Legislation Introduced to Eliminate State Subsidies to Private Colleges in NY

ALBANY, NY (04/26/2007)(readMedia)-- In an effort to focus attention to the growing problem of low graduation rates facing public colleges and universities, members of the New York State Assembly have introduced legislation to eliminate a costly state subsidy to wealthy private colleges and divert the annual appropriation of more than $45 million to public colleges and their programs to increase student success.

Every year, New York State appropriates hundreds of millions of public dollars to private colleges, including a category of funding called Bundy Aid. At a cost at times of almost $50 million per year, Bundy Aid is an almost 40 year-old subsidy that in 1968 was intended to temporarily help strengthen private colleges in New York. Today, lawmakers say that these private colleges with multi-billion dollar endowments, large big donor lists, high tuitions, and hundreds of millions in other state aid annually are no longer in need of Bundy Aid.

According to Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera, chair of the Assembly Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, "It has become increasingly obvious that in order to strengthen the economy of our state we need to dramatically increase college student success for the hundreds of thousands students attending our CUNY and SUNY campuses. The time has come to begin the redirecting of Bundy Aid to our public colleges and universities, where these funds are needed the most."

In introducing the legislation to eliminate Bundy Aid, Hispanic lawmakers say that years of neglect of New York State's public colleges and universities has led to problems that impact student success. They say that additional resources are needed immediately to meet the growing demand placed on CUNY and SUNY to train the next generation workforce.

"Our public colleges are faced with an unprecedented rate of student dropouts, larger number of students completing college after six years or more years, and a situation where only 32 out of 100 white students and 1 of every 100 students are graduating from college nationally. The economic impact on our state and the nation of these dynamics are tremendously negative trends threaten the fabric of our civil society and national security," declared Rivera.

According to Assemblyman Luis M. Diaz, Chair of the New York State Assembly Task Force on New Americans, "For more than a decade, the physical condition of many of our public colleges has been decaying, there is a large scale reliance on part-time faculty and there has been an inability to meet the academic needs of huge numbers of struggling students. This situation has created a condition that threatens the viability of these colleges and our state. We must begin to redirect public money away from private colleges to meet these challenges."

According to the White House Council of Economic Advisors, "unless we see a dramatic increase in the educational attainment, particularly college completion, we're going to see a dramatic negative impact on the economy, especially in states with large Hispanic populations."

According to Hispanic lawmakers, private colleges receive hundreds of millions of dollars of state funding every year. This money is a subsidy for private colleges that is not completely needed. Many of these colleges have multi-billion dollar endowments and regularly receive large gifts from wealthy donors, while charging extremely high tuitions that are also subsidized by part of the $874 million state Tuition Assistance Program (TAP).

According to lawmakers, over the past few weeks alone, Cornell University launched a $4 billion fund drive; New York University has launched a million dollar per day fund drive, and Columbia University received a gift of $600 million. "Neither the CUNY nor SUNY systems have the capacity to launch such fund drives. Neither has wealthy donors annually contributing millions, and neither can rely on exorbitant tuitions to fulfill their mission to educate the masses," stated Rivera.

The proposed law will, over a period of five years, phased-out Bundy Aid. Each year the percent of the phase-out will be reinvested in public colleges and universities of the SUNY and CUNY system. Rivera added, "This legislation is a perfect example of an excellent idea that needs to be acted upon. The strength of our local economies and the future of our shrinking middle-class demands that we use public funds to strengthen public institutions. That has been the history of our educational system until programs like Bundy Aid pick-away and take-away funding that would have gone to institutions that uplift our poor and educate the masses."

-30-