New York is one of the wealthiest states in the nation, with enormous capacity to make the State University of New York (SUNY) and the City University of New York (CUNY) more affordable, more accessible, more inclusive, and better able to transform students’ lives and future prospects. Yet nationally, New York State (NYS) ranks near the bottom in the share of total state revenues allocated to public higher education (#44 in 2019) and tax appropriations for higher education per $1,000 of personal income (#40 in 2022; #38 in 2023). NYS is only in the middle of the pack in tax appropriations for higher education per capita (#22 in 2022; #23 in 2023) and in total state support for public higher education per $1,000 of personal income (#29 in 2020).  We call on decision-makers to fund public higher education in NYS like the public goods they are, making New York a national leader in sustainably and equitably supporting and advancing the core academic missions of SUNY and CUNY.

The future of these great public higher education systems and their hundreds of thousands of students is at stake. SUNY and CUNY have not fully recovered from either the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic; federal pandemic relief funds will soon be exhausted; CUNY senior colleges suffered a 21% reduction in inflation-adjusted full-time student equivalent (FTE) state investment between 2008 and 2020; SUNY lost $4.2B in inflation-adjusted operating budget state support between FY09 and FY22; and a number of SUNY campuses need more faculty with expertise in diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice to design and teach required courses in the new SUNY General Education (SUNY GE) program starting in Fall 2023. SUNY Fredonia alone has lost $136.5M in inflation-adjusted direct state aid between FY08 and FY22, falling beneath 60% of its FY08 state direct aid real-dollar allocation for the first time in FY12 and below 50% for the first time in FY22. Despite Fredonia’s successful actions to cut costs during this time period, our structural deficit has grown significantly and our strategic reserves have been exhausted, as will our share of federal pandemic relief by the end of FY23.

To change that trajectory, last November the Fredonia University Senate endorsed the SUNY University Faculty Senate (UFS) call for Governor Hochul to significantly decrease the share of SUNY and CUNY core operating costs paid for by student tuition and fees by increasing the share of public funds going to public higher education core operating budgets in her FY24 Executive Budget. Today, we call on NYS decision-makers to work together to ensure that every item on UFS’s list of suggested approaches to increasing direct state aid to every SUNY and CUNY institution is addressed in the FY24 Enacted Budget:

● fully funding all negotiated contractual increases;
● fully funding debt service, fringe benefits, and mandatory operating cost increases for all SUNY and CUNY institutions, including SUNY hospitals, thereby fully committing New York State to a robust maintenance of effort for SUNY and CUNY;
● making all SUNY and CUNY institutions whole from the cuts in direct state aid to their operating budgets since the Great Recession, including SUNY hospitals for the withdrawal of mission funding that predates the Great Recession; and
● committing to covering more of the current costs of running degree programs and general education programs on every SUNY and CUNY campus through direct state operating aid.

We stand with UFS in urging NYS decision makers to fully fund requests by the SUNY and CUNY Boards of Trustees for both operating funds and five-year capital plans addressing critical maintenance and new capital projects, as well as necessary accessibility upgrades to older buildings.

We understand that direct state aid is not the only tool under consideration for raising revenues for SUNY and CUNY. Regarding differential tuition, we call on Governor Hochul and state legislative leaders to work with Chairman Tisch, Chancellor King, the SUNY Board of Trustees, SUNY System Administration, and SUNY shared governance bodies to develop a system that:

● covers operating costs of each degree program on each SUNY campus by setting a ratio of direct state aid to net tuition and fees that is appropriate, equitable, and sustainable for sectors and programs (building on research by Walter McMahon and Christopher Newfield, we suggest targeting an average ratio of 2:1 across all degree programs on a given campus);
● lowers tuition and fees for most students in most sectors and degree programs, but particularly for those students in degree programs that lead to socially beneficial, understaffed professions with lower starting salaries and career earnings (e.g., arts, nursing, social work, teaching, mental health counseling);
● utilizes SUNY and other data to identify high-return-on-individual-investment, high-demand, and/or high-cost degree programs whose tuition and fees should be set higher than the maximum TAP or Excelsior Scholarship award, regardless of sector;

● allows SUNY sectors that fall in the Governor’s “global” and “national” categories to set tuition and fees higher than the maximum TAP or Excelsior Scholarship award, provided that institutions in those sectors cover at least half the ensuing gap through their own sources of student financial aid;
● weighs costs and benefits of further reducing or eliminating out-of-state tuition across SUNY, or allowing higher out-of-state tuition than in-state tuition only for SUNY sectors that fall in the Governor’s “global” and “national” categories; and
● leverages federal, state, and private sources of financial aid to enhance student access, college affordability, and system equity and sustainability regardless of degree program by allowing SUNY students to use financial aid to cover all costs of attendance, not just tuition and fees.

We recognize that these are big asks, larger even than those laid out in the Public Schools Unite Us campaign, the FY24 state budget proposal that comes closest to fleshing out UFS’s vision for making SUNY the best public higher education system in the nation. But they are worth it. SUNY and CUNY serve NYS as anchors of community, foundations for democracy, platforms for civic engagement, engines of economic development, pathways to the middle class and beyond, magnets for population growth and private investment, and generators of health, creativity, and innovation.  Please read our full statement and associated resolutions below and endorse them by signing this petition.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yKp4yMNMZh-IvRw3XE1bbvqc85mVX861/view?usp=sharing