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Tuition increases would offset further budget cuts
UB would retain only a portion of the undergraduate tuition increase Gov. David A. Paterson proposed as part of his plan to balance the state budget in the face of a serious fiscal crisis, Provost Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee at its meeting on Nov. 12.
Under the governor’s proposal, Tripathi said, UB students would see a $300 tuition increase in the coming spring semester, 90 percent of which would be retained by the state to counteract the cuts being incurred by SUNY in this year’s budget. For the 2009-10 academic year, he said that UB students would pay an additional $300 in tuition, with 80 percent of the combined $600 increase being retained by the state to cover cuts to SUNY projected in next year’s budget.
In terms of cash from SUNY’s central budget that had been expected to benefit UB prior the state’s economic crisis, Tripathi estimated Paterson’s proposal could restore several million dollars to UB, including approximately $1.6 million in one-time relief for UB’s academic units.
Rather than use this cash now, however, Tripathi said the deans are in “almost unanimous support” of keeping it in UB’s central budget—to use as a buffer against future budget cuts or to invest in a project designed to generate additional revenue for the entire campus.
“It has been great to see that sort of university-wide, or campus-wide, thinking from the leadership,” he said.
Although the governor’s plan contains no additional cuts to SUNY, President John B. Simpson told FSEC members he remains disappointed that the state has not taken a more “proactive or forward-looking” approach to lessening the impact of the state budget crisis on UB.
“My view is that this is really nothing more than a tax on the students, for which they will receive nothing more and pay a substantially increased amount,” he said. “What I want to get to is an extended conversation about having some kind of structure and predictability and rationally [to tuition increases], as opposed to saying when there’s a budget crunch, tax the students.”
In other business, Arabella Lyon, president of the SUNY Council on Writing and associate professor in the Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences, proposed that UB establish a professional Writing Center to replace the small tutoring service currently operated by student assistants and volunteers within the University Learning Center.
“There’s a need for a real, robust writing center comparable to what is standard at other research universities,” she said, noting that UB’s curriculum contains a dearth of writing requirements. A “real writing center” would not only encourage faculty members to assign more writing as part of their courses by offering greater support services to their students, she said, but also serve as a resource for both freshmen in need of remedial help and upper-level undergraduates and graduate students working on final projects, thesis proposals and grant applications.
Also at yesterday’s meeting, John Ho, interim dean of the Graduate School, outlined a number of initiatives being implemented by his office, including several new policies aimed at improving matriculation and retention rates among graduate students.
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