CUNY News-In-Brief (February, 2010)
by Advocate Staff
Paterson to CUNY: “Take a Hike…A Tuition Hike!”
The money used to fatten Mathew Goldstein’s wallet isn’t going to grow on trees, people, so get ready to pony up some cash! As if David Paterson hasn’t already caused the students at CUNY and SUNY enough grief with his statewide cuts to higher education, Governor Justice is now looking to help the struggling university systems recoup some of those losses by proposing legislation that would allow the Boards of Trustees at SUNY and CUNY to increase and/or adjust tuition rates at will. Paterson’s new bill (euphemistically titled the Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act) would neither empower students nor provide for any greater innovation, but would instead give chancellors at both SUNY and CUNY the ability to significantly raise tuition without state legislative approval, as well as the option of offering differential tuition rates for different programs and campuses. This means more prestigious CUNY or SUNY campuses, such as Hunter and City College, could potentially begin charging higher tuition rates than other schools in the system, making access to those schools out of reach for increasing numbers of poor and working class New Yorkers. Not surprisingly, Matty G. is all in favor of the plan.
According to the Gotham Gazette, the new bill would allow increases in tuition up to to two and a half times the five-year average of the Higher Education Price Index, which measures inflationary increases in operating costs for colleges and universities across the nation. In other words, Mathew Goldstein and his BOT henchmen would essentially be able to increase tuition at a rate at least two and a half times that of inflation.
This kind of power would, once again, place the burden of the current budget crisis onto the backs of our city and state’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens. To make things even worse, Goldstein has made it explicit that he intends to use differential tuition rates at the graduate level, which could mean higher tuition for students in the sciences and those earning professional degrees.
Both the PSC and some state senators argue that this new bill is nothing less than an attempt to further privatize the two state university systems. In January, Barbara Bowen gave formal testimony in Albany that pretty well sums up what the future will look like should this bill actually pass: “It is not difficult to predict the next step, given New York’s sorry history of underinvestment in CUNY and SUNY. Students become the cash machine, legislative control of tuition disappears, and the State cuts back even further on its support. The governor’s proposal says not one word about State investment and offers no guarantee that ever-escalating tuition would not be used to replace existing State support.”
The City University of Phoenix
In a wildly audacious move even by the low standards of our lord and chancellor Matthew Goldstein, the School of Professional Studies (SPS) moved during the middle of January to jettison key provisions of its governance document that threaten the quality and value of CUNY doctoral education.
Initially designed to funnel all of CUNY’s continuing education programs through a centralized bureaucratic institution modeled after NYU’s School for Continuing and Professional Studies, the SPS was founded in 2003 with the twin understandings that portions of the generated revenue would be directed to doctoral support initiatives and that the new school would not offer duplicate degrees that could be obtained through other CUNY colleges.
Not surprisingly, the SPS paid out revenue funds for doctoral support only once, while it was still in its infancy in 2003. Since then, doctoral support monies have not been collected from SPS, with over a half-million dollars sitting in a rainy-day escrow account. The GC Advocate will be reporting in depth on reasons why the allocation of these resources has been refused by the Graduate Center in next month’s issue. But more immediately, and more troubling, is the fact that the SPS board of governors voted to kill any official responsibility it previously had to doctoral support as well as its promise not to issue duplicate degrees.
As the SPS increasingly offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in various subjects, the possibility of correspondence course degrees in, say, political science or biology, at the undergraduate, Master’s and doctoral levels has become increasingly real. Moreover, the fact that the SPS does not distinguish between in-state and out-of-state students for the purposes of tuition payment (everyone gets charged the same tuition regardless of residency) opens the floodgates for University of Phoenix-style online education to take root within CUNY, and suggests a naked business logic of offering for-profit educational opportunities for anyone, anywhere, that can pay.
All of which gets compounded by matters of accreditation. SPS currently enjoys pride of place under the banner of the Graduate School and University Center, a fully-accredited institution within the Middle States accreditation initiative. If oversight or rigor is lax — and current evidence suggests it is — and credits between the school and other degree programs are rendered transferable (which is theoretically possible already), than SPS could essentially free-ride on the accredited strengths of other colleges while simultaneously draining the integrity of the CUNY network’s solid academic reputation. Look for further coverage in these pages on SPS in future issues.
