...can be found here! Topics covered:
Quick-hit post tonight:
This post is a response to a colleague and friend in another state university system who asked for "a paragraph or two about your struggles that I could crib for my union email blast," as well as a way of organizing my thoughts before I meet with the Buffalo State College Senate's leadership team on the SUNY Buffalo State campus this afternoon. It's also going to be a reflection on the ways that union and governance leadership roles, goals, and interests overlap, as well as on some approaches for coordinating efforts even when they diverge. It draws on and distills my messages to Senators since becoming Fredonia University Senate Chairperson on July 1, 2022, as well as previous posts on this blog.
So here's the recap for those just tuning in.
Instead of funding and pricing the State University of New York (SUNY) and the City University of New York (CUNY) like the public goods they are, New York Democrats have engineered a massive decline in real-dollar direct state aid to both systems. New York State had a Republican governor (George Pataki) for roughly the first 10 years of my career at SUNY Fredonia until Eliot Spitzer was elected in 2007. Not long after a sex scandal in his first year in office brought Spitzer down, David Paterson had to deal with the Great Recession and then Andrew Cuomo had to deal with the deal the Obama administration cut with Republican leadership to send a large portion of the federal deficit down to the states. Despite Democrats finally winning a majority in the New York State Senate in 2018 (long story) and supermajorities in both the Senate and Assembly since 2020, SUNY has been underfunded on the order of $8B (inflation-adjusted) in direct state operating aid since the 2007-2008 state fiscal year. SUNY campuses have been covering the shortfalls by burning through both their reserves and federal pandemic funding. With both running out on many SUNY campuses, Governor Kathy Hochul (who moved up from Lt. Governor after Cuomo's own sex scandal) has begun moving the needle in the opposite direction from her predecessors, but not as far or as fast as supporters of public higher education in the Assembly and Senate have pushed for, and nowhere close to what SUNY or CUNY need.
At SUNY Fredonia, real-dollar cuts to direct state aid not only preceded drops in enrollment, but were steepest while our enrollments were growing:
And those cuts add up, to the tune of over $167M in inflation-adjusted dollars, and almost $120M in enrollment- and inflation-adjusted dollars:
SUNY's faculty-professionals union, United University Professions (UUP), the SUNY University Faculty Senate (UFS [track recent resolutions here and older resolutions here]), and many campus union chapters and governance bodies, including the Fredonia University Senate, have been sounding the alarm on these deepening budget holes on many campuses for many years. SUNY Chancellor John B. King, Jr., and SUNY System Administration warned in a report released at the end of 2023 that without an increase in revenues, SUNY would face a $1.1B deficit in the coming decade. Governor Hochul's Executive Budget proposal for state fiscal year 2025 did nothing to change that trajectory (although to be fair she has supported System efforts to increase enrollments across SUNY), nor did it include any provisions called for in the SUNY Fredonia University Senate Executive Committee petition that ran from December 6, 2023, to January 17, 2024, which drew on the SUNY UFS October 2023 Executive Budget resolution.
So where do we stand now?
Here's my first pass at Governor Hochul's Executive Budget proposal for next fiscal year. It focuses on what in SUNY System Administration's budget request shows up in the Executive Budget for SUNY. SUNY System's analysis just dropped, so to maintain the independence of my analysis, I'm going to post this before I read theirs....
The lines in bold are from SUNY System Administration's Report on Long-Range Enrollment and Financial Sustainability, with color coding as follows:
The SUNY report emphasized that "The 2023-24 Enacted State Budget Financial Plan, as well as its Mid-Year Update, includes additional incremental direct operating aid to SUNY’s State-operated campuses and statutory colleges of $54.0M in each of both 2024-25 and 2025-26, a total incremental add of $108.0M from 2023-24 Enacted levels" (pg. 66). Given that Governor Hochul was making noise in early January about no new operational funding being available for SUNY, it's a good thing that she didn't go back on this commitment. However, if this $54M is really just a way of continuing to offer state funding for the faculty hired originally through one-time funds a couple of budget years ago, this is not really "new" money. [Update (3:45 pm): Good news! The $54M here really is new funding. The $53M for new faculty salaries is carried over in "University/System-wide Programs" funding.]
This is huge!! It's rare for a 21st-century New York State governor to pay for the contractual increases negotiated by their own administration! This alone seems to put New York State on a path to funding the $1.1B shortfall by 2034 that SUNY's report projected without increasing SUNY revenues over the next decade. And the fact that Governor Hochul chose to do it this way, rather than proposing any tuition increases, is also a good move on college affordability and the balance of public and private revenue sources for public higher ed that I've been writing about here. At the same time, given that the Executive Budget does not turn the SUNY Transformation Funds from one-time performance funds into recurring funds (see below for more on this), the actual net increase to SUNY funding is $19M. So again, not as generous as it may at first appear. [Update (1/19/2024, 10:55 am): Darn it, it's just moving money around, not a commitment to new funds to cover contractual increases. I stand corrected! On to the legislature to get this done!!]
Another win, this time for struggling community colleges, but it's important to recall the floor was set at the then-lowest rate of community college funding in decades.
