Early final January, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a plan to strengthen the state’s sprawling 64-campus public increased training system, describing it in significantly formidable phrases.
It could be “transformative,” Hochul’s workplace said at the time, a blueprint that will clinch the State University of New York as “the best statewide system of public higher education in our nation.”
However, the imaginative and prescient and the benchmarks tied to it have been too aspirational for some increased ed students.
They questioned: How might SUNY’s enrollment attain 500,000 college students after it nosedived by more than 20% in a decade? After all, the state’s pool of traditional-age school college students continues to shrink, and establishments nationwide haven’t bounced again from a pandemic-era enrollment crash.
And how might Stony Brook University and the University at Buffalo, or UB, which Hochul final year ordained as flagship establishments, reap $1 billion every in annual federal analysis funding by 2030? The governor has made piecemeal investments on this space, like millions of dollars for STEM facilities at UB, however the $1 billion goal is extra in step with analysis funding ranges of prestigious establishments like John Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Higher ed specialists and school leaders say Hochul’s targets require an inflow of public funding to realize. They seem to have progressed minimally in the year-plus since she introduced them.
Hochul has expressed optimism about the system’s future, although, particularly with the set up of John King, a former U.S. training secretary and New York training commissioner, as its new chancellor. She and a few observers say King was the lacking piece wanted to drag Hochul’s plan collectively.
A spokesperson for the governor, John Lindsay, responded to questions on the feasibility of Hochul’s plan with an emailed assertion.
“Governor Hochul has a bold vision to transform SUNY and secure its status as the best and most equitable public system of higher education in the country,” Lindsay mentioned. “Governor Hochul has announced historic investments in SUNY, and welcomed the appointment of former U.S. Secretary of Education John King as Chancellor, who will continue the full implementation of her vision for the system.”
What’s the drawback with SUNY?
While SUNY is the largest complete public increased ed system in the U.S., it has suffered from tendencies ravaging school enrollment throughout the nation.
Falling birth rates cut into the quantity of highschool graduates matriculating to the system general, however its neighborhood schools particularly started shedding college students after the Great Recession. Fewer college students are likely to enroll at neighborhood schools during times of financial prosperity as a result of extra plentiful work alternatives.
SUNY neighborhood school enrollment plummeted by about 34% since fall 2012, right down to 159,333 college students in fall 2022.
Compounding the systemwide enrollment drop was the unfold of COVID-19, which led to an financial contraction that defied earlier tendencies and hammered neighborhood schools’ headcounts the hardest.
Postsecondary training is simply now seeing hints of restoration, with undergraduate enrollment dipping solely barely, 0.6%, from the earlier year, current National Student Clearinghouse Research Center information reveals.
All of those issues have left SUNY combating for college students — not simply in New York’s mammoth increased ed market that features big-name schools like Columbia and Cornell universities, but in addition amongst its personal establishments.
SUNY’s most outstanding establishments, like University of Buffalo, have drawn scholar curiosity away from different of its campuses, mentioned Nathan Daun-Barnett, a UB instructional management and coverage professor.
UB has been in a position to climate the enrollment downturn by accepting college students it usually wouldn’t with barely weaker tutorial data, Daun-Barnett mentioned. This is an possibility most SUNY establishments don’t have, as they aren’t brimming with candidates.
What’s in a plan?
Part of Hochul’s technique entails redefining establishments’ roles inside the system, like lifting up UB and Stony Brook as flagships.
Investing in these establishments — together with the different two SUNY “university centers,” University at Albany and Binghamton University — stays a big focus of the plan. University of Albany and Binghamton have been charged with receiving $500 million every year in analysis funding.
The thought is that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” and each SUNY establishment will ultimately profit from the 4 universities having main nationwide profiles, mentioned Nancy Zimpher, who was system chancellor from 2009 to 2017. Zimpher now works at the National Association of System Heads, serving to direct its Power of Systems program, a coalition of public establishments aiming to resolve a few of increased ed’s most urgent issues.
Ideally, UB and Stony Brook would compete with main public analysis establishments like the University of Michigan, mentioned Daun-Barnett.
Michigan’s flagship attracts big contingents of out-of-state and worldwide college students, who typically pay increased tuition charges. If extra of these sorts of college students got here to the two New York flagships, it might bolster their funds, and the boosted enrollment might spill over to different SUNY establishments, Daun-Barnett mentioned.
The system is devising “cascading” admissions wherein college students who have been turned down at one SUNY establishment might be admitted at one other.
