Good
afternoon, Chairpersons Johnson and Farrell, members of the
Assembly and Senate, students, colleagues and friends.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today.
Thank you also for the support you have shown for the City
University of New York and the 20,000 faculty and staff who
work there. I am honored to appear here with my NYSUT and
UUP colleagues, and the PSC speaks in solidarity with their
budget requests.
The
2005-06 Executive Budget for CUNY presents you, as
legislators, with a choice: do you accept an underfunded
university system as good enough for New York, or will you
act to make sure that higher education in New York is
supported? The choice is that stark, because what confronts
us in the Executive Budget is another year of deepening
starvation of CUNY. Yes, you’ve heard today about how well
CUNY is doing and the extraordinary efforts of students and
faculty. We are all doing more with less. But the truth is
undeniable and it’s in the numbers: whatever the State may
say it’s doing or even whatever you as Legislators wish to
do, New York State has decided to abandon the project of
providing adequate funds for public higher education. If
that’s not the decision the Legislature wants to make—and I
don’t believe it is—I call on you to reverse course and stop
the hemorrhaging of public money from public higher
education.
Last
year you acted in a bipartisan way and took important first
steps in restoring higher education funding. Unfortunately,
some of the additional operating funds you allocated were
not appropriated by the Executive branch, and the capital
funds were vetoed. This year’s Executive Budget not only
seeks to make permanent the loss of $22 million in operating
aid impounded last year by the Governor; it contains
additional devastating cuts. We are aware of the Court of
Appeals decision, but we believe the Legislature can
act to improve the budget. Without courageous action on
your parts, students, faculty and staff will be harmed, and
New York will slip further behind in the ranks of higher
education support. I find it especially unfathomable that
New York would engage in the defunding of public higher
education at exactly the same time that it is under court
order to improve funding for K-12. A major focus of the
Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision was to give all students
across the state an equal chance at finishing high school
and becoming prepared for college. To pull the rug out from
under the public colleges at just this moment, as the
Executive Budget does, would be self-defeating.
Decreased Operating
Funds
This
year’s Executive Budget for CUNY, despite the appearance of
a larger allocation than in the past, actually continues the
pattern of decreasing funds. What creates the illusion of
an increase, of $92.1 million, is a proposal for public
funds to be replaced by increased tuition and a shift in the
way collective bargaining increases are budgeted. In a
departure from past practice, the Executive Budget for 05-06
includes an amount dedicated to prospective collective
bargaining increases with the PSC and District Council 37.
In the past, collective bargaining increases have been
funded by a separate paybill, on which we have been grateful
for your bipartisan support. This year, however, $73.3
million is added to the CUNY budget for expected contractual
increases. Much of the balance of the $92.1 million
“increase” is to come from an increase in student tuition,
not from increased State appropriation. Despite the
appearance of an increased budget, then, the State
appropriation for the CUNY operating budget actually goes
down—by $9.8 million.
Funds for
Collective
Bargaining
While the PSC naturally supports funding for collective
bargaining increases, there are two problems with the
budgeted amount. First, the amount is not sufficient to
meet even basic needs, and second, it is designed to be
funded in part by an increase in tuition. Let me say here
that it is absolutely unacceptable to the PSC that our
overburdened students, among the poorest college students in
the nation, would be expected to pay for collective
bargaining increases that have always been funded by the
City and State. Only two years ago, CUNY senior college
students endured a 25% tuition increase. While the
Legislature was instrumental in containing the size of that
increase, it was still a major burden, when nearly
two-thirds of CUNY students live in families who total
family income is under $30,000 a year. The students and
their families have already paid for higher education
through their taxes; to impose a further tuition burden on
them to cover what should be basic operating costs of
salaries and benefits is appalling.
The
PSC calls on you, as a start, to restore the $37.3 million
in the Executive Budget proposed to come from tuition. We
also ask you not to accept the permanent, recurring loss of
the $22 million impounded last year by the Governor and we
ask for full funding for capital needs. The additional
funds allocated by the Legislature last year, at a time of
severe budget pressure, represent a bipartisan affirmation
of the need for additional operating aid for CUNY. To allow
what was a one-time hold on those funds to become a
permanent part of the CUNY budget would undermine the
significant work you did to begin restorations to public
higher education.
Hard
as we fight for students, this year the PSC is also in a
battle on our own behalf. The $73 million allocated for
collective bargaining increases for PSC and DC 37 together
falls short of providing funds for the PSC even to maintain
basic salary and healthcare, let alone to advance.
