The Real SUNY and CUNY Issue

The counter implies that I wrote about 11,000 words on comparative public school finance, addition to compiling the spreadsheets. There are probably those who think I’m more of a dweeb for that I do online than Anthony Weiner is for what he did online, particularly since I’m doing it on my own time. For those who read the four posts, downloaded the spreadsheets, and printed them, out congratulations – you now know at least as much about the subject as I do. To complete your education, and your dataset, you might want to read this post and download the spreadsheet with Census Bureau education finance data (from another data source) from FY 1972 to FY 2008 as a percentage of personal income.

Recently, the press was full of the sort of tribal issue that political types love to participate in and the media loves to report on. It seems that a playwright, who did not attend CUNY, was proposed to be granted an honorary degree by that institution, which perhaps wanted to highlight the excellent achievements of alumni of New York University and Columbia. But the proposed honorary degree was objected to and, I believe, not granted based on something the playwright may have said about Israel. Much outrage was engendered on all sides, and the real issue for SUNY and CUNY was safely ignored. That issue is as follows.

The situation of SUNY and CUNY is exactly like the situation of the New York City public schools 15 years ago. They are underfunded, compared with public colleges and universities elsewhere in the country. They are understaffed. And their teaching staff is underpaid.

This situation has an effect on the quality of education. A relatively large percentage of students at SUNY and CUNY take much longer than four years to graduate, and I think I know why. As budgets are cut, the number of course sections for courses that are required to graduate (in a major or overall) is also cut. Meaning that some students end up paying to be in college, but unable to take courses they are nonetheless required to take. So they can’t graduate until their priority ranking at registration rises high enough for them to take the courses.

That’s the situation my brother in law faced at CUNY – Baruch when he attended during the early 1990s budget crisis. And that is the situation at CCNY right now, according to a neighbor who has gone back to school in engineering at that institution. There has been a big cut in the number of sections of a math course that is required both for all math majors and for all engineering majors. He got in, but others did not, and not only will not be able to graduate, but also will not be able to take more advanced courses for which the shortage course is a prerequisite.

One might expect a public education to be an education without frills. But the ability to graduate is not a frill, and I expect this will get worse. (In fact, I expect that eventually either New York City high school graduation requirements will be dumbed down or that kids will not be able to graduate in four years, or at all. In fact I had predicted that would happen in the next fiscal year, but it might not because the city is still underfunding the teacher pensions).

And in fact, my youngest child, based on her interests, might be interested in attending a particular SUNY college upstate, one that claims to be of similar quality to upstate’s best liberal arts colleges. I’ll take her to see it, but I’ll be skeptical of what the future will hold, and will ask some questions. And not necessarily believe the answers. Given my overall outlook, being in a position to buy a way out of a diminished common future for my own children is not making me happy. Just as it didn’t seem right when we and our friends and acquaintances were able to lifeboat our children out of the collapsing NYC schools in the mid-1990s, in our case to Catholic school, while others were trapped. But it is better than the alternative.

So should taxpayers pony up more to remedy the SUNY and CUNY situation, as Client 9 had proposed before the recession? Should students be charged more to maintain or improve the quality of public education in New York? Before the experience of the past 15 years with the NYC public schools, I probably would have looked at comparative spending on public higher education in New York State and other states, and comparative tuition at SUNY and CUNY compared with public colleges elsewhere, and said yes. Now, given that experience, I would say it is probably hopeless. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Public services will improve in New York, in a sustainable way rather than through unsustainable debt (as at the MTA), when Lucy lets Charlie Brown kick the football.

From the end of WWII through the 1970s, U.S. public colleges were richly funded. Members of Generation Greed seeking to stay in school (some in order to stay out of Vietnam) often received grants to do so. As the interests and needs of that generation shifted, so did spending, and by the time I was in college loans had replaced grants. Loans with vastly more favorable terms than those available to today’s students.

Since my school days, the cost of private college has exploded relative to inflation and so, to a lesser extent, did the cost of public college. While private college cost inflation was driven by gold-plating amenities to attract affluent students, increases in non-teaching staff, and a reduction in teaching loads for professors, public college cost inflation was driven by a fall in taxpayer support. With college students at the bottom of the barrel in priority for public spending, during the Great Recession taxpayer support has virtually vanished at many state colleges and universities around the country. This happened even early on, when state and local officials were still trying desperately to protect their elementary and secondary schools from cuts, but with the state and local fiscal crisis intensifying things are getting much worse.

Throughout the country many of the better public colleges and universities are fuming that they are still required to given tuition discounts for state residents, given the loss of state taxpayer support. Others are accepting fewer students from in-state and more from out-of-state to survive financially. And with fewer U.S. out of state students able to afford the higher tuition, some are desperately seeking students from outside the country, from places where more parents reach late middle age with savings instead of debts. And, the quality of education is being reduced.

To give one example, an acquaintance of my oldest child decided to attend the prestigious College of William and Mary, where the out of state tuition approaches private college levels. As part of the regular college registration, she wasn’t able to get into a single class as a first term first year student. Not one. Presumably she was able to subsequently add whatever courses were left, but she might have ended up in courses she wasn’t interested in that didn’t meet any requirements. I expect many more stories like that one this year.

While government of, by and for the seniors of Generation Greed is a national phenomenon, it is even more pronounced in the State of New York. Here, once the fantasies are dropped and the amount of money the New York City Teacher’s Retirement Fund actually requires is contributed and other spending is cut, we will find that even a massive increase in spending “for the children” in the New York City public schools actually went to the retired.

We regard to SUNY and CUNY, however, while the quality of the education is getting worse the schools have at least remained cheap – at the expense of the staff. We are in a state where the strongest interests are producers of public services, whether public employee unions or organized contractors. And the second strongest interests are wealthy and business taxpayers who, since they already pay more here than just about anywhere else in the U.S., can always threaten to leave and take their tax base with them. The serfs who rely on public services for a decent quality of life and equality of opportunity count not at all, except in some affluent suburban locales. So the situation at SUNY and CUNY is an exception to the rule. The producer of public services interest also lost out, limiting (for now) the damage to the serfs.

Based on the rule, however, what would happen if more funding were provided to SUNY and CUNY? Would the CASH pay of professors who were WORKING increase? Would more course sections be offered?

Or would the number of courses taught per professor go down, with more sabbaticals and sick leave, and the retirement benefits be enriched – allowing an early exodus of the remaining qualified professors hired back when SUNY was on the way up (as in the NYC public schools in the mid-1990s)?

Today I feel, because it has been beaten into me after 25 years of observing New York public finance, that the quality of public services and the value of public benefits is going to ratchet down as people are forced to get used to paying more and more for less and less. So higher tuition, or higher taxpayer funding, would probably not help SUNY and CUNY in the long run.

For those who want to believe there is hope, I have a four-word argument that there is not. Sheldon Silver Dean Skelos. Case closed.

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