SUNY sought an "increase from the current $550.0M in the State Financial Plan to $1.0B per annum, a $450.0M per-year increase" (Report, pg. 67), but either there was no increase in Governor Hochul's capital funding proposal or there was a $100M increase (cp. pg. 31 and pg. 57/88/T-152 and the SUNY overview), so I'm guessing the latter. SUNY and CUNY are sharing $200M in capital funding for "strategic initiatives" (p. 31), but it's unlikely any of this could be used to address the $8.6B in deferred maintenance, increased construction costs, and "planned demolitions at select campuses" identified in the SUNY report (pg. 67). So there's a way to go to increase the critical maintenance capital budget. But I wonder if this part is new to this budget cycle, or traditional: "Finally, the Budget includes $210 million to support personal service and other costs associated with staff whose duties are related to the maintenance, preservation, and operation of SUNY facilities" (pg. 88). If the former, it's also a big deal!
This matches local funding on a 50-50 basis and is subject to change until all "Documentation of the local funding commitment [that] must be provided to the Division of the Budget by mid-December each year" has been submitted (Report, pg. 67). The Executive Budget projects this to be closer to the upper range in SUNY's estimate; expect the figure to change a bit by the time the Enacted Budget is agreed upon, but for technical rather than political reasons.
To aid in SUNY’s contributions to New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLPCA) goals, SUNY is proposing the creation of a “SUNY Clean Energy Implementation Fund” (Report, pg. 67). It's hard to tell from the capital funding proposal if the $200M shared between SUNY and CUNY on "strategic initiatives" (pg. 31) refers to this. If so, wonderful! If not, environmental organizations and activists will be pushing for the Enacted Budget to be much more aggressive on issues they care about, so there are opportunities to work with allies to better support this initiative.
SUNY will have to go to the Legislature to have the following increases added to the Enacted Budget: "The current State Financial Plan posits several reductions to existing programs that support distinct areas of the SUNY System, including the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), investments in nursing programs, and the Maritime Scholarship Program. SUNY requests that these programs be maintained at 2023-24 levels, ensuring that there will not be any interruption in their offerings and support to the constituent base" (Report, pg. 66-67). But these kinds of things are typically easy additions.
The SUNY report explained this as follows: "The New York Community College Association of Presidents has developed a proposal to expand workforce development to prepare up to 20,000 career-ready students annually. The Empire State Community College Workforce Guarantee would prepare New Yorkers with the skills and credentials necessary to make them well-prepared for careers in high-demand sectors including health care, advanced manufacturing, IT/cybersecurity, skilled trades, and green jobs" (pg. 67). It'll be interesting to see if this gets into the Enacted Budget.
The emphasis in the SUNY report on helping Governor Hochul meet her "ambitious goal of increasing the health care workforce by 20% to support a stable, strong, and equitable health care system" (pg. 67) from her 2022 State of the State Address not being in her 2024 Executive Budget seems like a missed opportunity for the Governor and for SUNY. I would love to hear why Governor Hochul did not support the following request from SUNY, which is based on recommendations from the SUNY Future of Healthcare Workforce Task Force and aims "to leverage SUNY’s role in ensuring the availability of a highly trained, diverse, and sustainable health care workforce" (pp. 67-68): "To strengthen SUNY’s role in addressing the statewide shortage, four short-term, immediate-priority areas have been identified: invest in simulation to train more nurses; create a SUNY health care educator pipeline; increase diversity and student support; and support critical partnerships and pathway generation. In addition, supplemental one-time capital funds would help support the infrastructure changes needed to leverage simulation in SUNY’s nursing schools. Simulation projects will be prioritized based on readiness, increase in nursing enrollment, quality of programs, and collaboration. This combined operating and capital investment will make it possible to enroll over 3,000 more students in SUNY nursing programs and produce over 1,000 more nurses per year; support over 1,000 more adult learners newly entering allied health professions; and support over 100 more Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) students pursuing health care" (pg. 68).
I'm confident the state legislature will support this SUNY request: "Building upon recent successes through the development of the Pre-Med EOP Program, SUNY requests that the State further invest in this path via the creation of five new program cohorts. These expansion areas could include disciplines such as mental health, law, engineering, nursing, and education, providing students with opportunities for career acceleration and hands-on experiential learning" (pg. 68).
The Financial Plan mentions $8M to support "various SUNY operating costs related to various State of the State initiatives, including, but not limited to, funding for the Empire State Service Corps" (pg. 26), but since this figure also includes Empire AI ($2.5M according to the budget book) and other programs, it seems that the amount proposed is significantly less than what SUNY requested. (If I had just looked first at the SUNY overview, I wouldn't have had to operate by inference!) Again, raising the funding level for the ESSC through partnership with the state legislature might not be too heavy a lift.
This seems like another student retention and success initiative from SUNY that deserves recurring support, or at least the kind of pilot laid out in the SUNY report: "Building on proven investments such as the Family Empowerment Act, SUNY seeks to receive isolated funding to support nontraditional students, particularly those students returning to school after stopping out due to family commitments. These funds would be provided through a request for proposal (RFP) process managed by System Administration, and a select group of campuses would be chosen to implement their plans, which would include comprehensive family-friendly initiatives such as guaranteed child care slots, hybrid class policies, language access, and wraparound supports over a multi-year period" (pg. 68).
