"The truth is that
the
students & faculty have
subsidized this University"
Excerpt from Testimony of the PSC/CUNY
Higher Education Committees
of New
York State Assembly and Senate
October 7, 2005
Delivered by Barbara Bowen,
President
Excerpt: The Board of Regents Statewide Plan for Higher Education (2005) focuses us on the real story of public funding for the City University of New York. Both SUNY and CUNY have experienced devastating losses of public funding, and the members of the PSC stand in solidarity with the faculty, staff and students of SUNY in demanding restoration of SUNY’s public funding. But as the Regents’ publication reveals, the losses at CUNY over the last decade have been of a different order of magnitude than even the losses at SUNY.
Here are the facts: The Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) inflation rate for the years 1990 to 2003 was 57.1%. If State appropriations per full-time-equivalent student for the state-operated colleges of SUNY had merely kept pace with inflation during this period, the State appropriation would have increased by 57.1%. Instead, it increased by only 35.8%. SUNY closed the gap, and then some, by increasing student tuition and fees during this period by 213%. The result is that total per-FTE funding at SUNY exceeded a level consistent with inflation since 1990 by $919.
SHIFTING THE BURDEN ONTO STUDENTS
That’s a bad story, because it reveals a shifting of the burden onto students, but the story for CUNY is worse. For CUNY senior colleges during the same period of 1990 through 2003, when the HEPI inflation index was 57.1%, the State appropriation for CUNY should have increased by at least 57.1%. Remember, during this period, the SUNY State appropriation increased by 35.8%. What happened to State funding for CUNY? It decreased by 16.8%. CUNY attempted to close the gap by increasing student tuition and fees during this period by 195%, but even a nearly 200% increase in tuition left the University short. By 2003, the University’s funding had fallen behind the level consistent with inflation since 1990 by a shocking $4,181 per student. (Regents Statewide Plan, Table 10)
Even though both CUNY and SUNY increased student tuition and fees during this period by around 200%—a rate far above inflation—the failure of the State to invest in CUNY meant that CUNY’s per-student funding plummeted. In 1990, the senior colleges at the two universities were at comparable levels of per-student funding: $7,855 at SUNY and $7,023 at CUNY. By 2003, look at the difference: $10,677 at SUNY and $5,846 at CUNY.
How has CUNY survived? The truth is that the students and faculty have subsidized this University. As State funding has fallen, the share of costs borne by students has risen, till it is now approaching 50%. Meanwhile, the faculty and professional staff have been forced to do more and more with less. We have reached a crisis point because the CUNY faculty and staff have now gone three years without a contract and four years without a raise. At the same time that we are forced to make thousands of daily accommodations to a culture of scarcity at CUNY, we have seen the real value of our salaries shrink.
cuny HAS "yet to offer our faculty and staff an increase that even reaches the level of inflation"
Again, using a comparison with rates of inflation: if CUNY salaries had merely kept pace with inflation since 1972, the last time the PSC faced a crisis this acute in contract negotiations, the top salary for a full professor would now be $147,000. Instead, it is $93,507. The median salary for an assistant professor would be $79,208; instead, it is $48,162. We heard Chancellor Goldstein speak earlier about many of our students whose family income is under $50,000; the median for CUNY’s own assistant professors is below that level. I am pleased to hear Chancellor Goldstein say that CUNY has “an extraordinary faculty” that deserves to be well paid, but you should know that the University has yet to offer our faculty and staff an increase that even reaches the level of inflation.