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Wall Street crisis could affect SUNY
SUNY trustees are trying to understand what affect the financial crisis on Wall Street might have on the SUNY system, Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said during yesterday’s meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee.
“They’re trying to figure out what impact this [crisis] might have,” he said in updating the FSEC on the meeting earlier this week of the SUNY Board of Trustees’ Finance and Administration Committee. “They did suggest the idea that we are talking about a rational tuition policy…and some of the regulations being eased so that we can do things differently.”
Tripathi said that SUNY leaders also are talking about taking $26 million of the $96 million in SUNY-wide budget cuts that were announced in August from the central budget—an action that could reduce the overall reduction to $70 million—but added that such a move still drains vital funds from SUNY’s capital funds budget.
“Whether it’s equipment money or maintenance money…that is the money that we get to do things,” he said. “So no matter what, they’ll be taking [money] away.
“It really depends on what happens with the financial situation,” he said. “There’s a lot of talk about a tuition increase—whether that really fills the gap in terms of the other budget cuts that might occur—but the [Wall Street financial crisis] is not part of the budget projection that they made two months ago.”
President John B. Simpson added that state lawmakers seem more receptive, in light of the current economic situation, to some of the SUNY reforms that he has been pushing. These reforms include giving UB the power to sell or lease state land, to employ third-party developers on construction projects, to eliminate the state attorney general’s pre-audit of institutional purchases and to gain more control over its own tuition policies.
“These really are nothing more than taking what was put in the Commission on Higher Education document and packaging them in a way that suits the university right now,” Simpson said. “I think the fact that they are without cost to the state and that they are being put up in a time where there is increasing desperation on the part of the governor to find anything to save money, that there is a reasonable possibility that one or more of them will be accepted.
“The more the budget crumples, the more likely we are to have these conversations,” he added. “It’s a mixed blessing.”
In other business, Robert G. Shibley, professor of architecture and planning and point person on the development of UB’s comprehensive physical plan, briefed senators on the progress of the plan.
“There has never been a more urgent need to assemble a flexible, comprehensive, physical vision for our campus that matches where we are headed,” he said. “We just have to be a lot smarter about how to get it done—the best time to do disciplined planning is during tough times.”
In addition to assuring senators that “growth is still the vision,” Shibley pointed out that the concepts and designs included in the current physical plan—while still a “first draft”—are now much closer to a real course of action than a mere collection of thoughts and ideas since UB is 16 months into its two-year planning process.
In terms of the redesign of UB’s three campuses, Shibley outlined plans to “strengthen” the academic spine and connect the Ellicott Complex to the main part of the North Campus; relocate the Graduate School of Education, the School of Social Work, the Law School and the graduate programs in the School of Management to the South Campus; and relocate the schools of Nursing, Dental Medicine, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Public Health and Health Professions to the Buffalo-Niagara Medical Campus.
In response to a question about how the construction of Kapoor Hall on the South Campus would impact the plan to relocate pharmaceutical sciences downtown, Shibley said planners are taking a very long view in some cases.
“It may be 30 years before we move pharmacy and dental medicine downtown,” he said, “but we’re looking for a long-term vision.”
Reader Comments
Ankit Nanda says:
There are a lot of places that money can be saved. However, the status quo is adamant about holding on to inefficient ways of doing things because of the inertia involved in change and of course entrenched interests. Less money is ironically translating to bigger projects (visionary buildings etc) and newer machines for police officers to police inside buildings, a very unnecessary investment in my opinion. Take for example the residence halls. A lost key for a single room translates to a fee of $46. The lock man takes about a minute of his time in order to change the lock. Calculate the profit as revenue - cost. It is also surprising to notice SUV's being adopted as a mode of transport for university related work. Very smart. What about university lighting with so many unnecessary lights?
Posted by Ankit Nanda, Money to spend, 10/02/09