|
TESTIMONY OF THE PROFESSIONAL
STAFF CONGRESS/CUNY
THE HIGHER EDUCATION COMMITTEE
OF THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
Delivered by Barbara Bowen,
President
June 12, 2003
Good morning, Chairman Barron and
honorable members of the City Council Higher Education Committee.
Thank you for holding today’s hearing and for your consistent
advocacy for the City University of New York.
Together with my colleagues from
the PSC, I am here to urge you to reject the proposed tuition
increase at CUNY’s community colleges and instead to use all your
energy to identify additional sources of public funds. No group has
been a stronger advocate for the needs of faculty, staff and
students at the community colleges than the PSC. We firmly support
the position that additional funding is needed this year. But we
cannot countenance an opportunistic increase in tuition as the way
to achieve it.
I want to be clear about the
seriousness of our position, because I recognize that the
recommendation to oppose the University’s request for spending
authorization cannot be made lightly. On the one hand, the PSC, as
representative of the faculty and staff in issues of employment,
might be expected to welcome any additional funding, no matter what
the source. I hope to show why we reject that position—fiscally,
historically, even morally. On the other, this Committee—and the
union—have a history of supporting funding requests by the
University and even linking arms in advocacy. It may be
uncomfortable to depart from that history, but this time the
University is wrong. We call on you to recognize that the
University’s request for authorization to spend the increased
revenue from tuition violates the deep interests of the people of
New York and of the City itself. Find public funding, don’t price
CUNY out of reach.
On the state budget, CUNY took
the right position—CUNY opposed an increase in tuition as a
substitute for public funding. There is no reason for that position
to change. All the arguments that were advanced by the University
then are still valid now: CUNY students are among the poorest
college students in the nation, CUNY tuition is already
comparatively high, increased tuition is no substitute for long-term
public support. You have heard testimony from the University
Administration today about the urgent need for “investment” in the
community colleges. You have heard about the crisis in full-time
faculty hiring at the community colleges, about the lack of support
for faculty and staff, the impoverishment of student services. To
every point we say Amen—in fact, we have long been singing the same
song for a long time, often solo, even within the University itself.
But where we differ is in our
definition of an “investment.” It is not an investment in
community colleges to demand that students make up for a
historical lack of public funds. Don’t mistake privatization for
investment. The PSC has consistently argued that a budget for a
public university that is based heavily on student tuition is
fiscally unsound. No one knows the effect a tuition increase will
have on enrollment; no one knows if thousands of students will
withdraw, as they did after the last tuition increase, causing
revenue to drop.
Equally important, the
University’s readiness to find alternatives to public funding sends
the wrong message to the Mayor and the City. Does CUNY really want
to say to the public, “Don’t worry if the City refuses to provide
the revenue to educate your children; don’t press to restore the
revenue lost through years of unfair tax reductions; we’ll just tax
the students”? To move immediately to a tuition increase, without
even exploring what public funds might be identified at this stage
in the budget, telegraphs to both the City and the State that the
responsibility for maintaining the strength of the University is not
theirs. I think that’s a dangerous message to send.
If I were a member of the Higher
Education Committee, I would ask CUNY what other avenues have been
explored for securing additional public funding. The current moment
may have been helpful in identifying a need for 25 to 30 million
dollars in additional funding—but how aggressively has the
University sought this amount from public sources? The PSC joins
the University in urging the Council to restore funds cut from
CUNY’s budget this year and provide for mandatory cost increases.
That is the funding to support our members and the amazing, unsung
work they do. But has CUNY pursued such approaches to new funding
as a downstate differential in the state FTE funding formula for
community colleges? SUNY recognizes a downstate differential in its
contract for faculty salaries, why not call for a similar
recognition of the higher cost of providing education in the
metropolitan area? Or has there been discussion of using public
funding to build up an endowment for the community colleges? All of
these ideas would require closer attention, but I question why the
University is not asking the Council to be its partner in seeking
new sources of public funding before asking for approval of a change
that will undoubtedly cost some students their education.
The PSC is concerned about the
timing of the University’s request for authorization to increase
tuition. We have no quarrel with the need; in fact, we would state
it more urgently. But the exact same need existed last year and the
year before that, as the budget has remained relatively constant.
