Friday, November 14, 2008

Paterson Offers Higher Ed A Bone While Swiping A Leg

City University of New York Chancellor Matthew Goldstein praised the Governor for a "paradigm shift" by offering a small portion (10% in the first year) of his proposed tuition hikes for CUNY and SUNY back to the schools. Chancellor Goldstein of course is probably just happy from his recent $55,000 dollar raise, bringing his salary and benefits to over half a million a year. That he gets to swim in his money when students have to pay for a substitute for budget cuts is obscene. Perhaps it is his job as an Administrator to keep money flowing in and not out, but he must have forgot that the ones kicking in the extra dough are the students who can least afford it in these troubled times.

From The NY Times:

“The way it is now certainly is not the best way to do things,” said H. Carl McCall, a member of the SUNY board. “Any tuition program we put forward would be some program that would look at predictable, regular increases rather than these spikes during a crisis.”

In the past, he said, such a change has met resistance among lawmakers. “They feel their constituents are hard-pressed and don’t want to pay additional fees every year,” he explained.
Well yeah, no one wants to pay extra fees, but legislators looking at such a drastic budget cut called for by Paterson might not hear the students as well when faced with the alternative of pissing off their wealthy contributors. The millionaire's tax is getting some discussion but Paterson is adamantly against any kind of tax increase. What really needs to happen is for Paterson to be pushed to change his mind and pinch the pockets of the 26,000 Millionaires in this state and not the millions who are going to shoulder the burden of hard times if he gets to keep things his way.

As for tuition increases, Pat Callan of the National Center for Public and Higher Education has the right idea:

The concern is that if the colleges and universities are allowed to increase tuition annually, they will still turn to even-bigger increases during tough economic times because that is easier than the alternative of cutting spending.

“It is a whacko system that no one defends,” said Mr. Callan. “But it works well enough for the colleges and legislators, so no one is willing to risk changing it.”

He said the current crisis presented a brief window of opportunity by focusing attention on the problem.

“As soon as this moment passes, then there is no real incentive to fix it,” he said.

Now is the time to make things right and not spike the cost for those that are trying to go back to college in tough times. Ideally we shouldn't be paying for tuition to our state schools as it was decades ago, but we can at least start turning the trend around so that the system puts students closer to the front of the line when the budget battles heat up. We as the public can stand up and join CUNY faculty and groups like NYPIRG to fight back. Politicians do hear us when we organize, but we must be loud when Wall Street comes into the room with a multi-million dollar sound system when we have a bullhorn at best.