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New Deal for CUNY

Decades of State Disinvestment

State Disinvestment

  • State funding per student at the senior colleges declined 38% between 1990 and 2022, when adjusted for inflation. It fell 18% between the Great Recession of 2008 and 2022, due largely to Governor Cuomo’s refusal to fund CUNY’s mandatory operating costs.

Tuition Hikes

  • Austerity for CUNY predates the Great Recession; it started with NYC’s Fiscal Crisis of 1975. In the wake of “open admissions,” as campuses were diversifying, CUNY began to charge tuition. 
    • For more than 100 years, the majority white student population at CUNY could attend tuition-free.
    • Senior college tuition has increased significantly in recent decades, when adjusted for inflation. Community college tuition has increased over the same periods.   

Faculty Shortages and Adjunct Exploitation

  • Before the 1975 Financial Crisis, CUNY employed 11,500 full-time faculty members. 
  • Now there are only 7,200 full-time faculty and most undergraduate teaching is done by 11,000 under-paid adjuncts. 
  • Most CUNY adjuncts work without job security and are paid significantly less to teach the same level of courses as their full-time colleagues.

Understaffed & overwhelmed Student Services

  • For most CUNY students, the University is their only access to mental health counseling
  • CUNY lags behind the national average ratio of academic advisors to students.
  • PSC members providing advisement and counseling report overwhelming caseloads 

Crumbling Infrastructure 

  • More than half of CUNY’s 300 buildings are over 50 years old
  • Only 8% of CUNY buildings are in a state of good repair   
  • The Deferred Maintenance Backlog on CUNY buildings is over $5 billion

Un-Competitive  Wages

  • Professors at CUNY earn less than their counterparts employed at peer institutions like Pace University, Fordham, University of Connecticut, Rutgers University, and Stony Brook University. 
  • CUNY adjuncts earn less per course than adjuncts teaching at comparable colleges and universities in and around New York. 
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