Common sense tells us that allowing each SUNY college to establish its own tuition rate would yield a much more equitable and responsible mechanism for each institution. We hope Gov. David Paterson's initiative to give that authority to each college receives the Legislature's backing.
With 64 campuses — 30 of them two-year community colleges — the state can scarcely make a case that equal tuition from school to school in each category serves students best.
Can $5,070 per year at Plattsburgh equal $5,070 per year at Geneseo, New Paltz and Binghamton? The number of programs varies from campus to campus. The number of employees varies. The standard of living varies.
Having the State University trustees ask for a tuition and then the Legislature approve it might make sense on one level: It might tend to spare students unwieldy leaps, as the Legislature would likely be inclined to want to keep expenses down.
However, competition for students within the system would do the same thing. Prospective students would surely be influenced in their selection between, say, Plattsburgh and Potsdam if the tuition at one school were far higher than at the other.
The biggest positive in allowing each campus to set its own tuition is that it would allow the school to be more responsive to its own needs. Costs don't accrue at each campus equally. Veteran faculties and staffs would cost more than young employees with little seniority. Liberal arts is a less expensive education to provide than many of the technologies or sciences.
And it would force each college to be more accountable for its own spending. Expenses would have to reflect potential income from tuitions, and a school can't charge a tuition outside the range of its competitors. Enforced thriftiness would prevail.
As it is now, whenever SUNY raises tuitions, the money goes into the state's general fund. SUNY doesn't even benefit from the increase. That means students don't benefit.
There is no question that the state is in a financial crisis and desperately needs all the money it can find — although we continue to believe there is plenty of money to cut in personnel costs and in eliminating waste. The Legislature needs to sharpen its focus on those areas before it looks for new revenue sources.
But SUNY, as we have argued in the past, is one area in which dramatic cuts will result in long-term losses for the state. If the state's best high-school graduates are chased to other states for their education, they will never return, and the state will slowly stagnate for lack of young talent.
Give each college control over its own tuition and the resultant greater control over its own budget, and the system will be more responsive and serve the entire state more efficiently.
Opinion
January 28, 2010
EDITORIAL: Let colleges set tuitions
- Editorial
-
-
Editorial: A pair of aces among the Cards
How fitting was it for Bob Emery and Kevin Houle to achieve coaching milestones on the same day and in the same building.
- Editorial: Nurses, aides: a breed apart
- Editorial: The leather lung: where not to sit
-
Editorial: A pair of aces among the Cards
- Cheers and Jeers
-
-
Cheers and Jeers: Feb. 6, 2012
CHEERS to Dr. Anne Cahill and JEERS to drivers who don't signal for turns and changing lanes.
-
Cheers and Jeers: Feb. 6, 2012
- Letters to the Editor
- Speakout
- In My Opinion
-
-
In My Opinion: E'town water, sewer essential
Elizabethtown has a history of economic ups and downs, Town Supervisor Margaret Bartley writes.
-
In My Opinion: E'town water, sewer essential
