LI's SUNY colleges upbeat on tentative tuition deal

Officials at Long Island's public colleges and universities were cheered Friday by a tentative deal in Albany that would allow them to keep revenue from tuition increases instead of sending the money to the state treasury.

But Gov. David A. Paterson, through a spokesman, on Friday called the proposal "not acceptable." And the local campus presidents added that the proposal would far from give them everything they'd hoped for.

Under the proposal, reached among top Democratic state lawmakers, tuition would go up uniformly across New York, so that Long Island colleges will continue to charge the same as those upstate. Paterson had proposed to allow Stony Brook University and others that grant doctoral degrees to charge higher fees.

The lawmakers' plan calls for tuition to rise in each of the next three to five years. Tuition Assistance Program would rise to absorb the increase for low-income students. State residents would face the same rate of increase regardless of the campus. Tuition for out-of-state students would be set by the campuses.

Friday, Calvin O. Butts III, president of the SUNY College at Old Westbury, called the proposal "a step in the right direction."

At Farmingdale, President W. Hubert Keen said retaining extra tuition money "will enable us to hire the faculty and staff to support academic programs and provide services for students."

Stony Brook University spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow declined to comment. Administrators have said the school hoped to set its own tuition - a hope shared by the state's larger research institutions, including Binghamton and Buffalo.

State Senate and Assembly leaders also called for a building fund, with an undetermined amount of money, for Stony Brook and the other research universities. But the state would need to issue bonds to raise money for those buildings, and so far no one has plans for bonds.

Stony Brook administrators also have said any small rises in tuition won't make up for the $55 million of state funding it has lost in the past two years.

Disagreements about SUNY and CUNY funding are holding up enactment of the new state budget, now 122 days late.

Friday, however, Paterson aide Morgan Hook said of the proposed deal: "More work needs to be done and more details need to be provided."

Aides to Paterson and the legislature's Democratic majorities met Friday for negotiations. Sisa Moyo, an aide to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), spoke of "positive conversations" but emphasized there was no agreement.