Additional funding for SUNY and CUNY 'must start this year,' higher education advocates say

The nation’s largest higher education union, United University Professions (UUP), as well as the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY union (PSC) held a joint press conference Monday calling on New York state leaders to increase SUNY and CUNY funding.

After what the two unions claimed was a decade of chronic underfunding, each requested $250 million in additional funding for CUNY and SUNY campuses – including the three SUNY public teaching hospitals located in Brooklyn, Stony Brook and Syracuse.

Joining the PSC and UUP at the press conference in Albany were students, lawmakers and higher education advocates, all hoping to encourage Governor Kathy Hochul and her administration to further fund CUNY and SUNY institutions.

“While we thank the governor for addressing long standing issues like closing the TAP Gap and investing in the Excelsior Scholarship in her Executive Budget, her proposal falls short when it comes to providing SUNY with the dollars it needs to overcome a decade of underfunding and flat budgets,” said UUP President Dr. Frederick E. Kowal, Ph.D. “SUNY is down $7 billion in state funding since the Great Recession. And here we are, in the second year of a pandemic, and there are zero dollars budgeted—zero—for critical mission funding for SUNY’s public teaching hospitals. For SUNY to meet the governor’s goal of being the best public higher education system in the nation, the state needs to make a long-term investment in SUNY. That must start this year.”

Read more: https://www.amny.com/education/additional-funding-for-suny-and-cuny/
(Metro New York)