SUNY listed this as part of its "long-term plan for enrollment and financial sustainability" (Report, pg. 69), and it already has committed to spending the SFY24 one-time disbursement over three years, but I would want to see this request supported with recurring funds as soon as possible: "The 2023-24 enacted budget included $75 million for the SUNY Transformation Fund as a one-year allocation. Currently, 25 SUNY campuses have elected to use their Transformation Funds to support the ASAP and ACE college completion initiatives described in the Student Success section. There is a robust body of research that supports ASAP/ACE as an evidence-based strategy validated by randomized controlled trials to increase retention and completion for students. An external evaluation led by MDRC found that involvement in the ASAP program nearly doubled graduation rates, both at CUNY and when it was replicated in Ohio. For CUNY, 22% of students not in the program earned a degree within three years, compared to 40% of the students participating in ASAP.25 Similarly, in Ohio, 19% of non-ASAP students earned a degree compared to 35% of ASAP students.26 Results from CUNY’s ongoing quasi-experimental evaluation of ASAP find participating students graduate at more than double the rate of non-ASAP students: 53% vs. 25%.27 SUNY has made it clear that one of the best enrollment strategies that SUNY will engage in for long-term success is increasing retention. ASAP/ACE has been demonstrated to have a strong effect on retention, and that is why to support SUNY’s long-term success, the ASAP/ACE program should be funded at a sustainable level to support student success" (Report, pp. 69-70).
Then there's another category that's aimed at enhancing SUNY's research productivity, quality, and impact (particularly at SUNY's Big 4), through both state and federal investments. I would say these are TBD, as the federal/state balance of funding for research needs to be worked out at a level beyond the state budget before final decisions are made for the Enacted Budget.
The SUNY report makes the following request: "Through investments in research-intensive SUNY institutions, the State could aid in meeting the Governor’s challenge for SUNY to double our research activity. This funding would support an earth and climate studies research building at Stony Brook; smart technologies building at Binghamton University; health, science, and innovation building at the University at Albany; and the AI Center for the Public Good at the University at Buffalo" (pp. 68-69)
The SUNY report notes that "In 2022-23, SUNY campuses generated $349.7M from the Department of Health and Human Services (including the National Institutes of Health), $106.5M in research expenditures from the National Science Foundation, $70.6M from the Department of Defense, and $133.1M from other federal agencies. Building on the extraordinary investment represented by the CHIPS and Science Act, SUNY hopes for continued federal investment in cutting-edge academic research" (pg. 70).
The final category is what I would call a comprehensive college affordability agenda, and it again includes (or ought to include) both state and federal contributions. It seems that the vast majority of discussion in the Executive Budget documents focuses on indirect state aid in terms of fringe benefits and debt service, rather than indirect state financial aid (such as the Tuition Assistance Program [TAP] or Excelsior Scholarship); the rest of SUNY's major proposals are either unmentioned, or, as with TAP, presumed to decrease due to decreases in enrollments (Financial Plan, pg. 24; although see pg. 26 [a vague reference to "TAP tuition credits"] and pg. 51 [which refers to the continuation of previously approved TAP eligibility expansions]).
From the SUNY report: "SUNY is an extraordinary value proposition, and thanks to Governor Hochul’s leadership, 53% of full-time resident undergraduate students attend SUNY tuition-free. In addition, fewer SUNY students take on debt—and for those who do borrow, their debt is lower than their peers. Nevertheless, affordability remains a challenge for many students. The income thresholds for TAP have not been updated since the year 2000, which has significantly limited access to affordable degrees for New York State students" (pg. 69).
From the SUNY report: "As noted above, expanding college affordability in New York State is important for students, families, and SUNY. The current maximum income threshold for a dependent student to receive TAP is $80,000—while the state median income for a family of four is $116,765. If TAP had kept pace with inflation since it was last updated in 2000, the current threshold would be $145,000 instead of $80,000. In addition, the situation for independent students—essentially including working adults—is even more dire: the $10,000 threshold for single independent students without dependents has never been updated since it was created in 1986, and independent students who are married with no dependents have an income threshold of $40,000. A person who makes the New York minimum wage of $15 per hour would likely have too high an income to qualify for TAP as an independent student, including the new part-time TAP for workforce credential expansion. SUNY supports the strategic, and much-needed, adjustments to these thresholds as well as increases in award levels as a pivotal tool to aid New York State students succeed in their higher education journey" (pg. 70).
From the SUNY report: "The New York State Department of Labor, which releases long-term occupational projections, identified 259 occupations for the 2030 long-term outlook that have 'very favorable or favorable' outlooks where the median salary is more than $57,000. Of these, 74% require some education beyond a high school diploma. However, not all of these require bachelor’s degrees or higher. SUNY currently offers non-degree workforce programs and 500+ microcredentials at 32 campuses in 60+ disciplinary areas that will serve an estimated 7,000 students in Fall 2023. However, the federal Pell grant requires that eligible programs be at least 600 hours—excluding short-term career readiness and workforce development programs. SUNY is encouraged by recent bipartisan Congressional support for short-term Pell and hopes the federal government enacts legislation authorizing Pell grants to be used for short-term workforce development programs, without penalizing Pell-eligible students who attend highly competitive colleges and universities as is the case in the current legislation" (pg. 71).
