ALBANY -- Many community colleges would likely have to raise tuition under Gov. Eliot Spitzer's budget, Interim SUNY Chancellor John Clark said Wednesday.
The spending plan Spitzer proposed last week cuts community college base aid by $50 per student, or $6.2 million, Clark testified during a legislative budget hearing.
It also eliminates $1 million in operating aid for the five smallest of SUNY's 30 community colleges, Clark said.
"If the current budget is passed as is ... in all likelihood many of our community colleges would have to seek tuition increases," Clark said in an interview.
New York's community college tuition and fees are the sixth-highest in the U.S. and more than 50 percent above the national average, according to a report by the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy.
SUNY community college tuition averaged $2,900 in 2004-05, and three campuses were at or over $3,000, according to the 2007 report. Tuition and fees at New York's community colleges are more than four times higher than California's.
Clark asked legislators to restore the community college money, one of several requests for more money the chancellor made during Wednesday's testimony.
SUNY's original budget request called for a 5 percent tuition increase for the system's four-year colleges. Spitzer, however, proposed no tuition hike in his plan.
In his State of the State speech, Spitzer called for hiring 2,000 full-time professors for SUNY and CUNY over five years. His budget proposal cuts SUNY's operating support by $34.2 million, or 2.5 percent.
Class sizes could increase and SUNY might have to rely on more part-time professors if the money isn't restored, Clark said.
Fred Floss, head of SUNY's faculty union, said the budget doesn't cover the costs of SUNY's growing enrollment, now a record 427,398 students.
"Instead of including state funding for additional full-time faculty, the Executive Budget proposes to fund some of this need through privatizing the state lottery and using it to fund a new endowment," Floss said.
But SUNY can't wait the years it may take for income from the endowment, Floss said.
Floss pressed lawmakers to include money for 400 new full-time faculty positions in the budget, a cost of $25 million.
Marc Parry can be reached at 454-5057 or by e-mail at mparry@timesunion.com. |
