Tuition Increases in Lieu of CUNY Board Fund Raising?!

To Benno Schmidt, Chair, CUNY Board
From: Ed Kent, Philosophy, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Re: Tuition Increases in Lieu of CUNY Board Fund Raising?!


Dear Chairman Schmidt:

You are reputed to have been a highly successful fund raiser during your term as president of Yale:

http://www.edisonschools.com/overview/ov_schmidt.html

Yet I understand on good authority that neither you nor your fellow board members have raised significant funds for CUNY, indeed, do not even bother to travel to Albany to lobby for more funding. You have among your members such potentially influential figures as Jeffrey Weisenfeld, former Executive Assistant to Governor Pataki and himself a graduate of a free tuition Queens College, CUNY, who, I would assume, could exert significant influence on his former employer on our behalf?

Needless to say, as a long time faculty member drawn to CUNY as the place where extraordinary teaching and learning could be done -- among my students are our first Rhodes Scholar, Lisette Nieves, and most recent Beinecke Scholar, Nicholas Pitsirikos and many others whom we have 'discovered' and sent on into distinguished careers -- I am disgusted by the pathetic board funding for this productive university, burdened by your less than supportive, indeed, too often actively hostile board actions, e.g. your claim that you have somehow mysteriously improved the quality of CUNY while simultaneously starving us of adequate funding to hire new faculty and to replace part-time struggling adjuncts with regular full-time scholar/teachers.

May I ask you to give a detailed accounting on precisely what you and each of the other CUNY board members have done to bolster our CUNY funding? Needless to say the most recently reported program (below) of tuition increases for our hard-pressed students is morally obscene in light of our history of free tuition for past generations of New Yorkers.

This letter will be sent out widely by me as a long time CUNY faculty member outraged by the abuses both of our junior faculty and our students by your failure to deliver the goods that we need to do the job right. I can think of no greater benefit to NYC than the well educated professional work force that CUNY has traditionally and now continues to provide it!

Edward Kent
Department of Philosophy
Brooklyn College, CUNY

...............................................................

At last night's University Faculty Senate, Chancellor Goldstein outlined his plan to fund the Master Plan (which includes new faculty, support services, and many initiatives). Part of the funding plan is 3% or 4% annual tuition increases. After the Chancellor described the plan, faculty wanted to go to the microphone and respond, but he said he didn't have time for questions. He said he'd answer them when he came back to the UFS.

Thus, the Chancellor gives the Master Plan higher priority than
affordability. "Tuition will continue to grow," he said. Free Tuition, which gave CUNY its moral compass, is buried forever, even as a long-term vision worth working toward. The Chancellor does not even plan to hold tuition at its present level. The university, which many believe is becoming increasingly middle class, will become more so.

The funding plan has five parts: press Albany for more funding;
philanthropy; another early retirement incentive; productivity savings through centralized purchasing; and, finally, tuition increases. The Chancellor also wishes to provide incentives for more interdisciplinary research. He mentioned that he had already presented the funding plan to various groups, including the University Student Senate, and intends to present it to the state legislature

The tuition plan would avoid sudden steep increases. Increases would be steady and predictable. But for the students struggling to make ends meet, the increases present enormous difficulties. The Chancellor added, to be sure, that CUNY would make sure no student is kept out of college for financial reasons. However this statement strikes me as pretty meaningless when thousands of current students are forced to go to college part-time (sacrificing TAP) and/or must take time off from college--and when many of these students eventually find it impossible to find the money to continue.

I urge all to question the inevitability of rising tuition and to call on the university to reorder its priorities so that it is more affordable.

--Bill Crain

--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]