A few months ago, Governor Cuomo held a news conference with the U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, to announce a new initiative: to make public college tuition free for families whose incomes were no more than $125,000.<\/p>\n
At that time, the governor remarked: “A college education is not a luxury \u2013 it is an absolute necessity for any chance at economic mobility.\u201d\u00a0 He went on to say that \u201c(College) is incredibly expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many New Yorkers, the governor\u2019s proposal was a welcome change.\u00a0 After all, it was Governor Cuomo\u2019s Administration that had changed New York law to automatically allow annual increases in public college tuition.\u00a0 During his time as governor, the cost of attending the State University of New York has shot up by 30 percent over five years.<\/p>\n
Making public college more affordable is a great idea, not only for educating the next generation of workers, but the next generation of citizens as well.<\/p>\n
Now that the state budget process is shifting into high gear, flaws in the governor\u2019s tuition-free plan, as well as his overall higher education budget, are becoming more and more clear.<\/p>\n
While the governor deserves praise for advancing the innovative concept of making public college more affordable, the evolving plan seems less and less compelling.<\/p>\n
Governor Cuomo\u2019s desire to create a \u201cfree tuition\u201d program at a reduced cost has cut out all students attending private<\/em> colleges and all students who do not take at least 15 credits<\/em> (which is more than currently considered to be \u201cfull time\u201d) every semester. In addition, the plan proposes that the public college defer billing the student for the tuition, and the college does not receive the scholarship money until after<\/em> the semester.\u00a0 Thus, if the student fails to maintain the Excelsior program\u2019s standards, the public college receives no<\/em> income from the scholarship and must charge the student for the cost.<\/p>\n Of course, offering even a limited \u201cfree tuition\u201d program will likely mean an increase in the number of students attending public colleges in New York.\u00a0 But the State University of New York and City University of New York campuses that would receive these new students will receive no additional state resources.\u00a0 What will happen?<\/p>\n And the governor has proposed a tuition increase<\/em> to those families making over $125,000.\u00a0 And in what appears to be a cruel twist, the Excelsior program is going to cover the current<\/em> level of public college tuition, not future<\/em> tuition levels.\u00a0 Thus, as tuition costs go up under the governor\u2019s plan it appears that the colleges could be forced to make up the difference.<\/p>\n As a result, stagnant state support not only means inadequate resources now, but the future tuition hikes mean future college cuts \u2013 unless the state adds resources, which the governor has not proposed to do.<\/p>\n Not only is the tuition free plan much more limited than initially advertised, but the governor\u2019s budget hammers the higher education budget in other ways.<\/p>\n As just mentioned, the governor proposed that operational funding for SUNY be kept at this year\u2019s level.\u00a0 Since the inflation rate is a bit over 2 percent, the governor is effectively proposing a cut of 2 percent in state funding for SUNY.<\/p>\n The governor also proposed cuts to programs that provide support to college students that come from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds.<\/p>\n The Legislature now must deal with the governor\u2019s plan.\u00a0 We can\u2019t forget that the governor deserves credit for serving up a good idea, but it is now up to lawmakers to make it work.\u00a0 Here are a few steps that they can take:<\/p>\n The budget clock keeps ticking; this could be a very big year for the state\u2019s higher education system.\u00a0 Let\u2019s hope the Legislature uses the governor\u2019s plan as a budgetary floor, not a ceiling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few months ago, Governor Cuomo held a news conference with the U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, to announce a new initiative: to make public college tuition free for families whose incomes were no more than $125,000. At that time, the governor remarked: “A college education is not a luxury \u2013 it is an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1836"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1838,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions\/1838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n