SUNY’s utility numbers are up, although it credit this largely to a current two-week fee-waiver program. It announced a “historic” application increase for fall 2023 — from 97,257 functions the earlier year to 204,437 — a 110% bounce as of November. SUNY additionally noticed 70% extra out-of-state functions.
Hochul and the system are banking on King to maintain this momentum going. They have lauded his expertise as federal training secretary and his intimate information of New York as its former training commissioner — although he did depart the state as an unpopular figure who pushed by way of controversial Ok-12 coverage reforms.
Hochul’s plan modifications the manner SUNY has operated for years, underneath a “systemness” model that stresses its energy as a unit, an method Zimpher championed.
The governor’s concepts don’t erode “systemness,” however fairly weaves collectively distinct establishments to their benefit, Zimpher mentioned. She mentioned King, who makes a speciality of “collective impact,” is well-prepared to information that work.
Zimpher envisions SUNY taking college students by way of every stage of their tutorial careers, from neighborhood school to a complicated diploma, which she mentioned would require tighter partnerships amongst the establishments. SUNY can assemble a majority of these frictionless switch agreements as a result of it has “everything under one roof,” versus someplace like California, the place its neighborhood schools should iron out switch guidelines with its two separate four-year public methods, Zimpher mentioned.
However, issues have arisen about the analysis emphasis and flagship designations, particularly that they’d spur extra institutional infighting. Shortly after Hochul introduced her design for SUNY, two state lawmakers wrote to her that University of Albany and Binghamton also needs to be made flagships — or the system ought to have none in any respect.
Haves and have nots
In some methods, Hochul’s plan has drawn consideration to deep monetary disparities between establishments resembling the newly designated flagships — whose enrollments have held regular for years — and people with deficits.
Frederick Kowal, president of the United University Professions union that represents broad numbers of SUNY school, mentioned at the very least 19 campuses have “severe financial troubles.”
SUNY Fredonia, for occasion, is projected to have a funds hole as excessive as $16 million.
“There’s a class distinction between those university centers and the comprehensive colleges and the other campuses,” Kowal mentioned. “I see that as a potential problem.”
Hochul’s initiative doesn’t create a fund for these distressed campuses, a program the union has requested. Nor has she proposed a significant increase in SUNY’s basic working funds.
SUNY’s 10-year falling enrollment coincided with essentially unchanged state support, which adopted Great Recession-era cuts that mirrored patterns throughout the remainder of the nation.
Public increased ed leaders throughout the nation typically blame middling state help for monetary woes. Observers of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, for occasion, named low state funding as the perpetrator for its rocky monetary scenario that led to current mergers of six of its establishments into two.
Daun-Barnett, the UB professor, mentioned he fears comparable consolidations for SUNY ought to its financially stricken campuses not get state assist.
King, nonetheless, mentioned that the New York authorities underneath Hochul has made “down payments” in SUNY.
He pointed to Hochul earmarking $53 million last year for hiring new full-time school throughout 30 campuses, in addition to $60 million for stemming the enrollment bleeding and creating new tutorial packages. In her 2024 funds proposal, Hochul floated creating an endowment matching fund for the 4 college facilities — UB, Stony Brook, Binghamton and Albany — wherein the state will give $1 for each $2 in non-public contributions, as much as $500 million.
Her funds plan preserves spending for neighborhood schools ultimately year’s ranges. The neighborhood schools underneath the state’s funding method confronted a decline in appropriations.
“We’re headed in a really good direction,” King mentioned.
However, the funds proposal additionally authorizes SUNY to bump tuition by 3% at most SUNY schools or 6% at the college facilities. The college facilities might hold elevating tuition for 5 years, a cap of a 30% enhance.
This raised the eyebrows of some college students and school entry advocates.
They questioned the knowledge of SUNY — which caters to moderate-income college students and is understood for affordability — mountaineering tuition, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 disaster. Higher costs might additional dampen enrollment.
King mentioned the proposed tuition will increase are modest and that greater than half of full-time college students don’t pay tuition due to federal Pell Grants or state help. New York recently broadened one in every of its monetary support funds, the Tuition Assistance Program, in order that part-time college students taking between six and 11 credit qualify.
He mentioned he still feels Hochul’s targets, together with the 500,000 scholar enrollment benchmark, are attainable — “over time.”
King rattled off an answer acquainted to increased ed leaders discussing enrollment troubles — that SUNY has but to completely faucet right into a market of stopped out college students with some credentials however no diploma. Adult college students can even want upskilling and might want microcredentials, he mentioned.
“The board of trustees is in alignment with the goal of making SUNY the best public university system in the world,” he mentioned.