Picking up where I left off last night, I could go on for many more pages about what a rhetorically effective political document the SUNY Report on Long-Term Enrollment and Financial Sustainability is. In addition to what I already noted, I would point to the report's yoking large-scale SUNY research endeavors to state economic development goals, positioning SUNY to leapfrog others in those emergent fields and industries, framing SUNY as the workforce development answer to needs in "high-demand sectors," and the sheer poetry of
SUNY’s commitment to excellence in operational and fiscal stewardship on behalf of the students and taxpayers we serve anchors SUNY’s success and enables us to provide extraordinary value. Fiscal sustainability requires both ongoing revenue increases and continuous attention to operational efficiency, along with a commitment to the difficult decisions necessary to ensure financial health. (Executive Summary, pg. 2)
as key examples, among many, of how thoughtfully and persuasively the report is directed toward and customized for its primary audiences: Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
Not being part of those audiences, however, I tend to distrust my judgments about the report's rhetorical and political effectiveness, and not just because the ripple effects of its release last Friday are only just beginning to be felt. I fully admit I have a lot to learn from Chancellor King—who after all has risen to the highest level of state and federal education agency leadership before winning a national search to become SUNY's next leader—when it comes to navigating relationships with elected officials.
So instead of giving more and more reasons why the report is certainly A-range material, I'll turn to analyzing it as an example of negotiating the constraints and parameters on political speech in New York State's political environment as we enter 2024. Of course, as a campus governance leader, I have a lot more freedom of speech than a university president or system chancellor, and I haven't been shy about using it. But before exercising it, there's a lot to be said for close reading the report's ambiguities, gaps, and other modes of drawing readers in, making them active participants in the construction of its meaning, and deftly wielding the power of suggestion.
Let's start with a simple question: why did it take until page 51 of the report for teacher education to be featured?
On the projected growth in education, it is important to note that SUNY is the state’s largest educator preparation provider and that these programs are vital both to SUNY and to the success of New York’s K-12 public education system. (Report, pg. 51, emphasis added)
Or rather, first featured as a general topic, rather than tied to a specific SUNY campus?
The UB Teacher Residency Program seeks to increase the ranks, diversity, and retention of teachers in Buffalo amid a looming teacher shortage, increasing the university’s ties to BPS and improving student outcomes. (Report, pg. 37, emphasis added)
Or rather, why did only one former "normal" school—a campus originally founded with teacher education as its core mission, a campus listed in the "University Colleges" or "Comprehensives" sector by SUNY and UFS—make it into the report specifically regarding its teacher education mission, and then only with respect to a privately-funded microcredential?
SUNY New Paltz’s Science of Reading Center of Excellence has also launched SUNY’s first-ever science of reading fundamentals microcredential. This fully online, self-paced microcredential supports New York State teachers in enhancing literacy instruction. A generous scholarship funded by philanthropy is making the microcredential available to the first 5,000 participants for just $50 per educator. (Report, pg. 21)
One of the reasons, it seems to me this afternoon after watching the livestream from Watervliet Elementary School of Governor Hochul's second preview of next Tuesday's State of the State Address, is that a proposal to invest $10M in new funding to advance the science of reading through SUNY/CUNY microcredentials will be part of the Executive Budget for State Fiscal Year 2025. Thus, while the SUNY report is certainly politically canny, I can't help but be worried that its emphasis on new initiatives in other areas will put the everyday work of meeting the national and statewide teacher shortage through the teaching and learning and clinical experiences gained in elementary and adolescence education programs at places like my own home campus of SUNY Fredonia on the back burner—or worse, left out in the cold.
These rhetorical roads not taken trouble me, as they are likely to have financial implications. Yesterday, for instance, Governor Hochul's first proposal on consumer protection and affordability could have—and, I would argue, should have—included college affordability (hello, Fredonia University Senate resolution and UFS resolution!) and protection from for-profit higher ed (hello, Tressie McMillan Cottom's 2017 classic, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy!) as central initiatives in her agenda. IF they are actually part of her agenda. And that, now, is apparently a big if.
Which leads me right back to the central dilemma that the SUNY report so masterfully and confidently and diplomatically tiptoed around: when the political reflex of so many in your primary audience is to raise tuition for public higher ed students to offset or at least mitigate real-dollar cuts to direct state aid, when this pattern has held in New York State for decades, when many states are reporting downturns in tax receipts, when the prospect of a "soft landing" (the Fed taming inflation without triggering a recession) is still in doubt, when the New York State Budget Director and Comptroller have been faithfully playing their fiscally conservative roles (alongside the Citizens Budget Commission) and the joint Quick Start Report has continued in that vein, closing with "The Governor will propose a FY 2025 Executive Budget by January 16, 2024, that will include a plan to provide for balanced General Fund operations on a cash basis in FY 2025" (pg. 14)—when all that history and context shapes how the SUNY report will be received, interpreted, and responded to—how to help the very decision-makers who have put SUNY on a path toward a billion-dollar operating deficit by 2034 understand the choices facing them in State Fiscal Year 2025? How to both suggest that something has to give and defer to the very Governor whose constitutionally-mandated role in the state budget process is to be the fiscal conservative in the room at the end game of budget negotiations?
Here are some hints:
- "Thanks to the generosity of the State, and as shown on the following charts, SUNY State-operated campuses have relatively low tuition and fees compared to other states. This reinforces SUNY’s incredible value and creates space for SUNY to enact moderate increases in tuition while remaining extremely competitive with other states" (Report, pg. 57).
- "As the following chart shows, System-wide expenditures are projected to grow to $6.9 billion by 2033-34, accounting for both collective bargaining agreements and cost controls intended to promote efficiency. With no investment in resources beyond the committed increases in the State’s current financial plan, SUNY would face a $1.1 billion annual shortfall at the end of this period. With reasonable, predictable, ongoing increases in resources, SUNY would instead face an $89.1 million annual shortfall by the end of this period" (Report, pg. 60).
- "Without reasonable, predictable, and reliable increases in resources over the next decade, SUNY will fail to achieve operational sustainability and be unable to meet the needs of New York State’s students, families, and employers. While the above model uses tuition increases to create projections, there are effectively two revenue sources that can serve this vital role: One is sustained and predictable tuition and fee increases, and the other is continued increases in Direct State Tax Support" (Report, pg. 61).
