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I. Introduction: Cuts and More Cuts
As of late November 1991, New York State government is again facing a fiscal crisis, the estimated magnitude of which may be as high as a $700 million General Fund budget gap in the State fiscal year ending March 31, 1992, and a gap that may be as high as $3.6 billion for the next fiscal year. The Division of Budget, earlier in the month (when the gap was thought to be much less), requested that SUNY begin contingency plans for permanent reductions in General Fund support of two percent, three percent, or four percent. At this time, the nature of a deficit closing plan that the Executive and Legislature can agree upon, and the impact of such a plan on this, or on an extended, fiscal year for SUNY are uncertain. However, since this year is dreadfully tight already, and since the 1992-93 fiscal year needs $19 million more for the State-operated campuses, even with no new salary increases, and $15 million more for the community colleges just to break even, most of the likely scenarios appear at this time to be devastating, with huge losses in dollars, positions, programs, morale, and perhaps both quality and access.
This would be the sixth budget cut in the past four years. Since the start of the 1988-89 fiscal year, the SUNY State-operated and funded campuses have absorbed nearly $49 million in one-time cuts and $143 million (inflation adjusted) in permanent cuts, after the addition of more than $100 million in tuition revenue increases. Since 1975-76, authorized positions have been cut by 4,851, or 17 percent; permanent budget cuts net of all additions have totaled $394 million (1991-92 dollars); and one-time funding reductions, also net and expressed in 1991-92 dollars, have totaled $83 million.
During the sixteen-year period, position reductions have been accomplished largely through attrition, with cuts falling particularly heavily on janitors, cleaners, and clerical workers. There have also been faculty and professional staff retrenchments affecting academic programs and eliminating nine campus laboratory schools and several State-funded public service and research programs. Other position reductions have included vehicle maintenance and maintenance shop workers, nurses and health care workers in campus infirmaries, library technical staff, and clerical and support staff in administrative offices and academic departments. Central Administration cuts have been especially heavy in the past four years, with the loss of five vice chancellors, 43 total staff (a nearly 16 percent reduction), and an inflation adjusted budget cut of some $3.2 million, or 19.5 percent. Some of the staff cuts have been partly offset by gains in productivity through technology and management improvements, but in many cases programs and services are simply either no longer being provided, or are being provided at lower quality (e.g., as with larger classes, or the substitution of lower paid part-time teachers for regular professors, or longer waiting periods for counseling, advising, or tutoring).
II. The Likelihood of Future Restorations
The appropriate response to whatever share the University will ultimately have to bear of this current further State fiscal deterioration depends in large measure on permanence, or irreversibility, of these and other recent losses in core General Fund tax support. If substantial recovery is likely, or at least "not unlikely," in the relatively near future, then the appropriate response might well be to hold onto the current course--i.e., to take the budget cuts in ways that minimize long-term consequences, maintaining most programs and most enrollments, minimizing retrenchments, and "holding on" for better days to return.
However, if a significant restoration of State General Fund tax support is unlikely, and the current and apparently worsening downsizing not likely in the foreseeable future to be reversed by tax revenues, then some very different options present themselves. Specifically, either a very much higher tuition must be imposed as an alternative revenue source, or the cuts that have been taken must be considered as virtually permanent, and a new -- and significantly smaller -- State University conceptualized.
For SUNY's General Fund support to recover significantly would require three conditions: (1) a recovery of the economy; (2) a recovery of the State's General Fund -- which must assume a resistance to further tax cuts, and perhaps even some tax increases; and (3) a much higher priority extended to SUNY for the use of these additional revenues -- i.e., a place toward the head of the queue for additional State tax dollars--in competition with such other public needs as health care, welfare, public infrastructure, economic development, housing, and elementary and secondary education. Increasing doubt that these three factors will, in fact, come together to replenish SUNY's deeply cut tax support is contributing to a more serious consideration of options other than "holding the line."
III. The Options
It is in this context that we must consider very seriously some difficult options. For purposes of discussion, it may be useful to consider the following five. In all likelihood, a combination of elements from several options could constitute a sixth option. For each option, some pros, cons, and necessary conditions and assumptions are suggested.
Those in SUNY's extended family of trustees, presidents, faculty, staff, and student leaders, council members, and others, as well as leaders in the State's Executive and legislative branches need to be part of the discussion both of the likelihood (or improbability) of a restoration of General Fund support and of the option or options that would best protect the State University and its mission to the State of New York if restoration is no longer considered a responsible planning assumption.
Option #1: Hold the Course -- downsize all campuses, presumably only temporarily maintaining as much enrollment and current program configuration as is possible.
This is the current stance of the State University, as reflected most recently in the SUNY 2000 planning document and in the official 1992-93 budget request. This option continues to assume that better economic times will come to New York State and that increased tax revenues, next year or soon thereafter, will recover some significant portion of recent cuts, as well as keep up with subsequent cost increases (i.e., wage and salary and general inflationary increases plus increases in enrollments).
