With the state's budget deadline looming, NYSUT's higher education members are continuing to push the message that New York's public colleges and universities are incubators for jobs, ideas, investments and inventions that bear the "Made in New York" label.

NYSUT crafted its annual Higher Education Lobbying Day March 3 as a two-for-one package, delivering that message through personal visits by members to lawmakers, and then — at a symposium for legislators and members — offering real-life examples of how public higher education is contributing to the state's economy.

Some 200 members — many of whom traveled through a winter storm — turned out to meet with legislators and press them to help turn back Gov. Paterson's proposed cuts to the SUNY and CUNY systems. The Executive Budget would cut state aid to the State University by $201 million; the three SUNY teaching hospitals by $25 million; and the City University of New York by $64.8 million.

NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan Lubin reminded members as they gathered for the lobbying day that public higher education needs revenue, not just a reversal of the proposed budget cuts, and that NYSUT favors getting that revenue through reform of the state's personal income tax.

"You should not leave a meeting without letting them know that most New Yorkers support a progressive income tax," Lubin told the gathering. "We have assured the governor that we are going to continue this fight until we have a bill before him."

Members delivered the tax reform reminder along with vivid personal accounts of what it's like to teach at a public college in New York these days.

"The cuts we've been facing are just devastating," said UUP member Jacqualine Berger, the part-time concerns representative from SUNY's Empire State College, on a visit to the office of Assembly member Francine DelMonte of Niagara Falls. "At the moment, we're getting swamped with all the people who have lost their jobs. We are so swamped with students, it's been overwhelming. We need more faculty."

At CUNY, faculty and staff are identifying a new sign of the times: Veterans returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan who are enrolling in college, said PSC Secretary Arthurine DeSola, as she paused to confer with colleagues in the halls of the Legis- lative Office Building. Some of the students need counseling or other special services, adding yet another strain to CUNY.

"Some of them have post-traumatic stress disorder," DeSola said. "The VAs are saturated. We don't have enough mental health counselors. The ratio at City University right now is one counselor to 5,000 students; it should be one for every 1,500."

NYSUT's three higher education leaders thanked members for giving yet again of their time, in what is turning out to be the most difficult budget year in memory for the state's public colleges and universities.

"The kind of directness and genuineness with which we speak when we come out of the labs and the lecture halls — it can't be duplicated," said Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, which represents more than 20,000 faculty and staff at CUNY.

Phil Smith, president of United University Professions, which represents 35,000 academic and professional faculty at SUNY, reinforced Lubin's message about income tax reform.

"Without an appropriate revenue stream, we are destined for more cuts," Smith said.

A combination of overcrowded classes, rising tuition costs, a faculty stretched too thin and reductions in the number of courses and sections offered each semester has made it increasingly difficult for SUNY students to complete a degree in four years, Smith said.
A longer college education is a more expensive education, so some of those students are making a surprising move in an effort to cut costs.

"We're finding for the first time in history that students at the SUNY four-year colleges are transferring back out to SUNY community colleges," Smith told NYSUT members.
And that, in turn, is adding to the burden of the community colleges.

"We're reaching near capacity in terms of access to our colleges," said Ellen Schuler Mauk, president of the Faculty Association of Suffolk Community College, who also chairs NYSUT's Higher Education Council.

Contact Darryl McGrath at dmcgrath@nysutmail.org