Fighting for a New Deal for CUNY

PSC’s State Budget Platform

The PSC’s budget platform seeks to improve retention and completion rates by hiring 1,000 new full-time faculty and 95 academic advisors and mental health counselors. To fund these investments, CUNY needs an additional $108 million added to the modest funding increase proposed by the Governor.

To fully fund CUNY, close the Adams Budget Crisis inflicted by the former mayor, and make other investments essential to making life in our state more affordable, the PSC is also supporting a platform of revenue raisers that would generate $17 billion in annual revenue for the state, $4 billion for New York City, and $300 million directly for CUNY.

See the New Deal for CUNY FY27 PSC/CUNY State Budget Request

Governor Hochul’s Executive Budget

The Governor’s Executive Budget for next fiscal year increases CUNY senior college operating funding by $28 million and it adds $23.5 million to cover increasing faculty and staff fringe benefit costs.

Community colleges will receive the same operating funding as last year, maintaining the “funding floor” at 100% of prior year funding, as they say in Albany budget parlance. State budgets for the last four years have maintained prior-year funding and sidestepped the enrollment-based funding model for community colleges to avoid deep budget cuts that would have resulted from pandemic-driven enrollment declines.

Funding increases provided by the Legislature in the last round of budget negotiations for the opportunity program SEEK/College Discovery, the Murphy Institute/School of Labor and Urban Studies, Black Male Initiative, and other programs were not included in Hochul’s plan. The State Senate and Assembly will have to negotiate to restore funding to these programs.