CONNOR HOFFMAN
Managing Editor
Recently, the New York state budget for the upcoming budget passed. One of the most controversial additions to the budget bill was a program called the Excelsior Scholarship. This idea was horribly thought-out and reeks of “Cuomo 2020.”
The scholarship will cover the tuition for New York residents that have parents who make less than $100,000, with the threshold increasing eventually to $125,000. Also, it requires students to stay in New York for the amount of time they received the scholarship after receiving their degree.
One major flaw is that this program really does not tackle the main issue for college affordability in New York. Tuition for SUNY schools is way cheaper than most of the other public university systems in the country.
The real problem New York should be tackling is lowering the cost of college housing and textbook costs. The housing for a semester costs just as much as tuition does, and while Fredonia is taking steps to lower prices, cost increases here are inevitable. Increased enrollment will seriously strain universities’ housing situations and it may even require universities to build new housing buildings.
A major factor to consider is the value of degrees. This possibly could lower the values of SUNY and CUNY degrees. With so many more people getting college degrees it will become basically become as valuable as a high school degree because so many will have them. An increase in enrollment would also cause a strain on the SUNY schools, and this might lead to students having to deal with cuts and other changes to accommodate an increase in students.
Also, the program is a last-dollar program, so the benefits it would have with lower income Americans would be limited. This program is meant to cover the difference that students would have to pay for their tuition that was not already covered by their scholarships and grants.
Perhaps the biggest flaw in this program is the residency requirement. If the student decides to move out of state before their time is up, they have to pay back the education as if it were a loan.
There are so many questions that instantly pop into my head when I think of how would New York even enforce this law. What if someone’s company that was based in New York decides that they want to move out of state? How are they even going to track this kind of thing?
It’s not like there aren’t other options that Gov. Andrew Cuomo could be pursuing to help tackle the cost of college education, but he wants to be able to say he made college free in New York. One major solution he could have pursued would be to increase the Tuition Assistance Program income cap.
They could also just increase the amount of support that they give to SUNY schools. This support has dropped significantly in the last few decades. Fredonia used to receive more than half of its budget from state aid but by 2015 it only accounted for 12.14 percent of the Fredonia budget. With this solution, the state would be able to cut costs and not have to force students to stay in the state when they graduate.
Cuomo is only interested in playing politics with our education, which should be blatantly obvious from this poorly thought-out program.