CONNOR HOFFMAN
Staff Writer
Fredonia president Dr. Virginia Horvath and the 63 other State University of New York (SUNY) Presidents have started a campaign asking the New York State Legislature to “Invest In SUNY.” The program is based on a consensus, between all 64 campuses, to try to achieve all the same goals, rather than separate ones.
“SUNY really wanted, as we went into the legislative session this year, the several month long process to determine the budget,” said Horvath. “They really wanted us to have a consistent message because it can be confusing to the legislators if they have 64 different campuses with a separate agenda. So they really worked hard on our having a consistent message to Invest in SUNY all of SUNY.”
The main end goal of Invest in SUNY is to increase the number of graduates by giving more support to the 64 campuses.
“What we have now which I believe across the system is like 92,000 [graduates] a year. Which is a pretty healthy number but the Chancellor has been suggesting… we ought to be able to move that up to a 150,000 graduates a year by 2020”, said David Tiffany, the Vice-President of Governmental Affairs.
To achieve this goal, SUNY is asking for several key things from the legislature: increased capital funding, base support for salary increases, performance based funding, and renewing rational tuition.
These general categories would then be divided up, and each university would receive the money to improve its campus.
Capital funding is a fairly general category, and applies to both critical maintenance for buildings and capital for new construction.
Constructing new buildings a very lengthy and expensive process – it takes about four years. The first step is to get it into program phase, then design phase and only then can the university put it out to bid for construction.
It’s clear that SUNY is asking for the money now so that they can start on plans for the buildings.
“Right now, we are finishing the design phase for Houghton Hall to re-do the inside of that building, so it’s fitting with the Science Center. We don’t have the dollars to build it, but we keep going forward saying we want to be ready we want to have our design ready if we do get the dollars” said Horvath.
There’s also an initiative called “NY2020” that is already a law. Although it is not directly part of Invest in SUNY, it has a very similar intention. NY2020 is a program that was instituted in 2011 which allows the SUNY schools to apply for grants to finance the construction of new buildings if they qualify.
Fredonia had tried – and is still trying – to qualify for some of this money to construct a new building by the Dunkirk waterfront. This project has been promoted several different times, and the university intends to promote it again.
“It would look at the environment of Lake Erie [and] would be a research facility to do research on Lake Erie. It’s kind of surprising to me but there really hasn’t been a lot of research on Lake Erie, so there’d be a lot of opportunity for people with some expertise to do it” said Tiffany.
Critical maintenance makes sure that the university is able to sustain the buildings on their campus. This includes stuff such as replacing windows, repairing the exterior of buildings and rebuild roofs. These funds are not allowed to be used for additions or new buildings.
Baseline support is crucial, as it’s the money that the 64 SUNY schools receive from SUNY. The problem is that it has remained relatively the same. The state negotiates salary increases, and doesn’t increase the money given to the campus to reflect these increased salaries.
“Our campus does not determine salary increases. That’s determined at the state level in different unions, and then we have to figure out then because most of our cost is personnel then how do we make up that cost,” said Horvath.
A driving reason for these salary increases is yearly inflation. Inflation is simply an increase in the cost of living.
“They’re things that cause more each year without any change. The price of a unit of something a supply or a service with cost of living increases goes up, and so does personnel costs,” explained Liz Praetorius, the Vice-President of Financial Affairs
This has caused the universities to have budget holes, and usually the universities having to increase fees for the students to pay these salary increases solve this.
“I wish we had people investing in our base budget, so that we didn’t have to charge more to students. To me they’re shifting the costs to students,” commented Horvath.
Rational tuition is another part of this program that SUNY is vouching for. Rational tuition is an annual set increase of SUNY tuition rates. Before rational tuition was agreed on, tuition increases used to be very unpredictable. Some year’s tuition was not increased at all or sometimes it was increased multiple times in one year.
What’s interesting to note is New York is one of five states that has not given the power to the chancellor or head of the public university system to control the tuition.
Rational tuition has made it so that each semester the tuition only increases by $150 for a yearly increase of $300. It was agreed upon in 2011 and will expire next year.
Some have suggested that instead of annual rational increases we freeze tuition such as the SUNY Purchase’s Student Senate. It sounds like a great idea but might not be realistic.
“It’s definitely possible but there has to be a corollary with it, and that is the state has to provide additional funds with a direct appropriation to the SUNY system”, said Tiffany.
“If the rational tuition plan is not renewed it creates a huge budget problem for us… I don’t know exactly the amount the $300 would generate but it would create a hole that’s gotta be more than a million dollars.”
Fredonia, Alfred State, and Potsdam separately advocated for a discount on differential out of state tuition. Out of state students have to pay almost three times more than residents pay for tuition.
These three universities are the main SUNY schools that border several states, so this is designed to make them more competitive with the bordering public state school systems. States such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Maryland are all offering New York State students close to their in-state rates or bargains to lure them.
“If you draw concentric circles from Fredonia for 300 miles a lot of that is lake, so we include Detroit. We’re closer to Detroit than we are to Troy. We’re closer to Chicago than we are to Manhattan,” said Horvath.
“By what we’re asking for on a discounted out of state tuition rate is reducing our competition with other SUNY schools. So that’s good for SUNY overall not just for Fredonia”, said Praetorius.
SUNY will continue to push for these programs to help improve the campuses. The goal is to make education not only better, but also cheaper so more people can attend SUNY schools. SUNY stays optimistic that the legislature will invest more money.
“Yes I mean all of these will [help us]. Continuing rational tuition and certainly increasing state support would be very helpful. I remain optimistic,” said Praetorius.