Four\u00a0years ago, state lawmakers approved a plan that changed its relationship with the state\u2019s public colleges and students.\u00a0 The plan contained two major changes: public college tuition would be raised automatically and the state would commit not to cut state support for those institutions and would not use the increased tuition to close budget holes.<\/p>\n
As part of the deal to increase tuition up to $300 annually, the state pledged to maintain its support.\u00a0 According to state officials, \u201cIn return, the State committed to maintain [the state and New York city university systems] current funding year-to-year \u2013 this preserved budgets for curriculum innovation and ensured students were not back filling State cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
This component of the plan was a Maintenance of Effort (MOE) provision, which mandated the state provide a steady level of funding to public colleges that would not depend on revenue generated from tuition.<\/p>\n
The idea was that this MOE should have allowed the State University of New York and the City University of New York to invest the funds generated by the tuition hikes toward expanded academic and student support services.<\/p>\n
But it turns out that there was a major caveat to the state\u2019s promise.<\/p>\n
Buried in the fine print of the 2011 legislation was that the MOE was defined to mean that the state would spend no less than the total amount it spent the year before.\u00a0 Yet, annual inflation erodes the purchasing power of the dollar; in essence keeping state support at a steady level meant a cut.\u00a0 Moreover, the fine print also left vague what services would be covered by the MOE.<\/p>\n
When the plan was approved in 2011, critics thought the result of annual tuition hikes would be a shift in the cost of attending public college from Albany to the students and their families.\u00a0 Sadly, it appears that they were right.<\/p>\n
Tuition at state public colleges is expected to increase by as much as 42% by the time the law expires on July 1, 2016. \u00a0\u00a0While tuition has jumped dramatically, state support for SUNY and CUNY has remained largely flat.\u00a0 As a result, the cost to maintain SUNY and CUNY\u2019s services at the same level as it was in 2011 has increased by nearly $200 million combined.<\/p>\n
The state made up the difference by using the increased tuition dollars, undermining its promise to students and their families. \u00a0Eroding state support coupled with rising tuition has had an impact: Prior to the 2008 recession, the state paid more than half<\/u> of SUNY\u2019s operating costs. Now student tuition and fees account for 64 percent<\/u> of SUNY\u2019s operating costs and the state pays a mere 36 percent of those costs.<\/p>\n
During that time, the state has not felt budgetary shortfalls: In fact,New York State\u2019sbudget has grown<\/u> from $134.8 billion in 2011 to $143.8 billion in 2015, roughly a 7.5 percent increase.That\u2019s right, while the state has spent 7.5 percent more than it did at the beginning of the Cuomo Administration, students have been forced to pay more and the state has shortchanged public colleges in the budget.\u00a0 Clearly, priorities have been elsewhere.<\/p>\n
The effect has been to shift the burden of operating New York\u2019s public colleges from the state to college students and their families.<\/em><\/p>\n Lawmakers now understand the mistake in the MOE and have overwhelming approved a fix.\u00a0 The legislation requires the state to provide funding tocover all mandatory costs<\/u> of bothSUNY and CUNY.\u00a0 Those mandatory costs include items like utility bills, building rentals and other inflationary<\/u> expenses incurred by both the state and city universities and the state university health science centers.\u00a0 The legislation has broad support:\u00a0 SUNY, CUNY, faculty and student groups all supported the bill and it passed the Senate 62-1 and passed Assembly 146-1.<\/p>\n Now the ball is in Governor Cuomo\u2019s court.\u00a0 When the legislation is sent to his desk, will he approve it and keep New York\u2019s promise to ensure that increases in public college tuition enhance public higher education?\u00a0 New Yorkers will soon see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four\u00a0years ago, state lawmakers approved a plan that changed its relationship with the state\u2019s public colleges and students.\u00a0 The plan contained two major changes: public college tuition would be raised automatically and the state would commit not to cut state support for those institutions and would not use the increased tuition to close budget holes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1517"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1519,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517\/revisions\/1519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}