Obviously, it would be inappropriate to involve the
Legislature in the details of collective bargaining, but
it’s important for you to know that the amount allocated
would leave our health benefit plan insolvent within the
year. Years of tight budgets for CUNY have taken a toll not
just on student life, college buildings and research
facilities; they have also meant that our welfare fund has
been starved of support. Without a serious infusion of
funds in this contract, CUNY faculty and staff will face
dramatic loss in health benefits. Without decent healthcare
coverage, the University’s ability to recruit and retain
faculty and staff will plummet; healthcare is for many
people the most important part of financial compensation.
That’s why we need more than the allocated amount and why
I’m wearing this button, to protest the economic offer of
1.5% over four years that is currently on the table.
Many
of you will recall that the contract settled last summer
with our brothers and sisters at SUNY, in UUP, included
increases of approximately 15% over four years. After more
than three years without a raise, we’ve been offered
one-tenth of that, 1.5%. We continue to press as vigorously
as ever for the budget CUNY needs, but our priority this
year is to ensure that the CUNY budget includes contractual
funding for the PSC comparable to the fair settlement
reached at SUNY and that it contains sufficient increases to
restore solvency to our welfare fund. There is no future
for CUNY if salaries and benefits are so poor that the best
faculty and staff cannot stay.
I
recently got a message from a former CUNY professor, Cesar
Ayala, who left his full-time position at Lehman College for
UCLA. He writes “as someone who loved, just absolutely
loved teaching at Lehman, but had to leave on account of
salary and conditions. When I left, my course load went
down . . . and my new salary was significantly higher. Only
when I saw the offer from my new employer did I realize the
cumulative effect of disinvestment in higher
education in New York.” How many more Professor Ayalas can
CUNY afford to lose before its most important resource, the
people who do the teaching, is gone? Certainly CUNY has
major capital needs, but its real capital is the faculty and
professional staff who make learning and research possible.
Additional Funds
for
Full-Time Positions,
Childcare and Diversity
As
part of our focus on supporting CUNY’s human capital, the
PSC is also seeking funding for three specific additions to
the operating budget. First, we support the University’s
request for an additional $18.5 million for additional
full-time positions and the support these positions
require. The PSC has led the campaign for additional
full-time faculty lines, while also demanding better support
for our part-time colleagues, and we repeat that call this
year. We also propose an additional $2.5 million to support
childcare for faculty and professional staff, and $1.5
million to support increased racial, ethnic and gender
diversity in hiring. Both of these are small amounts, but
they would go a long way toward rebuilding—and reimagining—the
University.
During the past two years, as you have heard, nearly 600
additional full-time faculty have been hired at CUNY. (The
number of part-timers, however, has also risen, by over
1000, to keep up with the increase in enrollment. Student
enrollment in the last two years has increased to such an
extent that the equivalent of one-and-a-half colleges have
been added to CUNY—but without the additional funding that
one-and-a-half colleges need. ) The issue of our newspaper,
Clarion, attached to my testimony, tells the story of
one young faculty member, CarolAnn Daniel, who was forced
to go on public assistance after the birth of her second
child because CUNY does not provide paid parental leave or
childcare support. Even with a husband working full-time
(though without benefits) Professor Daniel qualified for
food stamps and had to turn to Medicaid to cover healthcare
costs for herself and her children while on unpaid leave
after childbirth. Surely this is not what we want for
anyone, but especially not for a young scholar, a product of
CUNY herself, who earned an M.S.W degree, a Ph.D. and now a
full-time faculty position at Brooklyn College. SUNY
faculty, like faculty at most colleges and universities,
receive some support for childcare. Their institutions
recognize that an investment in sustaining the families of
young faculty pays off in the university’s ability to
recruit and retain the best new professors. Teaching at
CUNY shouldn’t mean forgoing the chance to have a family;
not everyone is as loyal to CUNY as Professor Daniel. A
relatively small investment in childcare support for CUNY
faculty and staff would make the difference.
The
PSC is also seeking an appropriation to CUNY of $1.5 million
to support an initiative to increase the racial, ethnic and
gender diversity of the faculty and professional staff. The
State Education Law contains an eloquent statement on the
centrality of faculty and staff diversity to CUNY:
Only the strongest
commitment to the special needs of an urban constituency
justifies the legislature’s support of an independent and
unique structure for the university. Activities at the city
university campuses must be undertaken in a spirit which
recognizes and responds to the imperative need for
affirmative action and the positive desire to have the city
university personnel reflect the diverse communities which
comprise the people of the city and state of New York.