What Good are Rules for If You Can’t Break Them on the Regular
According to the CUNY Board of Trustees Code of Conduct, no member of the board may accept employment with the university within two years of serving as a trustee. Yet this past month, the Board of Trustees voted to “waive” this silly ethical protocol in the name of political expediency and cronyism. The recent passing of Vice Chancellor Ernesto Malave left the board scrambling to find a replacement to fill this “large and unexpected hole in the University’s administration.” But what’s this? A perfect replacement from the board of trustees itself? What are the odds? “Fortunately, the University has a trustee,” the board announced, “whose background and experience make him uniquely qualified to step into the breach under these unique circumstances.”
Unique, indeed. Shaw’s bona fides are apparently so impressive that his fellow trustees simply brushed aside all bureaucratic constraints blocking his appointment as Interim Senior Vice Chancellor for Budget, Finance, and Financial Policy. At the same time, Shaw’s record is not so impressive that he can fill Maleve’s shoes alone. The board also promoted Matthew Sapienza, a career CUNY technocrat, to the position of Associate Vice Chancellor for Budget and Finance. Given the effusive praise heaped upon him by the board in their explanation of promotion — not to mention his close association with Malave — some might question why the board did not simply appoint Sapienza to Malave’s vacant post, and save the extra salary. Others might also question why Shaw’s portfolio includes “financial policy” whereas Sapienza’s does not. Should we expect another appointment of an additional “associate vice chancellor” to help hold Shaw’s hand through the thickets of financial policy? More on this as it develops…
Raise High the Chancellor’s Salary, Trustees
Times are tough — just ask CUNY’s Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. With the recent economic and financial crises, it’s hard to live on a nearly half-million dollar annual salary with an additional $100,000 yearly housing allowance. Good thing the Board of Trustees jumped into action with all the enthusiasm of an Obama administration official bailing out a Goldman Sachs senior executive. Citing his extraordinary — nay, Herculean — efforts to situate the CUNY system in the vanguard of corporatist efforts to smother public education, the band of trustees moved to raise the Heart of Darkness’ annual salary by nearly $40,000 a year. Seemingly without any intended irony, the board noted that such a raise was “richly deserved,” and moreover was “necessary for CUNY to remain competitive and on an upward trajectory.”
Yet despite the soaring rhetoric in honor of Darth Goldstein’s irreplaceably steady hand at CUNY’s helm, a seedling of dissent, a slight rebellion off fifth if you will, could be seen sprouting in the Board of Trustee ranks…kind of: the vote was not unanimous. Apparently concerned that a vote against Matthew Goldstein’s bank account is a vote against America, student senate representative Cory Provost, an MA student in Brooklyn College’s School of Urban Policy and Administration, abstained from casting his ballot. Way to stand up, guy!
Newsflash: You’re Both Ass Clowns!
What should have been a celebratory moment of remembrance and renewal in early December was quickly turned into an episode of Jerry Springer by City Councilmember Charles “the Red” Barron and CUNY’s own loose-cannon goon, trustee Jeffrey “don’t get spontaneous with me” Wiesenfeld.
On December 1st, city dignitaries and other mega-millionaires gathered in downtown Manhattan to mark the start of construction on a replacement facility for Fiterman Hall, a CUNY-owned campus facility badly damaged during the attacks of September 11. Barron, who had been asked to speak at the event, had not finished delivering his opening salutations before Wiesenfeld shouted “You’re a disgrace!” at the former Black Panther-turned-politico-insider.
What followed was an exchange of machismo idiocy worthy of a middle school playground as each man taunted the other with long-distance finger jabs, threats, and, rumor has it, unspeakable insults to each
other’s mother.
The incident would have been just another example of New York politics run amok had Weisenfeld and Barron let matters rest there. But weeks later, Councilwoman — and chief adjutant to Emperor Michael Bloomberg — Christine Quinn removed Barron from his chairmanship of the Higher Education Committee, an action that Barron insists was carried out on the orders of Jeffrey Weisenfeld. For his part, our lusty trustee has been otherwise engaged, reportedly locked in a political death match with fellow Republican Chris Collins, a rising star within New York State conservative circles, and could not be reached for comment.
In a bizarrely argued response to his ouster and backdoor call to revolutionary arms, Barron compared his fight with Quinn and Weisenfeld to the deadly struggles of the 1968 civil rights movement, and invoked Steve Biko to rally supporters to his defense. It was hard to know if Barron was consoling his constituents or himself when he proclaimed that while he may no longer be the speaker’s chair of the Higher Education Committee, he would always be the “people’s chair” of social struggle. Or perhaps, more fittingly, of political irrelevancy: Barron currently finds himself the only city councilman without a seat on a single committee.
