The Challenge

• The recently submitted Preliminary Report of the Commission on Higher Education urges the State to take urgent measures to strengthen higher education in order to meet the challenges of rapidly changing demographic, scientific, technological and economic trends and ensure New York’s standing as a global center of ideas in the 21st Century.
• Full-Time Faculty: The Commission found that existing levels of full-time faculty in New York’s public higher education systems are well below the levels in comparable institutions in other states.

• Only 52% of faculty are full-time at SUNY and CUNY 4-year colleges while the comparable figure at public institutions in Pennsylvania and Texas are 75% and 79% respectively.

• Research and Development: Our colleges and universities play an essential role in conducting research and development activities that foster economic growth, and the State should encourage world class research efforts, which could include making funding available to underwrite meritorious scientific and technological research projects.
• New York State receives just 7.9% of academic research and development grants in the United States, a 2.1% drop since 1980 when it received 10% of all grants – a difference that amounts to more than $2 billion per year. According to the Commission, an additional 27,000 jobs would have been generated had the State maintained its 10% share.

• Community Colleges: Students seeking to transfer from community colleges to senior colleges often do not receive full credit for the courses they have completed. The resulting duplication of classes drains both the wallets and financial aid eligibility of those students who can least afford the added burden.
• Funding: To achieve the improvements necessary to ensure the pre-eminence of New York’s institutions of higher education and meet the financial needs of New York’s public institutions there must be a dependable and substantial source of revenue that can be devoted to current and future investments over time.

Our Approach

• While the Governor has not taken a position on all of the Commission’s recommendations, three recommendations were specifically endorsed in the State of the State Address:
• Full-Time Faculty: Over 5 years, SUNY and CUNY will strategically hire 2,000 additional full-time faculty, including 250 eminent scholars who are recognized as leaders in their fields.
• Research and Development: The Empire State Innovation Fund will provide grants to fund promising academic research in New York. Only highly meritorious proposals will be funded, as determined by peer review. Preference in funding will be granted to those proposals which carry significant opportunities for economic development.
• Community Colleges: To make transfer between community colleges and senior colleges seamless, university faculty will work together to identify minimum standards for lower-division courses, and senior colleges will accept transferred credits as prerequisites for higher courses and as counting towards degree requirements.
• How to pay for it: Our proposal would establish a Higher Education Endowment, which the Governor said should initially be at least $4 billion in size. This Endowment would be similar to traditional college endowments. Using the standard endowment distribution of five percent a year, this will provide $200 million in operating funds each year to provide financial support to address the long-term needs and improvements identified as priorities by the Commission on Higher Education.

• The Governor suggested that the Endowment could be funded by monetizing some portion of the State Lottery, which would be accomplished under a process to be determined in consultation with the Legislature. The Governor indicated that he would accomplish this either by taking in private investment or looking at other financing alternatives. Earnings from the investment of the Endowment’s principal would provide a dependable stream of revenue for higher education investments.
• The Endowment would be administered by an independent board of trustees, which would include appointees of the Governor and Legislative leaders, who would be responsible for making investment decisions. The current level of commitment to providing funds for primary and secondary education from the Lottery would be maintained, with annual adjustments for inflation.
• The State will continue to regulate all Lottery games to assure that they do not inappropriately encourage gambling.

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