(Section 6201)
Although CUNY includes some nationally known scholars in
underrepresented categories, nothing like the potential for
diversity has been reached. As faculty and professional
staff ourselves, PSC members know that it takes active
support to hire significant numbers of people in
underrepresented categories. Along with restorations to the
operating budget, we seek funding to support successful
hiring of minority faculty: a modest allocation of $1.5
million would allow faculty to travel to recruit scholars of
color, provide for incentives in the form of research
support, and support essential mentoring. As the most
racially diverse major university in the country, CUNY has a
special opportunity—and responsibility—to go beyond mere
compliance with Affirmative Action guidelines. The City
University should be a national leader in reversing
institutionalized racism and providing a model to the
country of the intellectual richness of a faculty as diverse
as our student body.
Decreases in
Student Support
Of
the fewer than thirty people from New York City who have
been killed in the war in Iraq, three were CUNY students:
Segun Frederick Akintade, James Prevete and Francis Obaji.
All three turned to CUNY in search of a better life, and all
three bore heavy family responsibilities while attending
school. Segun Akintade was working while attending school to
support his mother and siblings in Nigeria, paying for their
school tuition, and Jim Prevete was shouldering the
responsibility of a seriously ill father at home in Queens.
Hundreds more CUNY students are financing their education
through service in the National Guard, and many are
currently in Iraq. Our students—and working-class people
like them across the country—are the people fighting this
war, and our students are paying heavily for its enormous
cost. In addition to the terrible loss of these young
lives, the war creates pressure on both federal and state
budgets. 84,000 students nationwide are expected to lose
all Pell Grant funding, and 1.2 million to see their Pell
Grants decreased.
I
urge you not to add to these burdens on our students by
asking them to bear far more than their share of the State
budget shortfall. The Executive Budget proposed this year
hits students especially hard, calling for increased
tuition, a reduction in TAP funds, elimination of financial
aid for the poorest students—those in SEEK—and the new PACT
proposal to pay a premium for speedy graduation. All of
these proposals move in the wrong direction, and have the
cumulative effect of making this year’s Executive Budget
proposal what one of my colleagues called “the most
anti-student budget I have ever seen.” The PSC calls on you
to restore full TAP funding and not to force students to
lend their money to the State while they work toward
graduation. There is absolutely no empirical evidence to
support the idea that withholding needed funds from students
helps them to graduate.
Likewise, the PSC opposes the PACT proposal, which would pay
colleges a premium for every student who graduates within
four years for a senior college, two years for a community
college. While the proposal is useful in highlighting a
continuing problem—the lack of access for students to the
courses they need—the way to solve that problem is to fund
more full-time faculty lines, not to put a bounty on the
students’ heads. The PACT program would also have the
effect of transferring funds directly from the public to the
private sector, as the demographics of private colleges make
it more likely that their students will graduate within the
specified period. CUNY students take a longer time to
graduate because they are supporting families in Nigeria or
Flushing or the Bronx; they are working, often full-time,
while attending school. The PACT program would have the
effect of favoring the colleges with the most affluent
student populations; I urge you to reject it as a mechanism
that would create a further drain on public higher
education.
Finally, the PSC urges you to restore the $6.9 million
decrease in the Executive Budget in funding for SEEK.
Taking this huge chunk out of the SEEK budget means
eliminating all financial aid for these students—and they
are often the students who need financial aid most. Cutting
funds from SEEK also has a disproportionate affect on
students of color. It is unconscionable to cut off this
lifeline for some of CUNY’s neediest—and often most
driven—students, to deny the poorest students the chance to
attend the City University. As someone who has taught SEEK
students and seen them go on to law school, doctoral
programs and other demanding careers, I feel personally
outraged at the proposed loss in support for these
students. It is a travesty of CUNY’s mission to single out
the SEEK program for budget cuts.
Conclusion
Education is about the future; it is intrinsically an
expression of hope. As people who entered into this work
because of hope, we in the PSC call on you to believe, as we
do, in the future of the people of New York. Dollar for
dollar, no investment goes further than funds for higher
education. Every dollar invested by the Legislature in CUNY
results in 24 extra dollars contributed to the tax base. If
this is the year of education funding, then public higher
education must be part of that movement. We call on you to
make vital restorations to the operating budget for CUNY, to
understand the need for an increase in the amount allocated
for collective bargaining, and to reverse the trend toward
making our already overburdened students bear extra costs
while new money is directed toward the private sector. If
public education is to mean anything in this state, nothing
less is required.
