Andrew Gounardes                                      Karines Reyes

Dear Commons Community,

New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assemblywoman Karines Reyes introduced a package of bills to end CUNY tuition and to mandate appropriate numbers of academic advisors, mental health counselors and full-time faculty in the CUNY system.  The “New Deal” legislation comments that New York State government  increase its investment in the CUNY system to eliminate tuition fees for students, improve working conditions, and repair crumbling infrastructure, a group of state lawmakers says.  In presenting this proposal, Senator Gounardes said:  “CUNY is this huge economic development engine…The more we shift costs onto students, it makes it harder for them to thrive and come out on the other side.”

CUNY was free for city residents until the crippling 1976 fiscal crisis. Undergraduate tuition for city residents now runs $6,930 a year for full-time students at four-year colleges and $4,800 annually for full-time community college students.  The bill would also provide money to hire more academic and guidance counselors so the ratio of students to advisers would drop from its current 2,700-to-1 to a more manageable 1,000-to-1.

The legislation would seek to improve working conditions for CUNY’s thousands of adjunct staffers, who teach a big chunk of the university system’s courses, but get lower pay and less job security than their full-time counterparts.

The bill would require CUNY to pull first from the adjunct pool when filling full-time positions, and raise pay for part-time staffers.

The law would also revive a CUNY capital plan that legislators say has been dormant for years and allowed college infrastructure to crumble.

“We’ve been doing the bare minimum for critical maintenance. It’s been a decade since we had a prospective, forward looking capital plan,” said Gounardes, who noted students at Manhattan’s Baruch College told him they only had one working elevator, with lines that stretched outside the building.

Cutting tuition would cost an estimated $800 million over five years, legislators say. Hiring additional counselors and tapping adjuncts for full-time roles would run an additional $680 million over five years, and a new capital plan would require more than $5 billion in new funding.

Gounardes acknowledged the daunting costs, but said officials need to compensate for years of declining state aid for the public university system.

“It was austerity politics that put CUNY on this path in the first place,” said Gounardes. “Education, frankly, should not be a victim or susceptible to austerity politics.”

Legislators say funding for the massive public education package would come in part from proposed tax hikes on the wealthy to generate revenue for the state.

The COVID quarantine economic crisis has bruised the university system.

CUNY students have also felt the sting of the recession, said state Assemblywoman Karines Reyes (D-Bronx).  

Some CUNY students lost the jobs they depend on to pay their tuition, Reyes said. In her view eliminating tuition fees next year could keep some students from dropping out, which will contribute to the city’s economic recovery.

“There are people struggling to pay their rent right now,” she said. “Deciding to either continue taking classes or pay rent, it’s a no-brainer.”

CUNY is our city’s engine of social mobility. The 1.4 million alumni who graduated over the past 50 years earn $65.8 billion annually — compared a projected $32.6 billion if they had obtained only a high school degree. CUNY reports that the vast majority of its graduates continue to live in New York after completing their degrees, contributing to our economy and our tax base.

This enormous success comes despite starving CUNY year after year. Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of the core budget covered by state funding decreased from 64% to 35%, per analysis by CUNY scholar Meghan Moore-Wilk. If CUNY had the same state funding per student today as it did in 1990, the budget would be $1 billion larger.

The lack of funding has tangible impacts. As tuition rises, students feel the strain. Some 2,900 adjunct faculty were pushed off CUNY’s payroll during the coronavirus pandemic, reducing course offerings and increasing class sizes. Approximately 1,000 were re-hired. Buildings have gone without maintenance. Before 1976, CUNY was tuition-free. Now students shoulder ever more of the tuition burden

To unleash the full potential of our CUNY system, we propose a bold plan, A New Deal for CUNY, that would create a fully free CUNY that is once again a crown jewel of our country’s public higher education system.

The New Deal for CUNY would transform not just the education the students receive, but the ability of many more New Yorkers to access it.

This is a matter not just of economic growth and opportunity but of racial justice. CUNY’s student body is one of the most diverse in the nation, with a student enrollment of 21% Asian/Pacific Islander, 25% Black, 30% Hispanic students and 23% White. CUNY brings more students into the middle class than every single Ivy League school. Just imagine what it could do if we actually invested in it.

The crisis that has been thrust on us is at once the product of a virus but also of poor political decisions; it is also an opportunity. This is a moment for wealthy New Yorkers to pay their fair share in taxes, and to recognize that investing in CUNY today will result in a healthier economy for everyone tomorrow.

We are fighting for a New Deal for CUNY because it is a fight for economic and racial justice. But we are also fighting for a New Deal for CUNY because it is the key to the city’s economic recovery, growth and mobility, now and in the future.

Thank you Senator Gounardes and Assemblywoman Reyes.

I was also happy to see Meghan Moore-Wilk’s dissertation on the the Erosion of State Funding for Public Higher Education… cited in the announcement.

Tony