For the university system to reach its full potential, the state has to stop treating it like just another agency

We want the State University of New York to be everything it can be. To hold its head high with the other systems, to provide the leadership in research and education for a 21st-century high-technology economy. But to do that, we have to pay attention to how it's structured.

The problem isn't just nearly $39 million in budget cuts this year, or a subsequent order to refrain from spending $109 million that isn't even state money. Beyond all that, SUNY still suffers from the same malady that has plagued it for all of its 60 years: To the Division of the Budget, SUNY is just one more state agency.

"New York State runs its university like it runs its prisons," said W. Clarke Wescoe, a former chancellor of the University of Kansas and a member of the Independent Commission on the Future of the State University, created by SUNY Chancellor Clifton R. Wharton, Jr. Its 1985 report, which quoted Wescoe, pounded on the over-regulation issue.

That report led to the passage of some state legislation that loosened the reins. But the latest commission to study SUNY, appointed last year by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, said in its preliminary report in December that many of the Wharton commission's recommendations "were never implemented."

The Wharton report had put it starkly: "No great university, and no very good one, has been built or can be built under the state rules that presently govern the administration of SUNY." Tied down by administrative constraints that the report called "tragically inappropriate," SUNY simply hasn't done as well as other state systems.

In that report two decades ago, the Wharton commission took a look at the public university systems in 10 states and found a stunning lack of management flexibility here, compared to the others. "Overall, New York's system was the least flexible of those ranked," the commission found. "The states that ranked highest in management flexibility were Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, California and, tied for fifth place, Wisconsin and Texas."

That basic imbalance is still true. The right structure for a state university is not just some vague concept. It's being modeled in numerous other states across the country.

 

History has been destiny

Whatever the outcome of the current budget struggles, if the state does not complete the unfinished task of giving SUNY the level of autonomy it needs, the system will continue to have a tough time rising above the obstacles that history put in its way.

At its birth in 1948, SUNY was already at a profound disadvantage: It was the baby among public university systems, and the others had grown big and strong before SUNY finally came along.

New York had a far stronger network of private colleges than other states. A key framer of the state constitution, John Jay, didn't much care for the idea of governments running colleges. As a result, New York left most of its public higher education to private schools.

That barrier was so frustrating to one New York-born 19th-century educator that he abandoned his efforts to start a public university in his native state and went on to found a little institution called the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Imagine where our state university might be now if Henry Tappan had succeeded in New York in 1852 instead of taking his energy and vision west.

The other historical disadvantage for SUNY relates to the 1862 Morrill Act, which designated 17.4 million acres of federal land for sale, with the proceeds to create colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts. In other states that land-grant money seeded the creation of potent public university systems. In New York it went to Cornell University, which became a great institution in its own right, but predominantly a private one, with some links to SUNY.

Against all that historical background, it wasn't until 1948, many decades behind other states, that SUNY got started. And it wasn't until 1960 that Gov. Nelson Rockefeller began a prolonged program of expanding SUNY. The expansion encountered a huge obstacle with the New York City fiscal crisis of 1975. And in the years since, in good times and bad, the level of funding from the state has been a constant issue.

The current budget year is just the latest struggle. Only a few weeks after the Spitzer commission laid out an ambitious agenda for SUNY's future, giving leaders of the system a real sense of hope, budgetary reality struck.

 

The budget trims

Immediately after taking office in mid-March, Gov. David Paterson focused on the sharp decline in revenue forecasts that had come to light since Spitzer had proposed his 2008-09 budget. To deal with that, Paterson said he wanted to cut an additional $800 million across all state agencies. Ultimately, the State Legislature adopted a $122-billion budget that cut SUNY by $38.8 million - amounting to a 2.9 percent cut in state funding for each campus. The SUNY central office left it to campus presidents to figure out how to deal with the cuts. The City University of New York suffered far smaller trims.

On April 21, less than two weeks after the budget agreement, the Division of the Budget issued a bulletin further outlining what agencies had to do. It called for a 3.35 percent reduction in spending. The Division of the Budget likes to say that SUNY will still spend $4.53 billion, and it gets $6 billion in capital spending over five years. But SUNY is still reeling from the cuts.

 

Whose money is it, anyway?

For SUNY, the impact of this April 21 request is $109 million. But the money affected by the edict is not really taxpayer dollars. It's based on revenue from tuition, dorm fees, hospital fees and other accounts. The Division of the Budget has assured SUNY that it doesn't intend to "sweep" - that is, take - these unspent dollars out of SUNY's accounts now. But that leaves open the possibility that the state could sweep the revenues next year or the year after, if the fiscal situation continues to decline.

So United University Professions, a key faculty union, has been stimulating student protests to blunt the effects of the spending edict. The campaign includes newspaper ads, a Facebook page, a "virtual rally" of students online, and 10,000 faxes to Paterson's office. SUNY leaders have also been working with the Division of the Budget to soften the blow to the system.

SUNY presidents fear the spending directive will result in fewer course offerings, larger class sizes and delayed faculty hiring. The over-regulation of the system already makes it tough for our state university to compete with other systems for top faculty. The spending curb could potentially add to that handicap.

One argument that SUNY leaders make - and it will be easier to make the case once a new permanent chancellor is finally selected - is that public higher education is never more important than in tough economic times. For one thing, people losing jobs rely on SUNY schools for retraining. For another, the campuses - like Stony Brook, Farmingdale, Old Westbury, and the community colleges in Nassau and Suffolk here on Long Island - have a huge impact on the economy. So this is a bad time to slow that economic engine.

 

Make crisis an opportunity

For SUNY the imposition of these spending cuts is a sharp reminder that it's still seen as just another state agency, like the Department of Motor Vehicles. And all of this activity around SUNY's budget comes at a time when the commission appointed by Spitzer is preparing to submit its final report.

Though that document is expected to be very close to the preliminary report released in December, we hope the commission's work, including concerns about greater autonomy, can serve as a starting point. SUNY's structure and relationship to the state still need work.

As tuition costs continue to escalate astronomically at private universities, and as the information economy continues to require greater educational attainment of employees, a reasonably priced state university education will be more important than ever. New York cannot compete in a global economy if its state university system falls short of its immense potential.

The state has to pause at this moment of fiscal difficulty and use the occasion as an impetus to rethink SUNY yet again, and finally make it the equal of any state system in America.

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