Speeches
Believe
Third Annual Community Address
John B. Simpson, University at Buffalo
Asbury Hall, Buffalo
September 24, 2008
Good morning. And thank you all for coming today . . . It is a pleasure for me to see such a mix of new and familiar faces.
I’d like to thank Scot Fisher, Jon Dandes, Thomas Burke, Byron Brown, and June Hoeflich for their kind remarks, and also take this opportunity to welcome June as the newest member of the UB Council.
This is my third Community Address. I’ve decided to make this address an annual event because we at UB believe deeply in our community.
UB is not just the University at Buffalo. We are the University of Buffalo, the University for Buffalo, and the University with Buffalo. UB touches every aspect of life in Western New York - and we are proud to be your partner in moving our region forward. We thank you for being here this morning.
I want to thank Ani DiFranco and Scot Fisher for hosting us today at the spectacular Asbury Hall. Isn’t this a great venue?
And as Scot noted, it has a fascinating history. It was in its prime when Buffalo was one of the most important cities in the nation. And then it nearly became a casualty of Buffalo’s economic and demographic decline in the second half of the 20th century.
Now this landmark has been restored because of a long-range vision, innovative thinking, timely investments, and a good deal of hard work. Perhaps there’s a lesson in this history.
A research university like UB can seem complex if you are looking at it from the outside. Yet what we do is really quite simple. Our purpose – and our passion – is to discover and share knowledge that improves people’s lives.
We are in the business of reaching others. We reach others through education. We reach others through research. And we reach others through service. We reach the thousands whose quest for knowledge brings them here to Buffalo.
Those of you who have followed our progress in recent years have seen a remarkable effort taking shape at UB. You have seen the university community develop a shared vision of the future, and create an ambitious plan to make that vision a reality.
Our plan is called UB 2020. Its goal is nothing less than finally, and fully, achieving the vast potential of our university. If we succeed, our wider reach and our deeper impact can do nothing but provide significant benefits for our city, for our region, and for our state.
UB 2020 is the right plan – and this is the right time for it.
As you know, the State of New York is facing a very difficult economic time. The entire country is facing a difficult economy. As Wall Street stumbles, the state has seen its revenues shrink – and the state’s leaders have cut spending in response.
These cuts, without question, will affect every aspect of state government. And because SUNY is part of state government in New York, our public colleges and universities will be affected. These cuts will take much-needed funds away from UB, and from our sister institutions Buffalo State College and Erie and Niagara County Community Colleges.
We expect that the cuts to UB’s state support could reach $20 million or more this year. That’s about 10 percent of the total direct support we receive from New York’s taxpayers.
Let me put that number in perspective for you. $20 million dollars is the entire state-appropriated operating budget for three of our schools; it is also the salaries of several hundred faculty and staff. $20 million is a full four-year scholarship for more than 1,000 deserving students.
That’s how much money we are being told to send back to Albany right now. These cuts are real, and they are as painful as they are myopic. And I am very angry about them.
We are presently deciding exactly how we will take these cuts. But this is a body blow for us, and it will have consequences for UB, for our region, and for our state. UB will not be the same.
I understand that the state has to take real and significant steps to get its financial house in order. This is appropriate, and it is commendable. But I believe it is very short-sighted.
Higher education is not causing New York’s budget shortfall. Our state spends just a small fraction of its budget on the 64 colleges and universities in the SUNY system. Higher education is not the problem. Rather, higher education is the solution. You know that. I know that. And everybody in Buffalo knows that.
New York was once called the Empire State because it was the wealthiest and most powerful state in the nation. We must regain that strength and reclaim our competiveness.
And in the 21st Century, our future requires that we invest in higher education – not cut it. UB 2020 is an investment, not a cost.
There is, despite our financial problems, a way forward in these challenging times. And we can get there together with your help.
In the flat world, Americans are competing globally as never before, and the challenges of globalization will not lessen. Here in Western New York, we know what that means.
Globalization has not been kind to our region. We’ve watched our steel mills and our auto plants close. We’ve watched good paying jobs leave our region and go to where the wages are lower.
We’ve had a tired debate here about whether Buffalo will ever again regain its lost glory. And an honest answer is, “perhaps.” But it surely will not come from a resurgence of the old manufacturing economy. That day is over. The only way forward is through an economy that is based on knowledge.
And for this, the very best research university is absolutely essential. Research universities make the discoveries and create the knowledge that the new economy will be built on.
Despite the budget, UB remains committed to this future vision. For example, just last week, we announced the formation of a new bio-medical engineering department. The life sciences companies in our area are strongly behind this new program. It will foster even greater opportunity for top level research and collaboration. And it was made possible by a generous grant from the Oishei Foundation, to supplement scarce university resources.
