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For Those Just Tuning In

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?

• UUP is fighting a multiple-front battle at Potsdam, Fredonia, and Downstate to preserve historic gains in its latest round of contract negotiations with New York State, defend its members, and advance SUNY's mission and the students, patients, and communities its campuses and hospitals serve.
• SUNY UFS is pushing for meaningful faculty involvement in curricular decision-making, even in conditions of financial stress.
• The Fredonia University Senate Executive Committee and President's Cabinet have agreed on a timeline for what we're calling a Program Deactivation Review Process, which develops a process for consultation on these administration-initiated proposals that were announced on December 6, 2023, as part of President Kolison's Roadmap to Financial Stability.

Going forward, many issues need to be resolved:

• the overall balance of public and private revenue sources for public higher education in New York State, which has shifted sharply toward the latter since the Rockefeller years;
• the net cost of attendance for SUNY students, the percentage of students going into debt to cover that cost, and the amount of debt they accrue, all of which are much higher for recent than older generations;
• SUNY System Administration's approach to allocating state operating funds to different sectors and campuses at a time when Governor Hochul seems intent on turning UB and Stony Brook into flagships.

Most important, proponents of Public Good U are going to have to develop an effective inside-outside game plan and execute it in the coming months during state budget negotiation season and admissions season:

• Inside:
• develop a coordinated advocacy strategy advancing shared objectives
• develop and implement System-level and campus-level strategic plans
• Outside:  through student-community-labor coalitions and campaigns,
• put public pressure on elected officials in an election year for every state legislative seat;
• encourage prospective students to choose the right SUNY for them.

New York State Fiscal Year 2025 Executive Budget: SUNY Scorecard

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:

• Green = got the funding
• Yellow = can't tell
• Pink = not quite/not yet

Let's start with direct state aid and capital funding.

• Maintain Investment in Four-Year Campus Operating Aid Increases: +$54.0M

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.]

• Provide Support for State-Negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreement Implementation: +$86.5M (+$103M in Executive Budget moves existing money forward to June 2024; it's not new, recurring, direct state aid)

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!!] 

• Maintain the 100% Community College Funding Floor: Avoidance of $85 Million in Lost Direct State Tax Support (actually, losses of ~$143M are projected to be avoided in the Executive Budget)

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.

• Investment in Critical Maintenance Capital Needs: $1.0B/+$450M ($650M/+$100M)

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!

• Community College Capital Program: ~$53.0-$196.0M ($138M/+$32M)

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.

• Clean Energy Implementation Fund: $100.0M

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.

• Maintain 2023-24 Investment Levels: ~+$7.5M 

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.

There's another category of budget requests from SUNY:  investments in student success and upward mobility.

• Empire State Community College Workforce Guarantee

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.

• Healthcare Workforce Innovation Fund: $47.0M Operating and $75.0M One-Time Capital

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).

• Pre-Professional Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) Expansion: $5.0M

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).

• Empire State Service Corps: $7.5M ($2.75M)

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.

• Family-Friendly Campuses: $3.0M

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).

• Sustainable funding for ASAP/ACE

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.

• Doubling SUNY Research Through Capital Investment: $745.0M – Year One

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)

• Major increases in federal research funding:

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]).

• Expansion of Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) Income Thresholds and Award Levels

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).

• Continued TAP modernization

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).

• Establishing short-term Pell:

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).

• Doubling Pell grants:

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?

On Increasing SUNY Revenues, Part 5

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.

My First January Message to the Fredonia University Senate

Read it here!  Happy to answer questions about it in the comments!

Mr. Constructivist Goes to Albany...

...really just as a chauffeur/butler for the Full Metal Archivist, my amazing wife, who's doing an all-day professional development thing in NYS's capitol city this Friday, but I will be in Albany and fairly free from Thursday night to Friday afternoon if anyone wants any unsolicited advice from yours truly, or has any suggestions about what I should be blogging and Xing/tweeting about in the coming days, weeks, and months.  Just putting that out into the intertubes' aether.

