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TALKING/WRITING POINTS ON THE CITY UNIVERSITY 

            The points that follow are meant to inform letter writing and office visits to legislators, and approaches to the media and other groups.  Remember, personal stories do the most to back up general points.  Tell your stories and your students’ stories. 

1.                  Budget cuts have severely damaged the City University.  We have (in constant dollars) less than 2/3 the money per student we had in 1985.  Although recent standstill budgets have blocked the worse alternatives of actual cuts, mandated salary increases and inflation mean that standstill budgets continue the decline at a reduced rate.  CUNY is being slowly, but surely, strangled. 

2.                  If the current trend continues, quality will diminish.  The number of fulltime faculty has declined 48.6% since 1974, while enrollment has been essentially constant.  The dedication of overloaded faculty and staff has kept us going, but it cannot do so much longer.  People get tired. 

3.                  Access is threatened as well.   Cuts in aid and increases in tuition forced thousands of students out of the University.  Recent changes in remediation policy will deny access to the senior colleges to thousands more.  

4.                  The current budget surplus provides ample means to reverse this trend.

The University must have the funds to counter past cuts, meet needed salary increases, rehire full time faculty and staff, and improve the situation of part time faculty. 

5.                  The funds would be wisely spent since The City University is a Great Bargain.   Our professors teach more—seven courses a year instead of the national average of five—and make less than their counterparts in state universities.  With costs between five and six thousand dollars per student, the University provides high quality education for less than a third of what many private colleges charge. 

6.                  The City University is a Great Economic Investment.  CUNY graduates pay $414 million more in state and city taxes than they would pay if they had not gone to college. 

7.         The City University is a Great Social Investment.     Our graduates become community leaders in the city and surrounding suburbs and towns.  They are the vital middle class of the metropolitan area—not only corporate executives, but also social workers, teachers, librarians, storekeepers, and the artists, writers, actors, and musicians who enhance life every day. 

8.         The University must be restored.            We need a hundred-and-forty-million-dollar budget increase this year just to begin the process of reconstituting the full time faculty and staff and providing fair compensation for part-time faculty.