The graduates of this new program will support the growing industry of making bio-medical devices right here in Western New York – an industry that was invented here some 50 years ago by UB professor Dr. Wilson Greatbatch’s cardiac pacemaker.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Buffalo had a unique competitive advantage. We had something no one else in America could duplicate—our geographic position at the western end of the Erie Canal.
Now let me ask you: “Today, what is our competitive advantage?” How will our sons and daughters compete in a global economy, where the digital movement of information is more crucial than the physical movement of lumber and grain?
I was excited to come to Buffalo because I saw that we have all the raw materials to become one of globalization’s winners. We are the center of the Golden Horseshoe stretching from Toronto to Rochester. We have good transportation, an educated workforce, a history of innovation, and cadre of excellent local colleges. Most important, we have a major research university. And that university now has a clear strategic plan, UB 2020.
We can use these ingredients to create a new competitive advantage, a knowledge-based economy for Buffalo.
This is happening right now in India, in Singapore, and in China. I have seen these countries investing heavily in building the knowledge infrastructure it will take to compete in the new global economy. To do this, at the very top of their lists is building new research universities based on the American model.
It’s happening as well in our own backyard. Look just a few hours down the road at Pittsburgh. In the last two decades, it has gone from a depressed steel-making town to a vibrant center of research and health care. Its economy, much like ours, was fueled by coke ovens and rolling mills. Now it is powered by research labs. If Pittsburgh can do it, we can do it.
Communities can – and do – adapt to new circumstances. But it takes a vision, it takes an embrace of new thinking, and it takes cooperation and coordination. It’s a lot like what Ani DiFranco has done to save this magnificent building. It takes a willingness to change, and foremost in this change agenda for Western New York, I believe, is investing in the quality and the future of our research university.
I know how this works. I watched it happen when I lived in the 1980s in Seattle, and in the 1990s in the Silicon Valley in California. I know what it takes for a region to transform itself, and I came to Buffalo because I believed that this region is poised to make that kind of transformation happen here.
Communities come to moments of decision. We have an extraordinary opportunity before us, and it is urgent. But opportunities have expiration dates . . . they do not linger for very long.
Two years ago at the Albright Knox Gallery, I invited you to believe in our vision. I said that UB 2020 could become our region’s “big idea” – and you agreed. As a matter of fact, the business community just recently made supporting UB 2020 its very top priority again this year.
Last year at Kleinhans we launched our UB Believers program. And today, there are 6,000 people who have signed on. I know that many of you are Believers. Can I see a show of hands?
Thank you!
You are Believers because you know that UB 2020 is the best hope for our region’s future – and you are willing to stand up and share your belief with others.
This coalition of support is both broad and deep. Labor is behind it. Business is behind it. Local government is behind it. The nonprofits are behind it, the media are behind it. The entire community is behind UB 2020 – and I thank you for that support.
It is no surprise to all of us here today that so many people in Western New York believe in UB 2020. What puzzles me is why so few people in Albany seem willing to commit to it.
We know that when UB achieves its full potential, we can be the catalyst for Buffalo Niagara to achieve its potential.
We know that achieving UB 2020 means that more of our children can earn the very highest quality college degrees right here.
We know that UB 2020 means more of our parents will receive world-class healthcare on a vibrant medical campus in the heart of the city.
We know that UB 2020 supports a region that attracts people rather than loses them; and
We know that UB 2020 means that our local businesses will be able to compete more effectively in the new knowledge-based economy.
These are not idle promises. UB is already a major force in our region’s economy. For every dollar we receive, we return five dollars to the state’s economy. UB generates an economic impact, conservatively estimated, of $1.5 billion dollars every year. And that will grow to at least $2.6 billion dollars when we achieve our plan.
To put that number in perspective, the proposed downtown casino would pay the city $5 million dollars each year. That’s a lot of money. But if we can achieve UB 2020, the university would pump that much into our region’s economy – every sixteen hours.
That’s $7 million a day into the local economy. You can well imagine what that would mean for our community. If we keep that up, they won’t be able to call us the third-poorest city in the nation for very long! And that is one high ranking I’d be pleased to lose.
We are good stewards of the public and private investments that have been made in UB. Over the last four years we have made substantial changes in the way we do business. We have taken genuine steps to improve our efficiency by eliminating duplication, applying new information technology, and modernizing our business practices. Taken together, these efforts are saving UB over $5 million a year, resources we have reinvested in our mission of teaching, research and service.
We’ve also focused on transforming UB from a good place to work into a great place to work. In fact, our human resources program just won the highest national award for the changes we’ve instituted.
