SUNY financial plan strains too many campuses

SUNY’s 2001-02 financial plan, recently adopted by the Board of Trustees, was deemed unacceptable by UUP for leaving too many state-operated campuses struggling in an inadequately funded system.

Although the plan increased most of the campuses’ allocations, UUP said the gains for the majority were barely enough to cover contractual costs and inflation. Worse yet, SUNY cut budgets at two colleges — Alfred and Old Westbury.

“A financial plan that negatively impacts any SUNY campus is totally unacceptable,” said UUP President William Scheuerman.

Moreover, the trustees did not provide enough data to immediately determine how the campuses fared this year. In contrast to the veiled way the trustees apparently approved the plan, UUP leaders were outspoken in their disapproval.

“By releasing limited information, SUNY tried to obfuscate the fact that the University remains badly underfunded,” Scheuerman said.

Meanwhile, SUNY enrollment rose for the fifth year in a row, reinforcing UUP’s request to rebuild the number of full-time faculty lines lost at the University since 1995-96.

According to preliminary figures released by SUNY Chancellor Robert King, 382,684 students — 235,618 of whom are full-time undergraduates — are now enrolled at the state university. Yet, the state’s bare-bones budget contained no money for additional full-time faculty positions.

“Enrollments are up and that’s great,” Scheuerman said. “But with so many students coming to the University, it’s more important than ever that SUNY gets the new, full-time faculty it needs to teach them.”

Increasing by an average of 2.2 percent overall, enrollments went up 5 percent at the University Colleges of Technology (UCTs), which UUP claims are chronically underfunded.

“These numbers reinforce what we’ve been saying,” Scheuerman said. “The technology colleges are terrific schools that get short-shrift treatment by SUNY. Maybe this will be a wake-up call for the extra boost the UCTs need to meet their goals and objectives.”

The UCTs also face an unfunded University mandate to provide four-year programs.

UUP continues to seek adequate faculty and funding to address this requirement -- and the needs of SUNY’s other state-operated campuses and teaching hospitals -- as the governor and Legislature grapple with additional spending in light of the economic toll the Sept. 11 disaster will take on New York’s finances.

— Lisa Feldman Reich