Protecting Funding for Higher Education
Hundreds of millions of dollars in unfair budget cuts have led to tuition hikes, overcrowded classes and dwindling course offerings at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the State University of New York (SUNY). Students’ graduations are being delayed, services and financial aid are being cu,t and critical maintenance needs are being ignored because of a lack of adequate public funding for higher education.
To protect SUNY and CUNY and fulfill the state’s promise of access and affordability, students working with NYPIRG are pushing their state lawmakers to stand up for students and restore the recent cuts to public higher education. In good times and in bad, public investment in higher education makes sense.
Funding for SUNY and CUNY, financial aid, and opportunity programs gets decided during the state budget process. Funding for CUNY community colleges and a few city-wide financial aid and opportunity programs is determined during the New York City budget process.
New York State’s budget crisis has been hard on higher education. A weak job market and an influx of students who in better times might have enrolled in private colleges have led to big enrollment gains at SUNY and CUNY. Instead of giving the public university systems the resources they needed to serve their growing student bodies, the governor and legislature, faced with shrinking tax revenues and multi-billion-dollar deficits, implemented hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cuts to SUNY and CUNY and tuition hikes.
During the period of 2008-2010, state funding for SUNY and CUNY senior colleges shrank by $680 million and $250 million, respectively. Over the same period, SUNY community colleges lost $69.6 million and CUNY community colleges lost $26.3 million in state funds ($415 per full-time equivalent). Additionally, the state’s premiere need-based financial aid program—the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP)—was cut by $74.3 million. This continues a long-term pattern of reduced state support, which in the past 15 years has included cuts to higher education of roughly $1 billion.
Students working with NYPIRG didn’t take these cuts lying down. We generated over 5,500 calls to key legislators, co-hosted a 300-person student/faculty lobby day in Albany, delivered thousands of petition signatures and letters to local legislators, and testified before the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways & Means Committees. On top of that, they hosted successful No-More-Cuts speak out/media events at 15 campuses, and partnered with student governments and faculty unions to organize a series of on-campus demonstrations. In response to the student pressure, the State Legislature passed a budget that restored funding for financial aid and community colleges. Unfortunately, Governor Paterson vetoed their restorations.
What’s Next?
For the 2011-2012 fiscal year, CUNY’s Board of Trustees requested a five-percent mid-year tuition hike, and SUNY requested a similar increase and changes to state tuition policy. Governor Cuomo’s Executive Budget proposal for 2011-2012 was released in February; with another state budget deficit pending, the governor decided to propose budget cuts that hurt students—$115.4 million from SUNY and $70.1 million from CUNY—and maintain the cuts and rule changes to TAP from 2010. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also proposed $13 million in cuts to CUNY community colleges. As ever, NYPIRG students have been fighting these cuts, most recently with a student and facutly lobby day on in coalition with the University Student Senate of the City University of New York (USS), Student Assembly of the State of New York (SUNYSA), the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), and United University Professions (UUP). Hundreds of students and faculty converged on Albany on March 15 in solidarity to deliver our message to legislators and Governor Cuomo that the state must uphold it's promise—written in the state's education law—to provide "educational services of the highest quality, with the broadest possible access." (N.Y. Education Law §351).
NYPIRG is mobilizing students for the next budget fight. Contact one of our chapters to hear about campus-level events.