New York's four-year colleges and universities could finally see some increases in their full-time faculty as a result of the long-awaited recommendations of a state panel on higher education, but it remains unclear whether community colleges would also benefit from such a hiring push.

As community colleges wait to discover how the Higher Education Commission's preliminary report will play out for their campuses, the crisis of overcrowded classrooms continues, said Ellen Schuler Mauk, president of the Faculty Association of Suffolk Community College.

Gov. Spitzer appointed the Higher Education Commission in May and charged it with examining the public higher education system with an eye toward making New York more competitive in the 21st century. NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan Lubin, who presided over the NYSUT Higher Education Council meeting in early January, praised the governor's intent in tackling the complex system of public higher education in New York state.

"He has said wonderful things about his commitment to higher education; he has said wonderful things about his commitment to

K-12; and he has delivered on a lot," Lubin told the council.

The commission released its preliminary report last month, along with the recommendation that 2,000 more full-time faculty be hired for the State University and City University systems — a recommendation echoed by the governor in his Jan. 9 State of the State address. (See article above.) That hiring recommendation, however, did not mention community colleges.

"We've been talking about this literally for 20 years at community colleges," Schuler Mauk said. "The major influx of adjuncts at the community colleges started in the mid-80s, and it's just grown exponentially. The full-time-to-part-time ratio at the community colleges is much worse than it is at the four-year institutions."

Community colleges typically have nearly 70 percent part-time faculty, Schuler Mauk said. System-wide, SUNY has about 50 percent part-time faculty. Nationally, higher ed experts say a college or university should strive for 70 percent full-time faculty, a goal rarely met at any of the state's public campuses.

Full funding

Fred Floss, acting president of United University Professions, praised the commission's recommendation for more full-time faculty at SUNY and CUNY, but added that "the state needs to fully fund — through state support — the costs of hiring the additional full-time faculty, rather than expecting SUNY and CUNY to provide the income from anticipated enrollment growth or tuition hikes."

UUP represents 34,000 academic and professional faculty in the SUNY system. Longtime UUP President William Scheuerman, who was appointed to the Higher Education Commission last spring, stepped down from UUP just before the preliminary report came out to become president of the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. Scheuerman intends to remain on the state commission until its work is finished.

The Professional Staff Congress, which represents 20,000 faculty and staff at CUNY, joined Schuler Mauk in noting that the preliminary report left unanswered some important questions about staffing levels at community colleges. Steven London, PSC vice president, said that the references to research, threaded through the recommendations, raised additional questions. The report recommended the SUNY Board of Trustees appoint a new commmittee to focus on the research needs and capacity of SUNY's four major research centers and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, but that recommendation made no mention of the important role that research plays at smaller campuses.

"The whole nature of research that's embedded in the report completely misses what happens throughout the entire university and the community college levels," London said. Many campuses within CUNY and the community college systems are engaged in original research, London added, especially in the humanities and social sciences.

Council discussion also centered on how colleges can better work with their K-12 counterparts in providing remedial programs for students.

The Higher Education Commission report lauded the efforts already under way, including the College Discover and Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge programs at CUNY and the Educational Opportunity Programs at SUNY.

"If we're going to be a partner in closing the gap, it must be a much broader effort," UUP Secretary Eileen Landy told the group. "There need to be more community-based, freshman-year programs. There are lots of different ways that have been successful, but it's often a big budgetary issue."

- Darryl McGrath