Finally, we are developing the first comprehensive physical plan for UB in more than three decades, focusing on making our North, South, and Downtown campuses more functional, more beautiful, and more sustainable. The full plan will be completed next April. We want to make our campuses places that people want to be, places that people can truly love, so that we can attract the best faculty and the best students to work and study here.
There are limits, however, to what we can do on our own. We need your help to support a common-sense platform of reforms that will unshackle our university and give UB – and Buffalo – what we need to make a significant leap forward.
We need to make Albany understand that UB 2020 is our community’s bold initiative for our future — and we should not be denied.
We must unite our voices and tell Albany what we need for our region.
We must tell Albany that a knowledge-based economy is the solution to our challenges.
We must tell Albany that now is the time to make the policy changes and make the investments that will transform UB from a good research university into a great research university.
While we thank many of our WNY state delegation members for their efforts, Albany’s failure to consistently support this goal over the last 45 years has held UB back, and therefore has held Buffalo back.
Albany has not delivered on the promise it made to Buffalo in the 1960s that there would be a preeminent public research university here in Western New York, a “Berkeley of the East.”
We need to tell Albany that the time has come to make good on that promise. And if they are not going to do it, they need to get out of our way and let us do it ourselves.
What’s at risk here? Let me give you one example.
We have already outlined our vision for a robust downtown presence for UB, a world-class Academic Health Center, a campus uniting UB with our strong partners, Kaleida, Roswell Park, and Hauptman Woodward, a place for providing the very best in medical care, education and research.
When the vision becomes reality, more than 13,000 UB faculty, staff, and students will make this downtown campus a vibrant place on par with the Cleveland Clinic or the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. These faculty, staff and students will want to eat, shop, and live near where they work, reinvigorating our urban core and creating opportunities for new businesses to flourish.
But there’s a limit to what we can do without investment and regulatory relief. We are at that limit. And without changes, this vision is in jeopardy.
I’m sure all of us would vastly prefer to see a vibrant academic health care center in downtown Buffalo that has our hometown university at its core. The truth is we can’t build that great public research university for the 21st century on an outdated, 1950s-style bureaucracy designed to enforce rules no one needs any more.
When it comes to purchasing goods, or developing real estate, we are bound by rules written at a time when nobody could foresee that the world would become intensely, globally competitive – and that research universities like UB would become the primary drivers of the new, knowledge-based economy.
The reality is that we cannot fulfill these high expectations the way we are now funded and regulated. UB is being starved for resources and strangled by over-regulation. The status quo, which has propelled us into our present situation, cannot continue. It is not an option. And if change does not come from Albany, we will have lost our opportunity.
I spent more than a year studying SUNY’s strengths and weaknesses in 2007 as a member of New York State’s Commission on Higher Education. My colleagues, who included business and civic leaders, and the heads of public and private universities, examined just about every aspect of our state’s system, comparing it to others across the nation.
Our major finding is really very simple, and it is this: For all of SUNY’s accomplishments and for all of its promise, the system needs reform. SUNY suffers from “too little revenue, too little investment, and too much regulation.”
Now I have heard some argue that SUNY, and therefore UB, are good enough. That what really matters most is easy access and low cost for an OK education. And some will say that New York already has several first-rate private universities, so why create more?
I reject those arguments on two grounds.
First, when we talk about access, I believe we must ask, “Access to what?” If we are speaking of offering broad access to public higher education, surely our New York students have just as much of a right to get a first-rate, public education as do students in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, and in California? Can we continue relegating our students – by New York law – to an education that is “acceptable” and nothing more?
In my view, access alone is simply not enough. Our children deserve access to excellence. Access without excellence is discrimination.
Second, if New York is to be a leader in the knowledge economy of the 21st century, it must strive to have as many world-class institutions as it can. This region – our region – has one public research university, and Western New Yorkers deserve to have it be one of the best in the world. UB – through UB 2020 – can be just that.
So what must be done? Our plan outlines common sense changes that will benefit UB. As the largest institution in SUNY, our actions have a statewide impact. In truth, all our SUNY sister institutions would benefit from the priorities we outline today.
UB needs the state’s help in two ways: First, we need long-term and stable investment committed to the university. And second, we need deregulation and relief from a battery of outdated and inefficient laws.
We know that in these difficult budget times, it is hard for the state to make the investment in the operational funding needed for implementation of UB 2020. So for the coming year we are therefore asking for regulatory reforms that are no-cost and high-impact.
These reforms will provide UB with the sort of flexibility that is commonplace for virtually all of the country’s great public universities. These changes, by the way, have the full support of SUNY and of the Commission on Higher Education.
