Wagner sees 'very long road' to final state budget

"We're in day one of a very long road," Wagner told the Faculty Senate Executive Committee at its Jan. 15 meeting, providing senators with what he called a "possible translation" of a "preliminary analysis" of Pataki's executive budget.

"It is not possible at this time to know for certain what our overall reduction will be," he said, noting that in the past several years the state Legislature has restored funding to SUNY that the executive budget had proposed be cut.

If Pataki's budget was to be adopted as proposed, Wagner said, UB's cut would be about $8 million, or about 3.8 percent of the total state-budget reduction-higher than it likely will be in the end.

"I didn't give specific campuses' reduction numbers (because) we can throw around numbers-$6 million, $7 million-but last year our campus budget reduction was $2.1 million, although the original overall SUNY budget reduction started at $98 million," Wagner said.

The tuition increase alone would reduce the budget gap to approximately $64 million, Wagner said. And he noted that TAP funding was cut by the governor last year, then restored to the budget by the Legislature.

"We need to be aware of this as the process plays out," he said. "The problem is that in the major period in which students are making decisions on where to enroll, we conceivably have two unknowns: What's the tuition level...and what's the aid available?"

On a related matter, President William R. Greiner addressed the FSEC about the relative parsimony of the State of New York when it comes to higher-education funding.

Wagner downplayed fears by some senators of "plummeting" enrollment figures due to the possible tuition increase.

"If (the system) lost 10,000 full-time students, it would be a very big number," he said. "At the moment, it isn't anticipated that the difference this year will be that significant a number, and the numbers were running behind before we talked about the $400 tuition increase."

Despite the uncertainty in the executive budget, Wagner noted there also were some "good news items."

Among them are a proposed capital budget that provides $5 million for graduate and technology equipment, and no cuts from 19967-97 levels in the appropriations for the National Center for Earthquake Engineering, equipment replacement, the Minority Fellowship Initiative, tuition scholarships, the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), the Educational Opportunity Center (EOC), Strategic Program for Industrial Research (SPIR) and State University Supplemental Tuition Award (SUSTA).

"New York doesn't have anything to be ashamed of when compared to California, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Pennsylvania and other states similarly situated in terms of expenditures on higher education," Greiner said.

"We have the most generous state in terms of spending on the private sector, but the private sector makes up a bigger share of total (higher-education) enrollment in New York than it does in all other states," he said.

Greiner added: "We have way too many small, underfunded, struggling institutions in New York-public and private. (Among the private colleges in the state) there may be 20 schools that count, that have any kind of significant national reputation or even a really significant regional reputation. So we have a lot of money spent on small schools and then SUNY has a tremendous debt burden compared to other places," he said.

Greiner blamed the debt burden on too many over-built, small campuses. He pointed out that SUNY has "way more" square footage per student than do other state university systems because of the large number of small campuses.

Moreover, most campuses are relatively new, having been built during the past 30 years and refinancing has resulted in high debt burden compared to other states, Greiner said.

Regarding resolution of this issue, "We're not even on this governor's screen," Greiner said. He added, "I think we actively raised the issue so we sort of got on the screen this time around, and the (governor's) budget message is very positive about the benefits and values of higher education in New York.

In other business, Voldemar Innus, senior associate vice president for university services, gave a slide presentation about the state of information technology (IT) at UB and the IT development plan formed by Innus after numerous meetings during the fall semester with various campus constituencies.

His presentation generated considerable discussion, particularly about the organizational structure proposed by Innus to develop the university's strategic IT development plan. In particular, senators questioned the lack of faculty members and students on the IT Steering Committee, which will set goals and priorities for the development plan, and the IT Coordination Committee, which will structure and define individual IT projects.

The Steering Committee is made up of vice provosts, associate vice presidents and an associate provost; the Coordination Committee is made up of Computer and Information Technology (CIT) directors, provostial and vice presidential staff, representatives of the academic computing nodes established by the provost, and a representative from the Departmental Computing Consultants Committee.

Senators questioned how and why those individuals were chosen, and if they were knowledgeable about the IT field, since filtering information "is a very dangerous thing." They also asked whether, given other committee and professional duties, committee members would be able to be active in this area.

Boris Albini, professor of microbiology, noted the complexity of the proposed plan and expressed concern that the "big structure" presented might become autonomous and begin to define priorities and the direction of technology at UB, even as they apply to curricula and academic issues.

Other committee members were concerned that some while deans on the steering committee are more aware of their faculty members' activities, knowledge and needs in the IT area, others are relative IT neophytes. Differential funding for IT infrastructure, equipment, training and services is also a problem, they said, noting that some faculties and schools are wealthy, technologically astute and able to upgrade and maintain far more sophisticated systems than others.

Senators asked that faculty members, including new junior faculty who have worked in computer technology and were familiar to its application to the disciplines, be named to the IT committees. It was suggested as well that "power users" of technology in various departments, particularly in the library school, be identified and involved in the discussion and planning stages.