Proposed state cuts would increase budget deficit

If Governor Paterson’s proposed Executive Budget for 2010-2011 passes as it stands, the College of Ceramics could receive a significant cut in funding, meaning more budget cuts for the University.

“It will mean more cuts, but it will be a different kind of cut,” AU President Charley Edmondson said.

The proposed Executive Budget would reduce the money given to New York’s statutory colleges by $14.9 million, reducing the College of Ceramics budget by $1.7 million from $10.4 million in the 2009-2010 academic year--reduced already to $9.8 million this past year--to $8.7 million in the 2010-2011 academic year, a 16 to 17 percent reduction from the original 2009-2010 budget, affecting AU over the next five years.

“This budget proposes the most dramatic overhaul of New York’s system of public higher education in a generation,” Paterson said in a letter on the NY.gov Web site. “It provides SUNY and CUNY with the freedom they need to achieve the promise of their full potential--in both good economic times and bad.”

New York State currently funds five statutory colleges: four at Cornell University and the College of Ceramics at Alfred University. The state also funds a land grant at Cornell University.

Last year, the statutory college budget across the five statutory colleges was cut by $6 million, less than half of the proposed amount to be cut this year. Although the cut to Cornell’s statutory colleges, in terms of percentages, is about the same as AU’s cut, the overall state funding cut to Cornell University is about 15 percent, 1 to 2 percent less than AU.

As it stands now, this wave of cuts would increase Alfred University’s 2010-2011 $3 million deficit to $4.7 million, excluding any data on TAP, Bundy or HEOP funding. Edmondson said the University anticipated an estimated $500,000 cut from the state that already occurred, but did not expect this currently proposed cut.

“This has been far worse than we actually anticipated,” Edmondson said.

Although this increased deficit would mean more cuts, Edmondson said that further cuts would likely be cuts of opportunity.

Edmondson defined a cut of opportunity as a cut of funding to vacant positions for that budget year. A strategic cut, such as the proposed cuts to modern languages and electrical engineering programs announced last December, is a permanent cut to a program, based on student demand.

Edmondson said that this is not the first time the University has faced major cuts from the state.

“Historically, we’ve been able to hold them off,” Edmondson said. “Without a Republican majority in the Senate, we don’t know what that outcome will be now.”

In the New York State Senate, District 57 representative Catherine Young, a Republican, has been the University’s main representation in Albany.

As far as the currently proposed cuts released by the Strategic Planning Council last December and other proposals to increase revenue to help reduce the $3 million deficit is concerned, decisions related to tenured faculty members will be made by Feb. 5, with other decisions following in the weeks after.

“The implicit assumption is that the savings you take would be applied to strengthen programs that are in high demand,” Edmondson said.

Edmondson explained why the strategic cuts being made are necessary.

“No one ever accepts the idea that their program should be cut,” Edmondson said. “We don’t want to understand that every service we provide has a cost to it. We’re coming to the end of sustainability for the current paradigm for higher education.”

Edmondson said that although he is only required to alert affected faculty members of his decisions, he intends to send out a more comprehensive announcement of his decisions in the following weeks.

“None of them are going to lose their jobs,” Edmondson said. “They will, however, need to plan for different assignments.”

The originally announced $3 million deficit has been attributed to decreased enrollment and retention due to an increased number of academic dismissals, cuts from the state, utility costs and financial aid increases. Census data also forecasts that there will be a sharp decrease in prospective students for AU by 2017.

More information on New York State’s proposed budget cuts for 2010-2011 can be found at http://www.budget.state.ny.us/.