NYSUNY 2020: UUP helps strike major negative provisions

The NYSUNY 2020 bill signed into law Aug. 9 stands as a monument to UUP’s successful and extensive advocacy efforts. The final legislation contained none of the significant provisions that UUP fought against, namely differential tuition, public/private partnerships and the sale or lease of campus property.  The legislation is also weakened by the fact that none of SUNY’s four University Centers will be receiving any funds from the state in the form of the so-called
$20 million “challenge grants” until the state’s next fiscal year that begins April 1.   
But UUP is not resting on its success with the final legislation. UAlbany and Binghamton—like Buffalo and Stony Brook before them—have presented their NYSUNY 2020 to a committee of the SUNY Board of Trustees. As The Voice went to press, UAlbany and Binghamton had not submitted their official plans to the governor, so details on them are still sketchy.
Like the earlier NYSUNY 2020 proposals, Binghamton’s plan suggests the prospect of new buildings combined with questionable financing. Binghamton is looking to construct a new health and natural sciences building. That’s only part of Binghamton’s plan, which would use $20 million from the state and $15 million in campus capital funds.
The $35 million total is only meant to be “seed money” for each campus’ plan. Where would the additional funds come from? According to a Binghamton University news release, “The remaining dollars would be raised through a variety of sources, including … University cash reserves.”
UUP President Phil Smith contends cash reserves are primarily derived from students and should be used to directly benefit students rather than being tapped to build new buildings.
“University cash reserves were never meant to be a source of capital funding,” Smith said. “Students should not be funding the cost of new buildings. That money should be coming from the state as it always has.”               
UAlbany’s 2020 plan also calls for a major building project—the construction of a $150 million Biomedical and Information Innovation Research Plaza. After applying $35 million in seed money, UAlbany’s administration plans to use $42 million in appropriations from 2008-09 and raise the remaining $73 million to pay for the building. Some of that money could potentially come from increased tuition revenue or SUNY cash reserves.
NYSUNY 2020 increases tuition on all state-operated SUNY campuses by $300 annually for the next five years. Students who received financial aid through the state’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) will pay the same percentage share of their tuition, but the additional funds will come from tuition revenues collected by the campuses rather than through TAP. Binghamton has pledged to commit 25 percent of its additional tuition revenue toward helping needy students.
“That’s a huge pool of money that’s being drained from funds that should be devoted to teaching students and hiring faculty,” Smith said. “The state should be taking on this responsibility by increasing TAP instead of watering down the benefits from the tuition increase.”
The NYSUNY 2020 plans coming from UAlbany and Binghamton are in stark contrast to recent budget-cutting measures taken in response to massive state budget cuts during the last three years. One year ago, UAlbany ordered a halt to new admissions in five programs: French, Italian, Russian, classics and theatre, and the campus would lose the equivalent of 160 positions by 2012. Binghamton announced some austerity measures that even included closing a number of bathrooms on campus.
 “It makes you wonder how campuses can gyrate from one extreme to the other, cutting programs and faculty one year, then promising to add facilities and faculty the next,” Smith mused. “The promises of NYSUNY 2020 just don’t add up.”
Smith suggested that SUNY would be better served applying its increased tuition revenue toward saving existing programs and faculty positions. Such an effort would help reverse the trend of delayed graduations by reducing the numbers of canceled classes and course offerings.
All of the NYSUNY 2020 plans will be reviewed by SUNY’s chancellor and require approval from the Empire State Development Corporation. When that review will be completed has not been determined.
— Donald Feldstein