The SUNY position under Option #1 would continue to be that: (a) the University should grow slightly, not contract; (b) there are no superfluous campuses or major unnecessary or uneconomical programs or schools to close; and (c) New York State's General Fund commitment to public higher education is too low, by absolute and comparative measures, and both should and can increase, at least as a percentage of State tax revenues, as soon as there is some general State economic recovery.
The anticipated next round of cuts would be spread to all campuses much as has been done for the past decade and one-half. The campuses would be asked to maintain as much enrollment as possible. Campuses would cut by attrition and layoff, with some programs eliminated or significantly downsized, and by continuing to curtail maintenance, new equipment, travel, library acquisitions, etc. The effect would be increased class sizes, increased advising and counseling loads, and reductions in student services, administration, public affairs, public service programs, and new programs of all kinds.
The advantages of "hold-the-course" are:
1. The long-term case for SUNY's needs would be maintained, not abandoned.
2. Enrollments would be generally maintained.
3. Job loss by layoff or retrenchment would be less severe than with Options #2, 3, and 4, below, (although could still be extensive).
4. This is the option most likely favored by many elected State officials, who do not wish to acknowledge, or genuinely do not believe, that New York State cannot maintain its State University.
The disadvantages of "hold-the-course" are:
1. All units of SUNY would be weakened. Constant cuts by attrition cripple programs and departments indiscriminately. No resources would be made available for reinvestment or for protecting the highest priority programs.
2. If the economy never recovers, or if SUNY is not to benefit even with some recovery, then the day of reckoning, and the ultimate pain, will just be postponed, and perhaps be made worse.
3. The pressure to cut enrollments will become fierce. Enrollments may fall of their own accord due to the unavailability of key sections and courses.
4. One or two of SUNY's smaller campuses might become unviable with much more cutback while attempting to "hold-the-line."
Option #2: Downsize permanently both the faculty and staff and the enrollments of the State-operated and funded campuses.
This option would spread the cuts through many or most of the State-operated and funded campuses, but match with commensurate cuts in enrollments so that class size, section availability, access to student services, and the like are generally maintained. The cuts would be considered permanent, and enrollments, faculty, staff, space, and programs would all be reduced to yield a State University with 29 State-operated campuses still, but all of them smaller than today. The faculty and staff cuts and the program elimination's would probably be even sharper than in Option #1, above, because maintenance, OTPS, library expenditures, and equipment purchases would be more protected. But the commensurate cut in enrollments would, over time at least, protect quality.
The advantages to downsizing both faculty/staff and enrollments are:
1. Quality -- at least as represented by such indices as class sizes, faculty/student ratios, and the like -- could be maintained, at least relative to Option #1.
2. Those who believe that the State University baccalaureate campuses currently admit too many students would be pleased, as would those who believe it to be essential to preserve enrollments in New York State's private colleges and universities.
3. The political bitterness and divisiveness associated with campus closures would be avoided.
The disadvantages of overall downsizing are:
1. SUNY will seem to have abandoned its claim for a University funded on a par with other state universities and meeting the needs of the State as articulated in SUNY 2000: A Vision for the New Century.
2. Access would be reduced, at least to the State-operated campuses. Students turned away would presumably turn to community colleges, to the independent sector, to out-of-state colleges, or to the work force; it is not clear how much demand these alternatives could absorb.
3. SUNY community colleges, themselves hard pressed, would become more crowded; the full opportunity principle even might be jeopardized.
4. SUNY State-operated colleges, squeezed between large numbers of academically qualified first-time students and lower overall enrollment caps would no longer be able to guarantee transfer opportunities to community college A.A. and A.S. graduates.
5. It is not clear that a SUNY enrolling substantially fewer students would not get cut even more.
6. At some point, reduction in scale totally changes the nature and fundamental mission of a small campus
Option #3: Downsize permanently by closing a campus or two or three.
This option, like Option #2, assumes a permanently smaller State University, with no restoration of tax support. But Option #3 would protect the rest of the University by taking at least some of the cuts through the closure of a State-operated or funded campus or two or three (including the possibility of closing a major school of a large campus). This strategy assumes that the Governor and Legislature will not only concur with the radical "campus closure" option, but will allow SUNY to keep the saved funds in order to protect the quality of the rest of the University; it also assumes that there will be time to make such savings in light of probable enormous legal and logistical challenges that would accompany a campus closure.
The advantages of radical restructuring are:
1. Quality and even enrollments might be better able to be maintained at the rest of the State-operated and funded campuses.
2. Some persons view "radical restructuring" as good management in a time of great financial stress and expect it to have to take place in SUNY. The absence of a radical move--as in Option #1 hold-the-line, or Option #2 across-the-board downsizing--may seem to some to be weak and unimaginative, quite apart from the actual or relative real merits of any particular "radical" action.