From the SUNY report: "Pell grants help nearly 7 million low- and moderate-income students attend and complete college annually. Systemwide, about one-third of SUNY students receive a Pell grant to attend college. Increasing the maximum Pell award to $13,000 would help more students afford college, earn a degree, get a good-paying job, and achieve a brighter future" (pg. 71).
This seems to be a place where the Governor, Legislature, SUNY System Administration, NYSUT, UUP, SUNY UFS, SUNY SA, NYPIRG, and other allies could focus their efforts on influencing the federal/state balance of enhancing college affordability. Heading into an election year, this could be a winning issue for Democrats at all levels of government. I know the media loves to focus on internecine battles between "centrist" and "leftist" Democrats, or between "conservative" and "progressive" factions within the party, but making college more affordable without harming educational quality or student success could be an issue that unites the party. Maybe #TurnOnTheTap gets augmented by a "You can't spell student access, affordability, and success without Pell" or better tagline?
Unless the Bills Blizzard delays the release of Governor Hochul's State Fiscal Year 2025 Executive Budget proposal, we'll know tomorrow where she stands on the issues I've been laying out in the first four parts of this series. I want to shift gears here, today, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, before the Bills game, to put together a reading list foregrounding others who I would want state decision-makers to become familiar with before the start of April when the Enacted Budget is due (building on an x-twitter thread I started before hopping onto the WNY Working Families Party zoom call).
I'm going to start with a new book by Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson, Campus Economics, which I'm about halfway through as of this writing. Given the emphasis in the SUNY Report on Long-Term Enrollments and Financial Sustainability on thinning low-enrolled majors at SUNY campuses facing structural deficits (see my January 2024 Message to Senators for the Reader's Digest version, and my earlier posts in this series for my personal, individual reactions and analyses, which certainly inform my official communication as Senate Chairperson but go well beyond it), I want to highlight this moment from Baum's and McPherson's interview in Inside Higher Ed:
Q: You write, “It may be entirely reasonable that a college maintain its archaeology department even if it has few majors.” Many colleges have made the number of majors key to decisions about eliminating departments. When is that a reasonable decision?
A: We use this example to illustrate the complexity of decisions for academic institutions. Even if no students major in a certain field, courses in that subject may be very important to many students and to the broad skills and perspectives nurtured by a liberal arts education. (Mathematics departments often have a great many enrollments but very few majors.) Some departments may cost money and require a transfer of resources from other endeavors. Certainly, the archaeology department in our example must be serving someone other than the faculty members themselves, but the number of majors does not provide a simple valid metric. For example, in some cases, a department may be producing research of value far beyond the walls of the university.
Finding out that the revenues of the college would increase if all required courses were eliminated would not by itself imply that there should be radical curriculum reform. But it would mean that the cost of the requirements should be acknowledged and the source of funds to cover those costs should be identified.
It is quite reasonable for some parts of the college to subsidize others. Even if it were possible to precisely measure costs and revenues of each component of the institution, eliminating those that do not bring in the revenue necessary to pay for themselves would not be consistent with the educational mission. With this example, it is easy to see that good solutions will require faculty members to understand the financial realities and business officers to value the education central to the institution’s mission so they can communicate well and reach balanced decisions.
Picking up on this theme, I'll next turn to West Virginia University and point you toward pieces by Rose Casey, Jessie Wilkerson, and Johanna Winant; Lisa Corrigan; Dennis Hogan; and Jeffrey Melnick. But the one I'm going to highlight is by Aaron Hanlon, specifically his point that
[B]y suggesting that certain subjects have outlived their professional utility, these schools are presuming to know which specialties of knowledge will be in high demand for decades to come. History shows that’s a fool’s game.
After surveying examples from West Virginia University and several others, Hanlon summarizes:
When you put it all together, the claim that slashing academic programs is necessary for sound fiscal management looks dubious at best. What’s actually happening is that ideologically motivated higher education leadership have been using the pretext of financial exigency to reengineer higher education. But the ideology isn’t necessarily liberal or conservative; it’s the short-term thinking of business management.
His takeaway?
Making bets on this crude form of analysis is risky and shortsighted because predicting student interests and enrollment patterns, as well as economic needs that may impact enrollment, is notoriously fraught. Examples abound of subjects across the liberal arts and sciences that were foolishly written off....
We don’t know—not even university presidents; not even management consultants—when circumstances will elevate a neglected or undervalued area of study to dire importance. Since at least the 2008 financial crisis, higher education leaders, policymakers, and the media have increasingly accepted as a given that higher education should not be comprehensive but rather driven by return on investment, based on short-term, fluctuating, homespun ideas about market value. This is a high-stakes gamble on an unknowable future.
In my x-twitter thread, I pointed to general sources like Metrics That Matter (for the college search process), Christopher Newfield, The Great Mistake (for higher ed funding and purposes), Kelly Grotke (on endowments), and Steven Bahls (on shared governance). I pointed people to case studies like Clifford Ando on the University of Chicago and Christopher Gunderson on CUNY (h/t Leigh Claire La Berge for the link and recommendation). I'll add here that both Michael Fabricant and Stephen Brier's Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education and William Bowen and Eugene Tobin's Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education focus on CUNY, as well.
