UUP Press Releases

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 17 , 2005

Union chief: Increase investment in SUNY, add full-time faculty

Saying SUNY today stands at a crossroads, the president of the nation’s largest higher education union is asking state lawmakers to increase their financial investment in SUNY.

Testifying before a joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly Higher Education Committees, William E. Scheuerman, President of United University Professions, said while lawmakers have increased the portion of state funding for SUNY, that trend must continue to address problems caused by underfunding in the past.

“SUNY’s state operated campuses have absorbed years of unfunded major expenses,” Scheuerman told the committee members. “For too many years, SUNY campuses have been forced to pay for negotiated salary increases, increasing energy costs and other inflationary operating expenses out of a flat base budget.”

As a short-term solution, Scheuerman proposed that SUNY receive a deficiency appropriation to cover rising energy costs. For the long-term, Scheuerman called for a budget for 2006-07 that, “must fully fund base budget requirements at SUNY and fund additional challenges such as enrollment growth, more full-time faculty, cutting-edge technology, library acquisitions, opportunity programs and ensuring outstanding SUNY hospitals that are capable of dealing with everyday and crisis health care needs.”

Advocating for more full-time positions, Scheuerman noted that less than 60 percent of SUNY’s faculty is full-time compared with 72 percent 10 years ago.

“Our concern is that the level of quality of a SUNY education will decline as an ever-increasing percentage of faculty is not paid – nor has the time, space or institutional knowledge – to offer students and their campuses what they need.”

UUP represents more then 34,000 academic and professional faculty on 29 New York State-operated campuses, and is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO and New York State United Teachers (NYSUT).    

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