There are four major policy reforms we seek. These are:
- Spending and contracting deregulation for land and equipment;
- Access to capital through the New York State Dormitory Authority;
- The ability to lease and sell land; and
- A rational tuition strategy for New York.
Let me provide just one illustration of what I mean when I said earlier, “too much regulation.” UB is building a new Educational Opportunity Center next door to our Downtown Gateway in the former M. Wile Building. If we had the type of flexibility I just described, we could build it 13 months faster. That would save New York taxpayers $1.5 million dollars. For our new Engineering building on the North Campus, we could save the taxpayers $3.8 million dollars, and open the building a year sooner.
Imagine how much we will save on the whole UB 2020 build-out! It would cost the state literally nothing to change these rules, and enable UB a faster and less costly implementation of UB 2020.
Our package of reforms also includes a rational tuition policy, one that would allow us to finally improve academic quality while providing even better access and opportunity.
SUNY’s history is marked by large and utterly unpredictable increases in tuition imposed by Albany every several years, when the state is in budgetary crisis. Implemented to replace state funding withdrawn from SUNY, these increases have done nothing to grow the net resources of the university.
This is not a tuition policy. While these tuition increases may be convenient for New York to balance its budget, their true effect is that students pay more and get less. This ad hoc “tuition roulette” practice is as unpredictable as it is irrational.
Rather, what makes sense is a policy of small, regular, and predictable tuition increases that guarantees students and families the ability to plan their budgets with confidence. What also makes sense is a policy that enables UB to move toward tuition levels that take into account its mission, and that truly recognizes what it costs to provide excellence.
I agree that affordability is one of SUNY’s biggest drawing points, and I am personally committed to maintaining access, and to ensuring that access is to an excellent public education for all qualified New York students. But we are trapped in an out-of-date way of managing tuition levels.
There is a view - fallacious in my assessment - that keeping SUNY tuition artificially low is the best way to help economically struggling students. But the present situation actually harms needy students, and erodes the quality of education that we can provide.
What actually happens when NYS holds tuition at artificially low levels is that those with the most ability to pay get a substantial state-provided subsidy compared to just about any other state. Meanwhile, UB is starved of revenue, portions of which we would use—as we do now—for financial aid for low-income students.
A rational tuition policy will help needy students. It will allow us to open the doors to a UB education to many more low-income New York students because more resources could be applied locally to need-based aid.
We know this will work because for ten years we’ve had the limited authority to gradually raise tuition with UB’s Law School. The results? Even after a decade of regular, small increases, our Law tuition remains one of the lowest among our peers. The increased resources have allowed UB Law to provide one of the most innovative and affordable programs in the nation – while offering substantially more financial aid.
The Law School has been able to make extraordinary strides in its academic quality, while simultaneously enhancing its commitment to diversity and access, thanks to a rational tuition policy which provides resources to the Law School.
We are simply asking for the same types of control that most other outstanding public universities have had for decades. If this works in California, in Michigan, and in North Carolina – why would it not work here?
If you agree with me that we should take the time and money that are being wasted by outdated rules and invest it where it matters – in education, financial aid, healthcare, and career training – then I need you to join us in asking Albany to make these reforms, and make them now.
At my Community Address last year I showed a film clip of children talking about the future of our region, and I said that these kids would be eighteen in the year 2020. I said we owed it to them to create a community and build an economy that would provide them with the kinds of options that many of us enjoyed when we were young, including access right here to the very highest quality education.
Those kids are one year older now. We have without question accomplished some positive things in the past year. But are we really any closer to our goal? I fully believe that getting there will require a level of partnering and cooperation beyond what our community has seen thus far.
Despite these tough budget times, we must not retreat, and we must not retrench. We must invest now in our future. We must not be fearful of excellence.
Our region needs economic growth. This growth over the long term can only come from innovation and new knowledge. And providing that innovation and new knowledge is what UB does.
But UB cannot achieve this under the current conditions . . . with our hands tied behind our back. We need long term investment, and we need relief from unnecessary regulations. New York can do these things. It can enable our future.
I need you to help us get these reforms. Business, labor, and community leaders – everyone who has a stake in our region’s future – I need you to tell Albany that UB 2020 is the plan for all of us, and that our entire community wants the investment and flexibility needed to make UB 2020 a reality. Tell them that UB 2020 is not only UB’s academic plan. Tell them that UB 2020 is the community’s bold initiative.
In the year 2020, UB and Western New York will still be here. I wonder, though, what we will look like then? Will we have a vibrant downtown? Will we have a knowledge-based economy? Will there be more good paying jobs available here?
We have right now a remarkable power to shape the answers to those questions, and I believe we must use this power.
Last year I asked, “Will you join me?”………. and you said, “Yes.”
Join me in taking control of our region’s future.
Thank you.