It's the day before Governor Kathy Hochul's 2024 State of the State Address and I have not yet given up hope that she will make the right call and put forward a proposal for pricing and funding SUNY and CUNY like the public goods they are that responds substantively both to the point made by United University Professions that her predecessors underfunded SUNY to the tune of about $500M per year over the last 16 years and the point made by SUNY System Administration that we can expect that gap to rise another $100M per year over the next 10 years without action from New York State. But some impromptu comments from Governor Hochul last Friday have raised my level of alarm that she either doesn't understand the situation facing SUNY or is willing to lie about it. I'll let you go to my x-twitter account @CitizenSE to see the full range of my immediate responses to Governor Hochul's claim that increasing SUNY revenues beyond what she's already done is "impossible." And of course you can read the first three parts of my response to the SUNY report for the rationales underlying those responses. But here's the bottom line.
The $10M-$17M structural deficit facing my own home campus SUNY Fredonia is no joke. Even at its "smaller" end, if we are looking only at budget cuts to address it, we are talking job losses on the order of 100-200 positions, depending on the average salary of those who lose their jobs. Is Governor Hochul really saying that's what she wants for the Village of Fredonia and Northern Chautauqua County? Because if so, she can expect all of Western New York to go to war with her.
"No, no, no, perish the thought. All I'm calling for is to raise revenues by raising tuition. Calm down." In this economy? When 91% of Fredonia's Class of 2019 graduated with student debt? When Fredonia's seen a decrease in enrollments on the order of 40% since Fall 2007? What clearer signal can the students accepted at Fredonia but choosing not to attend be sending that any further tuition increases are unacceptable?
"No, no, no, you misunderstand. Any tuition increases at Fredonia will be more than offset by increases in indirect state financial aid." Well, now we're getting somewhere. What matters to students and families is the net cost of attendance per year. The sticker price at Fredonia, when all costs associated with attendance are factored in, is the equivalent of four very small new cars over four years (about $25K, give or take). Governor Hochul should be asking herself (and, if she doesn't know how to answer the questions, then asking SUNY System Administration) what's the average net cost of attendance at Fredonia? The mean? The median? The average amount of debt a Fredonia student graduates with for the Classes of 2020-2023? The mean? The median? And how much of that net cost has been reduced by Fredonia taking direct state aid operating funds and using them to discount tuition each year on top of scholarships offered by the Fredonia College Foundation? Then start asking the same questions about every campus "in the red" on enrollments over the last decade from page 29 of the SUNY report. If she does that, Governor Hochul will get a very clear picture of the price wars SUNY campuses have been waging.
I'll have much more to say about this later today, but I wanted to get this much out this morning!
Please see today's interview with New York State Assembly Higher Education Chair Patricia Fahy.
Yesterday, the Albany Times-Union editorial board laid out a position very close to what I've been advocating for on this blog, via twitter, and through my work as Fredonia University Senate Chairperson and Immediate Past Vice President/Secretary of the SUNY University Faculty Senate. I encourage everyone to read it!
Check out the #TurnOnTheTAP hashtag on x-twitter for a new initiative sponsored by the chairs of the Senate and Assembly Higher Education Committees, Toby Stavisky and Patricia Fahy. Also check out the #NoCutsToCUNY #InvestinCUNY #CareNotCuts #FullyFundCUNY #NewDeal4CUNY and #APeoplesCUNY hashtags for ongoing efforts by Professional Staff Congress-CUNY leaders and members (such as by Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and History at John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY Gerald Markovitz) to stave off cuts to the City University of New York. All these efforts and more are aimed at raising the stakes on the eve of Governor Hochul's State of the State Address.
The key thing to keep in mind is that increasing indirect state financial aid by itself won't necessarily help SUNY or CUNY, as students could simply choose private alternatives that are already investing heavily in tuition discounting. That's why Assemblymember Fahy has been so careful to connect increasing direct state aid to modernizing the Tuition Assistance Program. That's why the Fredonia University Senate and SUNY University Faculty Senate have been emphasizing the importance of funding and pricing SUNY and CUNY like the public goods they are.
Commentary by Blair Horner of NYPIRG also supports shifting the balance of public/private revenues for SUNY back in the direction of greater public investments.
So far in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I've attempted to be a generous, charitable close reader of the SUNY Report on Long-Term Enrollment and Financial Sustainability. I've pointed out how rhetorically and politically effective it is likely to be and praised its customization toward its primary audience: Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. In both posts, I've argued that Chancellor King and SUNY System Administration are putting the ball exactly where it belongs at this stage of the budget season: firmly in Governor Hochul's court, within days of her State of the State Address on January 9 and release of her Executive Budget proposal by January 16. The essential function of the SUNY report is to make the following question unavoidable: what mix of additional public and private funding sources will be needed to put SUNY on sound financial footing over the next decade?
