic return.

“It seems to me that we have to be investing additional funds in education. Not only because it is morally correct, but it’s economically correct,” she said.               

UUP President Phillip Smith thanked the panel—that also included Joyce Moy of CUNY, Michael Garvey of License Monitor Inc., Mathew Cusack of X-Ray Optical Systems and Frank Mauro of the Fiscal Policy Institute, and moderator Brian Taffe of Capital News 9—for the discourse.

“I thank you all for exemplifying what we’d lose without public higher ed,” he said.

— Donald Feldstein