Schools react to cuts in aid
St. Lawrence County's two State University of New York campuses are reacting differently to the latest cuts to come down from Albany.
At SUNY Potsdam, students are protesting and President John F. Schwaller is struggling to cut $7.5 million from the college budget while still working to improve the institution.
"Little by little, we are closing the gap," Mr. Schwaller said. "It feels somewhat schizophrenic. It's difficult to have a rosy vision when things seem so bleak in the immediate future, but that's one of the challenges given to my cabinet. We have to look at what things we can do now that can position us better for when the good times come back."
Members of the college's Student Government Association organized a rally recently to object to the cuts to higher education.
SUNY Potsdam stands to lose a little less than $1 million in state funding next year, on top of the money the college lost in the state budget this year. In all, the university must eliminate about $7.5 million from its budget for 2010-11, Mr. Schwaller said.
The college is accomplishing that through attrition and by cutting back on adjunct professors and other temporary employees such as summer groundskeepers.
"We have cut our expense budgets by just about as much as we conceivably can, so we need to see how we can find efficiencies in personnel," Mr. Schwaller said. "To be quite candid, it's very difficult because of contractual obligations and state rules and regulations. We have a very limited degree of action when it comes to budget issues. We simply can't lay people off."
SUNY Potsdam is hoping that its new test-optional policy, which eliminates the requirement for most students to submit SAT or ACT scores with college applications, will attract more applicants — and more tuition dollars — this year.
"A dollar's a dollar's a dollar," Mr. Schwaller said. "We are trying very hard to reduce the impact on our students, but with reductions of this size we can't eliminate all of them."
SUNY Canton President Joseph L. Kennedy is less worried about the latest cut in state contributions, because his campus budget has been buoyed by its own big spike in enrollment.
"We're doing OK. As long as we sustain our enrollments, we'll be just fine. We have dipped into our reserves, so instead of having five years of money in the bank, we have two," Mr. Kennedy said. "Honestly, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be."
SUNY Canton likely will lose about $450,000 from the latest cuts in state contributions, and will have about $3 million less to work with as it puts together its 2010-11 budget.
The college set a new enrollment record this fall, with 3,361 students, a 10 percent increase from the year before. Those extra students have made the difference in helping to balance SUNY Canton's budget for next year, Mr. Kennedy said.
"They're the reason we're not having to cut faculty. The impact on our campus is very modest," he said. "And also, for whatever reason, we've always been a campus that saved money. We collect more money than we spend. So we came in with a cushion."
Even so, SUNY Canton can't count on expanding its student body forever. The campus already is "maxed out" for dormitory and classroom space and the college is working to increase its selectivity, Mr. Kennedy said.
"We have to invest in areas that are strategically important," he said. "We're in pretty good shape right now, and hopefully we will stay that way."
Even as both presidents work to trim their budgets, they share a concern about state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli's proposal to increase tuition for out-of-state students.
They think the measure, which is aimed at raising more revenue, actually would hurt the colleges more than they would help.
Mr. Schwaller said the most recent tuition hike for out-of-state students drove away some of SUNY Potsdam's sizable population of Canadian students.
"The majority of my colleagues in the comprehensive college field and everyone I've spoken to agrees that the increase in out-of-state tuition would be disastrous," he said. "Last time, we saw a significant reduction in the number of Canadian students we could recruit. It was a back-door hurt to us."
Mr. Kennedy is worried that the out-of-state tuition hike would in turn translate into a jump in the cost of online courses, which also are mandated by the state.
SUNY Canton OnLine has become popular across the globe, he said, and the college's partnerships with universities abroad also often bring international students to the campus for courses each summer.
"That could have a tremendous negative impact. Students outside of the U.S. simply couldn't afford the education. That would be such bad public policy," Mr. Kennedy said. "It's such a good investment for the state of New York to educate students from developing economies. We could be really shortsighted on this if we aren't careful."