As further evidence of Chancellor King's political savvy, consider how the report is being covered in the media thus far. This Spectrum News headline says it all: SUNY System Sustainability in Doubt without More Tax Support. Eileen Buckley quoted a UB student and United University Professions President Fred Kowal as being firmly in the pro-public funding camp. I believe Kathleen Moore's headline writers improved her story's headline (check me on that!): "SUNY warns of future $1B deficit without higher tuition or more aid" (although that "or" remains misleading). Janet Gramza went more into summary/paraphrase mode, but, in echoing the report's emphasis on SUNY proactivity and fiscal responsibility, reinforces the notion that SUNY is good investment material. (I mean, show me anything else with a return on investment of 817%!)
I've been doing my part to bring some momentum to the pro-public funding camp. The Fredonia University Senate Executive Committee's petition has been going a little viral in the last 24 hours, thanks to an x-twitter thread I posted yesterday morning and updated in the afternoon and evening, setting up a little friendly competition between my friends in public colleges and universities and private ones in promoting our petition. In less than 12 hours, I would guess all my tweets promoting our petition earned on the order of 30K views, 250 likes, 125 reposts, 12 quote tweets, and close to 60 new signatures on the petition itself. As of this posting, we are approaching 600 signatures, more than doubling the previous high-water mark of our original "New Deal" petition to Governor Cuomo from Spring 2019.
In today's post, I'm going to share some of my own thinking on the proper mix of public and private funding sources for public higher education—thinking that builds on and goes beyond the resolution-crafting I've led for the Fredonia University Senate (archived here) and SUNY University Faculty Senate (October 2023) as well as previous posts on this blog (you can trace the evolution of my thinking over a decade ago by looking at posts from 9/24/2011, 5/14/2010, 4/27/2010, 4/17/2010, 3/24/2010, 3/22/2010, 3/21/2010, 3/17/2010, 3/16/2010, 3/10/2010, 3/3/2010, 3/1/2010—this is just a selection of the meatiest from the "On Funding Public Higher Education" tag; the entire timeline from March to May 2010 is pretty revealing of what's remained consistent [often frustratingly] in New York State budget politics and processes!).
Why am I in the pro-public funding camp? Many reasons!
According to higher education scholars Walter McMahon and Christopher Newfield, decision-makers consistently underestimate higher education’s private non-market goods (on a degree holder’s health; longevity; happiness; human capital; working conditions; job type and benefits; control over consumption, savings, and family size; and children’s education and cognitive development), indirect private market benefits, nonmarket private benefits (both direct and indirect), and social goods (both direct and indirect), leading to an overemphasis on the “personal monetary benefit of a college degree,” although this is really “only about one-third” of its “overall value.” (paraphrasing and quoting Newfield, pg. 71; emphasis added)
I'll have much more to say in later posts about the SUNY report's emphasis on increased enrollments at most SUNY campuses signaling "renewed interest and confidence in the value of our educational offerings" (Executive Summary, pg. 1) and on the foundational claim that "Our rapidly changing economy and society require institutions of higher education to be nimbler than ever to meet student demand, deliver on the promise of upward mobility, and invest students with the broad knowledge and skills to be leaders, innovators, problem-solvers, and citizens" (Report, pg. 44). But I want to advance another argument for the pro-public funding camp that builds on what United University Professions (UUP) and SUNY University Faculty Senate (UFS) have been advocating for in their own ways. Unlike SUNY's forward-looking argument, this one is historical, and it will be very familiar to people who have been reading the Fredonia University Senate's October 2023 and November 2023 State Fiscal Year 2025 (SFY25) resolutions or my October 2023 message to Senators.
Here are the corrected figures from the November resolution. The blue line represents Fredonia's change in enrollment since Fall 2007; the green line represents the change direct state aid since SFY08, adjusted for inflation (many thanks to Rob Deemer, Fredonia University Senate's Governance Officer and University Faculty Senator, for making these infographics):
So what is New York State going to do to redress these damages to Fredonia? Here's where the Fredonia University Senate and SUNY UFS answer diverges slightly from the UUP answer, and where my answer is different from both.
UUP points to recent actions of the SUNY Board of Trustees and SUNY System Administration touted in the SUNY Report (pg. 23) as the key source of the financial problems facing nearly 20 SUNY campuses (cf. examples from October 2023, November 2023, December 2023, and December 2023). To understand why there is a lot of justice to these claims, consider this infographic (which Governance Officer and University Faculty Senator Deemer also put together):
When I emailed similar questions to Merryl Tisch, the chair of the SUNY Board of Trustees, Chancellor King, and SUNY Acting Chief Financial Officer Josh Sager on October 26, 2023, I never received a reply. Here are a few highlights from that email:
In response to the lack of response to my email, Fredonia University Senate passed an augmented and corrected SUNY state funding allocation formula resolution a little over a week later, and on November 16, 2023, I sent the following transmittal email and letter:
Dear Chairperson Tisch, Chancellor King, Acting Chief Financial Officer Sager, and President Landa,I'm sharing the google doc link to, and attaching a pdf of, the transmittal letter for four recent resolutions from the Fredonia University Senate:
I'm hopeful that there is still time to assemble the teams called for in the last three resolutions and to continue working with Governor Hochul and her staff on the goals of the SFY25 Executive Budget resolutions.
