Board Vice Chair Thomas Egan offered eight specific proposals last week that, together, reveal a vision of a less centralized SUNY with more autonomous campuses-more closely resembling other public universities around the country. Egan is one of seven new trustees Pataki has appointed to the 16-member board since taking office last year. Two more trustees, serving as "holdovers" as their terms have actually expired but no replacements have yet been named for them, tend to act with the new appointees, giving Pataki defacto control over the board.

The trustees were in agreement on the general principles embodied in the proposals, according to Tuesday's Buffalo News, but have turned to SUNY staff to draft language for some of the proposals. The trustees are slated to meet again Nov. 21.

Egan's Nov. 6 memo calls upon the trustees to craft, "in careful negotiation with the campuses," differentiated missions for each sector (university centers, university colleges, specialized colleges and statutory colleges) and every institution.

SUNY Central would turn over to individual campuses administrative discretion over "faculty hiring, pay and workload; research and consulting; and the level of tuition and fees," as well as "devolving" many administrative functions currently performed centrally.

The downsized central administration would be precluded from micromanaging campuses, adopting "a more focused role of evaluating how well campuses" perform.

Campuses presumably would receive a smaller state appropriation, roughly on a per-student basis, but would be allowed to retain "a greater portion of tuition and other revenues." Tuition increases would, in part, fund additional, campus-based financial aid. However, campuses would be able to carry forward surplus funds from one year to the next and would be freed of much "red tape" in areas such as purchasing and managing campus property, changes valued by campus financial officers.

The Egan memo also specifically addressed quality, recommending a commitment to "high academic standards for all...institutions" while allowing individual campuses to set their own standards higher than any promulgated by the trustees, and embraced SUNY's "multiple mission" of undergraduate and graduate education, research, community service and economic development. Just weeks ago, one new trustee virtually proposed jettisoning the State University's graduate mission altogether.

SUNY should also liberate its free-standing hospitals in Syracuse, Brooklyn and Stony Brook, according to Egan's memo. The hospitals, which together receive $75 million from the state each year, may be perilously close to bankruptcy, according to UB President William Greiner. The Egan memo asks that they be "quickly freed from the disabling constraints under which they now operate within the State University."

Greiner explained that this would mean spinning the hospitals off to not-for-profit corporations which could contract with health care management organizations for day-to-day operations.

"What they are proposing is simply to put the other three medical schools on the same financial footing as UB's medical school has been on for 150 years," said Greiner.