State of the State Post-Game

I've got to admit that I found the State of the State Address almost totally demoralizing for almost the entire afternoon and evening yesterday—so much so that I needed time to even start reading the SOTS Book (that's a today project).  It's not that anything that Governor Hochul announced regarding higher ed was so bad; on the contrary, the AI consortium initiative is potentially huge, the top 10% automatic admission is wonderful, etc., etc.  Building new housing units on underutilized SUNY properties?  Why the heck not?  What I was left with, though, was the despairing question, "Is that all?"

What also demoralized me was hearing the Governor talk about long-standing issues and problems that were clearly huge priorities to her using language I've been hoping she would use for SUNY and CUNY—language such as

• "get us out of the deep hole created by decades of inaction"
• "it's a band-aid when we need reconstructive surgery"
• "it takes political will, it takes collaboration...to deliver what New Yorkers desperately want"

—and not use similar language, or really any language at all, on her core responsibility:  to set the terms of debate over pricing and funding SUNY and CUNY.  College affordability was not incorporated into her consumer protection and affordability agenda in the big way I had called for last Wednesday.  And there was really very little on SUNY or CUNY anywhere else in the State of the State.

As statement after statement rolled in yesterday afternoon and evening, my malaise deepened.  Was anybody prioritizing a public goods approach to funding and pricing public higher education in New York State?

Right before I called it a night, after I got ready for bed, though, it hit me.  There was another interpretation for the Governor's silence on these questions:  they were still in play.  Governor Hochul is likely still in discussions with SUNY, CUNY, union leaders, DOB, and others on what will actually go into the State Fiscal Year 2025 Executive Budget.

I didn't have the energy last night to gather evidence for this alternative interpretation of the Governor's silences in the State of the State:  sleep was a higher priority.  But now that I'm awake and rested, I'm seeing evidence everywhere:

• NYSUT's statement (which was released before the State of the State) is very strong, suggesting that the New Deal for Higher Education campaign from 2023 continues into 2024 and that New York's education and higher education unions are in the arena.
• UUP and PSC-CUNY still have not released statements specifically addressing the State of the State.  When do unions decide not to make public statements or go to the media?  While they're still in negotiations.
• SUNY and CUNY's statements accentuated the positives so intently and were so relentlessly optimistic, while remaining silent on what the Governor was silent on, also suggest that discussions are ongoing.  I'm going to read Chancellor King's apparently constative closing—"Under Governor Hochul’s leadership, New York is making a commitment to public higher education like no other state, and for that we are grateful"—as potentially performative (in the speech act theory sense), or if not actually doing something as concrete as naming a ship or marrying two people, at least trying to call hope into reality (think about "is making" and "like no other state" for a while and you'll see what I'm getting at).

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it until I find countervailing evidence.

Today's agenda includes reading the SOTS Book, talking to people from New York State Assembly Higher Education Committee Chair Patricia Fahy's office, and trying to get New York State's progressive politicians and non-government organizations to pay attention to our petition.

Update (9:04 am)

I've already written about the "you can lead a horse to water..." problem facing every awesome SUNY and CUNY initiative aimed at increasing applications, including the new top 10% initiative:  if you don't provide the quality, if you don't price and fund SUNY and CUNY like the public goods they are, then students with better options will go elsewhere.  Public higher ed is in the midst of a net cost of attendance battle—a yield war—and so far the Governor doesn't seem to want to publicly acknowledge it, even when it would advance her overall affordability agenda by forcing "independent"/private higher ed to compete harder on college affordability.

Here's another example of how the Governor's proposals could potentially work at cross-purposes.  Her voter registration initiative acknowledges what's been known for a long time:  college towns tend to vote blue, even in red states and counties.  But what is the likely result of forcing places like SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Fredonia to further downsize their faculty and staff?  Just ask Emporia State.  As Governor Hochul considers how to balance the mix of public and private revenues for SUNY for the coming fiscal year and over the next decade, I hope she also considers the partisan political implications of investing in cities and disinvesting in rural counties.