To his credit, Chancellor King indirectly responded to many of these questions and critiques at the UFS Fall 2023 Plenary at SUNY Geneseo in mid-October 2023, on the Capitol Pressroom at the end of October 2023, in the SUNY state budget request from early December 2023, and in the January 2024 SUNY report that's been the subject of these three blog posts, among other places. And there is a good deal of justice in his responses.
What has Executive Committee been trying to achieve over the past 16 days in particular? We have been working hard and moving ahead with all deliberative speed to protect the integrity of Fredonia’s shared governance system, follow approved processes, and, when necessary, establish processes that similarly incorporate respect for academic freedom, peer review, and the exercise of professional expertise, judgment, and responsibilities. In developing the PDRP timeline, Executive Committee and Cabinet sought to maximize opportunities for departmental, standing committee, Senate, and campus engagement with President Kolison’s curricular recommendations—to set aside sufficient time at each stage of the process for observation, reflection, analysis, and input-gathering, so as to ensure, as I put it on December 6, that the campus community has “considered every possible angle on” and “vetted every promising alternative to” degree program deactivation. But we also sought to design an orderly and expeditious process for providing input to the Cabinet on real, pressing, challenging financial dilemmas. At no point in the PDRP will any governance body be taking a vote on any degree program deactivation proposal. Governance body input will be strictly limited to providing observations and analyses—never crossing the line into making a recommendation or offering advice on what has been, and remains, solely an administrative responsibility to formalize program deactivation forms, follow the PDRP, and submit them to SUNY System Administration, certifying that the appropriate and established governance process has been followed. (pg. 2)
I will be returning to the reasons why Executive Committee has taken this tack in a later post. But the bottom line for this post is that at this point it's extremely unclear what effect on the bottom line any program deactivations or other outcomes from the PDRP might have. Certainly effects will take time to be realized, whether they are savings, efficiencies from redeploying faculty and transforming curricula, or enrollment growth that might come from redesigning programs instead of deactivating them. The PDRP itself is only one small part of the Roadmap to Financial Sustainability, which is one part of the financial sustainability and stewardship goals of Fredonia's overall strategic plan. There is much work to be done at Fredonia to flesh out, synchronize, and coordinate all the components this spring semester. The timing of Governor Hochul's State of the State Address and release of the Executive Budget could not be better, in this sense, as both will help all of us at Fredonia understand what to expect going forward from New York State, and figure out what actions need to be taken to influence the final shape of the State Fiscal Year 2025 (SFY25) Enacted Budget come April 2024.
So to sum up the points I've been making about increasing revenues for public higher education in New York State, Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature have only so many levers to pull when it comes to funding SUNY and CUNY. Raising tuition, as I've argued, is a political and economic non-starter: when demand goes down, businesses lower prices; when the supply of students goes down, expect the ongoing tuition discounting arms race only to heat up further. If New York State and SUNY leadership don’t commit to increasing direct state aid and indirect state operating aid significantly, but instead keep digging SUNY institutions ever-deeper into their real-dollar budget holes of the past 17 years, it will become even more difficult for those institutions to climb out of those holes by growing their enrollments. If Governor Hochul’s SFY25 Executive Budget proposal does not extend a ladder to campuses like SUNY Fredonia, if she does not throw away her predecessors’ shovel, then legitimate questions will be raised about whether she is digging the graves of at least some SUNY campuses. Is that the legacy she wants to take into her next election?
For these reasons, I am fairly and increasingly confident that Governor Hochul's Executive Budget will include the following SUNY proposals, as they overlap significantly with core UUP and UFS priorities. If anything, UUP and UFS will push the New York State Legislature to build on this foundation and make larger commitments to increasing direct state aid and indirect state financial aid over time. Here's a selection of proposals from the closing pages of the SUNY report (pp. 66-71) that I think have an strong chance of being incorporated into Governor Hochul's SFY25 Executive Budget, with rationales from SUNY System Administration:
The 2023-24 Enacted State Budget Financial Plan, as well as its Mid-Year Update, includes additional incremental direct operating aid to SUNY’s State-operated campuses and statutory colleges of $54.0M in each of both 2024-25 and 2025-26, a total incremental add of $108.0M from 2023-24 Enacted levels. These monies will serve to advance student success and support vital investments in support of student completion and high-demand program offerings. It is anticipated that funds would be allocated consistent with the Executive’s 2023-24 initial proposal for differentiated tuition increases supporting all State-operated campuses as well as continued mitigation of the cost of student fees to compensated graduate student workers.
In recognition of the vital work of faculty and professional staff across SUNY’s State-operated campuses, SUNY has requested support from the State to financially aid in the implementation of the new contract. In 2024-25, the agreed-upon 3% across-the-board salary increase and increase in adjunct minimum compensation together total approximately $86.5M.
The 2023-24 Enacted State Budget continued the maintenance of a 100% “Funding Floor” for the 30 community colleges operating under the program of the State University of New York, putting these unique local/state entities on the same financial footing as all institutions of postsecondary education in New York State. The floor, if included in the 2024-25 Executive Budget as reflected in the Mid-Year State Financial Plan, will ensure that these essential institutions avoid nearly $85M in lost direct State tax support.
