CUNY needs fair funding!

Dear [ Decision Maker ],

I am writing you to request that the Legislature significantly increase public operating and capital funding to CUNY in the 2009 fiscal year budget. New York must find the necessary revenue from public funds this year to make the needed investment.

The Commission on Higher Education's Preliminary Report identified serious and chronic underfunding as the underlying structural problem facing CUNY. The Commission has found what we, as current and retired CUNY faculty and staff, know all too well: NY public higher education is no longer competitive with its peers, even as New Yorkers need public higher education to succeed and prosper. The dimensions of the crisis are daunting:

New York State funding for CUNY fell 18% in real dollars since 1990.
Full-time faculty now number 5,000 less than in 1975, even as enrollments increase.
Teaching continues to be shifted onto poorly-paid adjunct faculty.
Tuition as a part of CUNY's operating budget has increased from 20% to 36% since 1990.
Uncompetitive faculty salaries and crippling workloads have created a recruitment and retention crisis at CUNY.

New Yorkers need the Legislature to begin the necessary investment in CUNY this year with a significant down-payment on building the 21st-Century CUNY.

New investments of public funds will allow CUNY to hire 500 new full-time faculty and pursue important programmatic and capital initiatives. In addition, the Executive Budget?s cuts to CUNY should be restored and community college aid should be increased by $250/FTE over Fiscal Year 2008's levels.

There is much more to do in this budget to begin building the 21st-Century CUNY: providing graduate employees with health insurance, expanding mental health counseling for students, and supporting TAP reform by expanding part-time TAP and treating financially independent students equitably.

Please step forward to do what is right for New Yorkers in this year's budget.

Thank you,