The disadvantages of radical restructuring are:
1. Closing otherwise popular and viable campuses just so that other campuses might be better off will be politically and logistically difficult, if possible at all. In fact, it is difficult even to discuss campus closure as an option without doing damage to a campus that might or might not be a real candidate.
2. The financial benefits of a campus or a school closure, while potentially considerable, take some years to realize, making such an option of no use at all to solve an immediate cash problem, and worthwhile only with a large and virtually permanent budget cut.
3. Since no campus is currently superfluous or without distinctive merits, there would be substantial academic and other losses to the State in the closure of a campus, the nature and extent of which would depend on the particular campus or campuses.
4. The closure of a campus brings cost to its surrounding region even greater than the costs to the immediate employees who lose jobs. Some towns would be irreparably devastated by the loss of their SUNY campus.
Option #4: Downsize permanently the faculty and staff of the State-operated and funded campuses, but maintain enrollments through significantly larger teaching loads and less faculty/student interaction, fewer administrative services for either faculty or students, less maintenance, significantly diminished expectations of scholarly activity from the faculty, etc.
SUNY could downsize its State-operated and funded campuses, as in Option #2, but retain their enrollments on a more-or-less permanent basis by simply accepting the loss of quality as a trade-off for the maintenance of access. This option must be viewed alongside the fact that SUNY faculty teaching loads are already at or slightly higher than national norms for similar sectors and are considerably higher than comparable private college norms, and overall per-student costs in SUNY, even with what used to be higher than average wages and salaries, are generally at or slightly below those of comparable public universities and colleges.
The advantages to downsizing faculty and staff while maintaining enrollments are:
1. If quality could be preserved, this option would maintain enrollments and accessibility.
2. This option corresponds to some people's views, however mistaken they may be, that faculty and University staff do not work as hard, or under as onerous conditions, as other persons of similar educational and intellectual background.
The disadvantages to cutting faculty and staff and maintaining current enrollments are:
1. Quality would suffer as faculty and staff had even less time per student. Student learning, student retention, scholarship, and service to the State would all be jeopardized.
2. SUNY would cease being competitive in the attraction and retention of top faculty, students, and research grants; SUNY's reputational rankings, at both the colleges and the University Centers, would cease rising, as they have been, and almost certainly begin to decline.
3. This option would have to be won at the bargaining table--difficult at a time when there does not seem to be any dollars.
Option #5: Make up for lost General Fund support with much higher tuitions for those who can afford to pay.
A fifth option is to continue to shift costs away from the New York State taxpayer onto the parent and student in the form of very high tuitions--compensated in part by more TAP aid to needy students and families. Tuitions might also be differentiated by campus or sector, with the community colleges and the two-year State-operated campuses retaining lower tuitions, and other campuses raising tuitions to, say, from one-third to one-half instructional costs.
The advantages to a major, permanent shift of support from taxpayer to the student and the parent, via very high tuitions, are:
1. If the General Fund is never to be restored, the very high tuition option may be the only way to maintain both enrollments and quality, at least as we presently know it.
2. New York State's private institutions would be made very happy.
The disadvantages to high tuition are:
1. It may be politically impossible; CUNY, in particular, might be unable to follow such an option regardless of its need for revenue or the danger of the other options.
2. Access would almost certainly be diminished with very high tuitions (i.e., $3,000-4,000), even with a well-funded TAP.
3. At some point of high tuitions, a state university ceases to be "public" at all, as does any one-time public good that the State has decided to privatize and price at cost.
4. It is not certain how students would sort themselves out among the existing private and a very high tuition (but high aid) public sector. SUNY might become accessible only to the fairly well-to-do and those low-income students for whom SUNY is still effectively free via TAP . . . or SUNY could become increasingly elitist.
Of course, elements from several options might be combined. But it would be a mistake to presume that combining elements can reap only advantages and avoid the disadvantages. All of the options are undesirable for the simple fact that we are beginning with a University that is demonstrably underfunded, at least by all historical and peer comparisons, and is also suffering considerable demoralization from the many years of cuts, and then assuming still more cuts of still unknown, but potentially devastating, size.
But some options (or combinations) are going to be preferable, at least with hindsight, and at least according to certain values and priorities. What we must not allow to happen is a paralysis that locks us into, for example, a "hold-the-line" strategy merely because we were too indecisive or unimaginative to craft a better course; nor must we allow ourselves to get swept up in a rush to "bite the bullet" or otherwise to demonstrate our management metal. When drastic actions are unwarranted and when restoration of tax support is possible if we only hold onto our convictions and our votes.
( This paper was prepared at a time of great budgetary stress. It was shared widely with the Trustees, the campus presidents, and the faculty, as well as with the Governor's Office and the offices of the key legislators. It was designed, I suppose, to illustrate that there were no painless solutions...and there were almost certainly no other major options. In this sense, the paper was very successful.