It is no secret that the City University of New York has been struggling financially for quite some time. With tuition hikes, reductions in class offerings, and increased class sizes, CUNY students from across the five boroughs are wrenched about from one semester to the next as desperately needed requisite classes prove to be understaffed, and elective classes are mysteriously dropped from the roster.
This budget crisis climaxed in November, when dozens of CUNY professors were arrested during a protest over their now sixth year without a contract—or a raise in salary.
Now with this in mind, review New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s latest budget for the state of New York. Out of the billions of dollars spent, one half-billion is glaringly absent: the state money allocated to funding one-third of the CUNY system.
Instead of coming from the state, Cuomo proposed that the money would come directly from New York City’s budget, a model abandoned during New York’s financial crisis in the 1970’s. Cuomo’s plan allotted some of this saved state money to begin to give professors their much needed raises, at the cost of a cut in state funding for the colleges.
After New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio fired back on the validity of the financial plan and denounced it as unfair, Cuomo backpedaled, assuring New Yorkers that the budget proposals served only as a way to generate discussion on CUNY cost cuts. Cuomo does not want CUNY academics to suffer from the financial game of hot potato, vowing that cuts would come to the CUNY bureaucracy, and money would be used to bolster classes and students. How that philosophy will be implemented remains to be seen.
What does all this mean for the future of the average CUNY student? As it stands, tuition at CUNY has risen $300 every year for the past five years thanks to a Cuomo backed legislation, a hike that will be prolonged for another five years if Cuomo’s budget has its way. With under-funding and overcrowding plaguing every college in the system, CUNY students’ woes do not seem to be abating anytime soon.