Higher education policy moved back into the news last week when the State University of New York\u2019s Chancellor announced an effort to keep increasing the cost of public college tuition.<\/p>\n
The Chancellor urged that lawmakers renew legislation, known as SUNY 2020, which (among other things) allows for annual increases in SUNY tuition.\u00a0 The current law expires in late June of 2016.<\/p>\n
SUNY\u2019s argument to allow continued tuition hikes hinges on this statement, “We simply cannot go back to a time when students applied to SUNY without knowing what their tuition rates would be year to year.”<\/p>\n
The plan would hike tuition as much as $300 per year.\u00a0 The plan to continually hike tuition was originally hatched in 2011.\u00a0 At that time, New York\u2019s fiscal house was still in disorder from the national financial meltdown in 2008-09.<\/p>\n
New York, like the rest of the nation, jacked up the cost of going to college to help balance budgets.\u00a0 But those policies have come at a price \u2013 the shift from the state coffers to the bank accounts of students and their families has increased the size of college debt.\u00a0 Nationwide, student loan debt is currently over $1 trillion and it is estimated to be $2 trillion by 2025.\u00a0 At New York\u2019s four University Centers, 56% of graduates carry debt averaging over $22,000.<\/p>\n
The shift of college costs from the state to students happened in New York as well.\u00a0 Prior to the 2008 recession, public tuition covered about half of SUNY\u2019s budget.\u00a0 Since 2008, state support to New York\u2019s public colleges and universities has been slashed by $1.5 billion.\u00a0 Now, tuition covers more than 60% of SUNY\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n
These tuition increases are the result of a so-called \u201crational tuition\u201d policy.\u00a0 New York\u2019s law, described by proponents as \u201crational,\u201d hiked public college tuition each year for five years.\u00a0 Tuition at SUNY will have increased by over 40% by the time the law expires at the end of June.<\/p>\n
The only thing rational<\/em> about this policy is that it guarantees increases in the cost of attending a public college.\u00a0 As a result, New York families are paying more \u2013 and in some cases adding to an increasing college debt load.<\/p>\n Yet in recent years, the state budget hasn\u2019t faced shortfalls:\u00a0 Its annual budget has swelled from $132 billion in 2011 to $142 billion today.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, while the state has spent 8% 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.<\/p>\n The SUNY 2020 deal was predicated on the fact that students would pay more, but that the state would promise to maintain its support for SUNY.<\/p>\n Yet, while the state budget swelled by 8%, state support was stagnant.\u00a0 That stagnant state support does not include the eroding impact of inflation on SUNY\u2019s expenditures.\u00a0 When inflation is factored in, stagnant state support means a cut \u2013 and that cut must be made up with other dollars.<\/p>\n Legislation has passed with overwhelming bipartisan support to close that loophole to make sure that the state adjusts its support for inflation as well as other increases in fixed costs at SUNY. \u00a0The tea leaf readers guess that the governor will veto that bill.<\/p>\n If so, he will further undermine whatever credibility SUNY\u2019s plan for additional tuition hikes may have had.<\/p>\n Irrespective of what the governor chooses to do, there is a more basic question: should students have to pay more just to ensure the \u201cpeace of mind\u201d knowing that the tuition hikes come at a predictable pace?\u00a0 Or would they have greater peace of mind knowing that no increases would occur?<\/p>\n The state\u2019s budget has swelled in recent years, the promise in the last tuition deal not to reduce state support was broken, and public college has become less – not more \u2013 affordable.<\/p>\n The state should make a new pledge \u2013 add support for SUNY, not make the students pay for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Higher education policy moved back into the news last week when the State University of New York\u2019s Chancellor announced an effort to keep increasing the cost of public college tuition. The Chancellor urged that lawmakers renew legislation, known as SUNY 2020, which (among other things) allows for annual increases in SUNY tuition.\u00a0 The current law […]<\/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":[60],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-suny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","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=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}