Chancellor: SUNY strong, but not invincible
The state university is at risk of a serious erosion of quality offerings for its 468,000 students, the system’s chancellors warned this morning.
“SUNY is strong, but it is not invincible,” SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher told a joint Assembly and Senate fiscal panel in a hearing on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s state budget plans.
The ability of SUNY to provide access for students to a quality education is “obviously threatened” by proposed funding reductions to the sprawling system.
Zimpher suggested problems of increased class size, more reliance on adjunct professors and a reduction in class offerings that is increasing time to graduate for many students will worsen across SUNY if the Legislature does not restore some of Cuomo’s planned cuts.
“We must address the issue of tuition,” Zimpher said.
Over the past five decades, she noted, SUNY’s tuition has increased only 13 times.
The governor’s budget calls for two of three plans pushed last year by SUNY, and especially the University at Buffalo: easier rules and provisions to encourage more campus deals with private companies for joint ventures.
But the budget does not include a tuition hike, which SUNY officials say is needed to make up for lost state aid and which UB insists is the linchpin of its ambitious UB2020 plan that includes a massive downtown Buffalo development project.
Zimpher urged lawmakers to OK a five-year tuition increase plan with “predictable” annual hikes. She noted SUNY tuition has only been raised 13 times over the past 48 years. Tuition for a full-time resident is $4,970 a year, though that does not include a variety of fees imposed at different levels by the campuses.
Since 1963, she said, freshmen students have been able to attend a SUNY college without ever seeing a tuition hike over four years, while other students would be slapped with two or three increases during their time at SUNY.
“SUNY needs a tuition policy that is fair, predictable and responsible,” Zimpher said.
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