"Faculty unionists press Albany lawmakers." March 16, 2006. New York Teacher.

Faculty unionists press Albany lawmakers
Higher education lobbying

March 16, 2006

Assemblyman George Latimer, D-Westchester, says NYSUT's call for more funding for colleges and universities has real merit. 'There's a multiplier effect when you invest in higher ed,' he told Anne D'Orazio, president of the Westchester CC Faculty Association.

Talking up higher education means going higher — the top floors of the Legislative Office Building in Albany , to be exact. That's what two busloads of faculty and staff did on the last day of February to urge legislators to pay attention to the hard-line economics of higher ed:

Eighty-one percent of graduates from the State University of New York stay in the state, providing an educated work force and adding to the tax base.
Nursing students can turn around the nursing shortage — but funding and faculty are needed to teach them.
The top four candidates for an English faculty position at Queens College turned down the job once they examined cost of living and faculty input into retirement programs. Some higher ed employees permanently contribute a percentage of their salaries to retirement plans, while others cease contributions after 10 years of service.
Last year, 7,500 graduates of the state's community colleges were denied admission into the State and City universities because there were not enough faculty.
In the past 12 years, SUNY has taken in 45,000 more students,and has 1,200 fewer faculty members. The number of new students is the equivalent of five to six small, comprehensive college populations.

Faculty union leaders Ellen Schuler Mauk at Suffolk Community College; William Scheuerman, president of United University Professions at SUNY; and Steve London, vice president of the Professional Staff Congress at CUNY, urged legislators to use the opportunity of a budget surplus to increase funds for higher ed.

Schuler Mauk said community colleges have not had an executive budget proposal for an increase in base aid since Hugh Carey's first term as governor (think bellbottoms and disco fever).

With the governor proposing a $100 increase in base aid for community colleges, Schuler Mauk said, "He seems to realize that higher education has been on the bottom." Each nursing student, she said, costs $5,000 more to educate than other students. Technology and engineering programs, in demand from businesses, require regular updates to college technology.

SUNY hospitals

Scheuerman made an impassioned case for funding to save the SUNY teaching hospitals, which have once again been targeted for privatization.

"Why are we in the hospital business?" Scheuerman asked. "If you train doctors, they need a hospital to train in. For people of more moderate means, SUNY gives them an opportunity to go to (medical) college. It's an important part of the mission of the State University."

The hospitals also serve indigent populations.

Donald Pisani, a Stony Brook UUP member, told Assemblyman Peter Grannis, D-Manhattan, that Nassau County Medical Center was privatized and then laid off 400 employees, including doctors.

There is $10 million in the governor's proposed budget for the SUNY hospitals; they need at least $35 million, Scheuerman said.

CUNY funds

London said only 47 percent of all CUNY faculty are full-time. Adjuncts have become the majority.

"This is not a way to fund a major urban university," he said.

Full-time faculty serve on committees, advise students, write and receive grants, and participate in the formation of policy and curricula. More full-time faculty means more students graduate on time.

Juliette Romano, president of the United College Employees at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, told Assemblyman Ron Canestrari, D-Cohoes, that FIT adjunct faculty now reach a staggering 80 percent.

"We need faculty with a connection to the industry and a commitment to the college; to write curriculum, to revise, review and keep current," she said. "We're not current, and it's due to this insane ratio we have."

Canestrari said it was "unconscionable" that state support "has been reversed" for the last 10 years.

When Sen. Vincent Leibell III, R-Putnam, was shown charts of the state's contributions to public higher ed since 1990, he was surprised.

"We haven't put any more money in than that?" he asked UUP members.

Anne D'Orazio, president of Westchester Community College Faculty Association, told Assemblyman George Latimer, D-Westchester, that faculty are now 70 percent adjunct. He pledged to co-sponsor a Canestrari bill to add full-time faculty.

State budget proposals on the table call for 541 new faculty for SUNY and 400 for CUNY.

PSC's plan is to convert long-serving adjuncts into full-time jobs at a cost of $2 million per 100 conversion lines, which London called "an affordable reality."

— Liza Frenette