The current State Financial Plan posits several reductions to existing programs that support distinct areas of the SUNY System, including the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), investments in nursing programs, and the Maritime Scholarship Program. SUNY requests that these programs be maintained at 2023-24 levels, ensuring that there will not be any interruption in their offerings and support to the constituent base.
Necessitated by immediate asset renewal needs and a deferred maintenance backlog totaling $8.6B, increased construction costs, and planned demolitions at select campuses to reduce SUNY’s physical footprint, which will achieve operational savings and permanently reduce the deferred maintenance backlog, this request item seeks an increase from the current $550.0M in the State Financial Plan to $1.0B per annum, a $450.0M per-year increase.
To aid in SUNY’s contributions to New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLPCA) goals, SUNY is proposing the creation of a “SUNY Clean Energy Implementation Fund.” These funds, seeded by bonded State capital and supplemented by existing funds such as the Clean Energy Bond Act, state, local, and federal grants, and ultimately reimbursed to the State through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Direct Pay benefits, would accelerate the implementation of the Clean Energy Master Plans developed at the SUNY State- operated Campuses. Funds would support through the design and construction of geothermal networks, energy efficiency retrofits, full campus electrification, and other clean energy projects.
Community College sponsors must first support and provide documentation for 50% of project cost (Local Share), which then drives a 50% State match. Documentation of the local funding commitment must be provided to the Division of the Budget by mid-December each year. The current range reflects the State share driven by community college projects that have secured local sponsor support ($53.0M) as of October 12th, as well as potential projects identified but that have not yet secured local sponsor support. The likely requested State match will likely be ~$100.0M.
SUNY is an extraordinary value proposition, and thanks to Governor Hochul’s leadership, 53% of full-time resident undergraduate students attend SUNY tuition-free. In addition, fewer SUNY students take on debt—and for those who do borrow, their debt is lower than their peers. Nevertheless, affordability remains a challenge for many students. The income thresholds for TAP have not been updated since the year 2000, which has significantly limited access to affordable degrees for New York State students.
The 2023-24 enacted budget included $75 million for the SUNY Transformation Fund as a one-year allocation. Currently, 25 SUNY campuses have elected to use their Transformation Funds to support the ASAP and ACE college completion initiatives described in the Student Success section. There is a robust body of research that supports ASAP/ACE as an evidence-based strategy validated by randomized controlled trials to increase retention and completion for students. An external evaluation led by MDRC found that involvement in the ASAP program nearly doubled graduation rates, both at CUNY and when it was replicated in Ohio. For CUNY, 22% of students not in the program earned a degree within three years, compared to 40% of the students participating in ASAP. Similarly, in Ohio, 19% of non-ASAP students earned a degree compared to 35% of ASAP students. Results from CUNY’s ongoing quasi-experimental evaluation of ASAP find participating students graduate at more than double the rate of non-ASAP students: 53% vs. 25%. SUNY has made it clear that one of the best enrollment strategies that SUNY will engage in for long-term success is increasing retention. ASAP/ACE has been demonstrated to have a strong effect on retention, and that is why to support SUNY’s long-term success, the ASAP/ACE program should be funded at a sustainable level to support student success.
As noted above, expanding college affordability in New York State is important for students, families, and SUNY. The current maximum income threshold for a dependent student to receive TAP is $80,000—while the state median income for a family of four is $116,765. If TAP had kept pace with inflation since it was last updated in 2000, the current threshold would be $145,000 instead of $80,000. In addition, the situation for independent students—essentially including working adults—is even more dire: the $10,000 threshold for single independent students without dependents has never been updated since it was created in 1986, and independent students who are married with no dependents have an income threshold of $40,000. A person who makes the New York minimum wage of $15 per hour would likely have too high an income to qualify for TAP as an independent student, including the new part-time TAP for workforce credential expansion. SUNY supports the strategic, and much-needed, adjustments to these thresholds as well as increases in award levels as a pivotal tool to aid New York State students succeed in their higher education journey.
As described in the Financial Sustainability section, SUNY’s fiscal health depends in part on additional revenue following completion of the three-year increase for State-operated campuses included in the current State Financial Plan. Two potential sources of revenue are 1) implementation of differentiated tuition increases that would maintain SUNY’s competitiveness, provide additional support to all State-operated campuses, and recognize the unique mission and costs of the University Centers; and/or 2) additional annual recurring increases in State operating funds.
Pell grants help nearly 7 million low- and moderate-income students attend and complete college annually. Systemwide, about one-third of SUNY students receive a Pell grant to attend college. Increasing the maximum Pell award to $13,000 would help more students afford college, earn a degree, get a good-paying job, and achieve a brighter future.
Since I've already made the case for increased direct state aid, and the task of building on SUNY's proposals will become clearer after the State of the State Address and release of the Executive Budget, let me focus on differential tuition and expand on previous arguments I've made (including the Fredonia University Senate's October 2023 resolution) in favor of a certain version of it. This, by the way, is where my position may diverge from UUP's, which historically has opposed creating disparities in tuition for undergraduate New York State residents. Fredonia's University Senate's resolution attempts to address these concerns by calling for