To make the case for “investment” now, in the context of a request
to raise tuition, provokes some questions.
If I were a member of the
committee, I would ask whether this is really about investment or
whether it represents an opportunity to impose an increase. If
increasing tuition was wrong in the state budget, then it’s wrong in
the City budget. The development of a differential between senior
and community colleges is not a strong enough argument. We don’t
have proof of any of the predicted consequences of a tuition
differential. And what about the possibility of demanding a tuition
reduction for the senior colleges? Have we become so
acclimated to the not-yet-imposed increase that we’ve already
forgotten we could work to reverse it? Economist and former
Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently offered a trenchant
analysis of why increasing public college tuition across the country
is exactly the wrong way to go in this economic climate. The PSC
urges you not to compound a terrible decision by the State by
repeating it in the City.
Before I close by reflecting on
what this increase will mean for our students, I want to respond
briefly to some of the arguments for the increase advanced by the
University. The PSC is strenuously committed to protecting the
rights and interests of its members, the 20,000 faculty and staff of
CUNY. We would not advocate any position that placed those
interests in jeopardy. But to say that without this tuition
increase the faculty may face retrenchment is irresponsible. There
is no evidence, only speculation, that the new, higher tuition at
the four-year colleges will cause a mass exodus from these schools
in favor of the community colleges. Some significant evidence
points the other way. Colleges like Medgar Evers and Staten Island
have a strong constituent base in their communities and are unlikely
to see desertion in favor of community colleges. Others, like John
Jay and New York City College of Technology, offer unique programs
that are not duplicated at the community colleges and that will
continue to attract students. There just is not sufficient evidence
to claim that the tuition increase is essential in order to preserve
CUNY-wide enrollments. If a drop in specific areas of enrollment
does occur, we will work with the University and the Council, as we
have before, to buttress those programs and enhance the student
base.
We believe that what truly puts
our members in jeopardy is acquiescing to the substitution of public
for private funds as the core budget of a public university. No one
can be a more passionate advocate than the union for the need for
decent salaries and support for our community college faculty and
staff, but we recognize that deriving that support from the shifting
and uncertain source of student tuition—let alone that the students
are some of the poorest in the country—is a shaky proposition. The
fiscally responsible approach is to use every ounce of energy,
creativity and muscle to identify the necessary public funds.
When Ronald Regan was governor
of California, one of his major aims was to eliminate free tuition
at the University of California. He succeeded in 1970, leaving CUNY
the country’s sole free university system. As Governor Reagan
pushed his policy through, his aide Roger Freeman—who later served
as President Nixon’s educational policy advisor—commented: “We are
in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite!
We have to be selective about who we allow to through higher
education.” [Quoted by H. Bruce Franklin at the 2000 Modern Language
Association Convention, from “Professor Sees Peril in Education,”
San Francisco Chronicle, October 30, 1979.]
An educated proletariat is
dynamite, but not in the sense Freeman meant it. We, the CUNY
faculty and staff, are still committed to the mission of creating an
educated proletariat, and an educated middle class, an
educated city. That’s exactly the mission of the country’s oldest
and most visible urban university. But a tuition increase, even one
as “small” as 300 dollars, will inarguably have the effect of
driving some students from school. If you support the enactment of
this increase rather than the identification of new public funds,
you will be acquiescing in the slow death of accessible public
higher education. For we can all see that the country’s current
fiscal agenda, paring public funds to the bone, is really a
political agenda, but one most people are too genteel to articulate
in the way Roger Freeman did. Its real object is not just
increasing the wealth of the few but also making sure that the huge
majority has no access to the “dynamite” of education—or healthcare
or housing or other public goods. And in this case, the
anti-working class agenda is also racialized and gendered, as it
often is—because many of the poorest students at our community
colleges and those most at risk with the proposed tuition increase
are women and people of color.
As a labor union and a union
committed to public education, as part of a community of scholars
with allegiances to free and rich intellectual traditions, the PSC
cannot support a tuition increase that implicitly assents to the
withdrawal of public funds from CUNY. We maintain that other public
funding can be found, and we call on the City Council to join us in
insisting that increased tuition is not the answer.
|
