ALBANY, N.Y. — The SUNY board of trustees on Thursday allocated an additional $114 million from the state budget for its campuses across New York.
The allocation maintains last year’s investments “and the progress they have generated,” SUNY contended in its Thursday announcement.
At the same time, Frederick Kowal, president of United University Professions (UUP) said that he was disappointed by the trustees’ decision to underfund 19 “financially distressed” campuses in its state-aid allocation.
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UUP describes itself as the nation’s largest higher-education union, with more than 42,000 academic and professional faculty and retirees.
Allocation
The $114 million in increased funding provides $102 million to support SUNY faculty and staff, contributing support for salary increases reflected in recent collective–bargaining agreements.
It also provides $4.5 million for additional student internships, bringing the two-year total to more than $14 million. The funding also allocates $4 million to support faculty and student researchers.
It also continues to reduce mandatory fees for graduate–student workers with an additional $3 million, bringing the two-year total to $6 million.
SUNY also noted the funding represents the “largest two-year infusion in at least five decades” with an increase of $277 million in tax support allocated to SUNY.
Last year’s $163 million increase in the 2023-24 budget made it possible for SUNY toprovide double-digit percentage increases in support at every campus, including support for faculty hiring and student services across the system.
It also spent more than $40 million in mental–health services, support for students with disabilities, student internships, expanding research, and addressing food insecurity. That funding also helped reduce mandatory fees for graduate–student workers, SUNY said.
“Today’s announcement marks a historic investment in our nation-leading statewide public higher education system and will inject critical funding to support our students and faculty,” SUNY Chancellor John King, Jr. contended in the announcement.
UUP reaction
In its statement, for the second year in a row, UUP said the trustees approved an allocation plan that sends the “lion’s share” of funding to the financially secure university centers and “doles out what’s left” to the rest of the campuses — including those dealing with multimillion-dollar deficits.
Some of those campuses, like SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Fredonia, have announced program and staff cuts to reduce deficits of $9 million and $17 million, respectively.
“Once again, SUNY leadership has been taken down the wrong road again by Chancellor John King Jr.,” Kowal contended in the statement. “By doing so, they continue to undermine the system they are supposed to lead.”
Kowal also said the trustees’ allocation plan will help the university centers, but they could have used those funds to “wipe out” a combined $146 million deficit at the 19 campuses, many of them located upstate.
