Governor Andrew Cuomo started the year off with a bang on January 21st, unveiling his outline of the Fiscal Year 2021 Executive Budget. The plan, which is valued at $275 billion, is designed to tackle many issues that exist in New York politics, such as homelessness, mental health, public health, and infrastructure funding.
In terms of the funding aimed at benefiting higher education, Cuomo’s plan specifically mentions CUNY/SUNY schools and “expanding access to a quality and affordable college education.”
According to the budget, the funding for higher education has increased from $6.0 billion to $7.8 billion with $1.3 billion going towards “strategic programs to make college more affordable and encourage the best and brightest students to build their future in New York.”
The budget sets out to expand the eligibility threshold of the Excelsior Scholarship, which provides students below a certain income with free tuition. Among other requirements, the scholarship currently requires students’ gross family income to be $125,000 or less to receive the scholarship, but Cuomo’s new budget plan would raise it to $150,000.
Despite this change, the Excelsior Scholarship remains the subject of criticism with claims that it does not help low-income students and barely helps CUNY students at all.
According to the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation, the Excelsior Scholarship was awarded to 24,000 students in its second year, making up only 3.8 percent of total SUNY and CUNY undergraduate enrollment. “That’s extremely low,” said Corrinne Greene, a student activist at Brooklyn College. “I think that raising the income cap is fine, but that should not absolve the Governor from criticisms of the program. It’s a bandaid on something that requires surgery.”
To much dismay, the Excelsior Scholarship mandates that recipients be enrolled in at least 12 credits per semester and complete 30 credits each year. The program also does not cover the costs of books, housing, transportation, and food which are all common sources of student loan debt.
“A program like Excelsior is necessary, but it would be a better use of time and resources to create an interest free loan program with no requirements,” Greene continued. “I would love the opportunity to apply for that loan!”
In addition to Excelsior, the budget also includes $400 million to go towards Cuomo’s “2:1 strategic needs capital matching program,” which is designed “to support new construction and/or major renovations of academic buildings at SUNY state-operated and statutory colleges and CUNY senior colleges.” This program, however, would require CUNY/SUNY campuses to contribute one dollar for every two dollars invested by the state into construction costs.
“Students know how important capital investment is for their safety, health, and education. However, the 2:1 Strategic Needs Capital Matching Program seems to benefit schools that already have more access to wealth while leaving other schools behind,” said Jonathan Gaffney, the project coordinator for New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). “NYPIRG advocates for a free and fully funded CUNY, and as far as the 2:1 matching proposal is concerned, NYPIRG wants to see all CUNY and SUNY capital programs robustly funded, regardless of the school’s ability to fundraise private dollars.”
While NYPIRG feels wary regarding the budget’s proposal, CUNY officials remain optimistic about the budget as a whole. “We applaud the increased investment in CUNY’s operations and the continued commitment to the University’s critical capital needs reflected in Governor Cuomo’s budget,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “Governor Cuomo’s budget will enable CUNY to continue forward with its ambitious infrastructure investment, the fruits of which can be seen in the cutting-edge Tow Center for Performing Arts on the campus of Brooklyn College.”
Despite Rodríguez’s optimism, Greene remains doubtful that the budget’s changes will benefit students of higher education.
“When the Excelsior Program was announced, I was very relieved, but I haven’t benefited from it at all. And there are so many students like me,” Greene said. “I don’t want to see the Governor say that we have a progressive agenda and then not talk about higher education. This should be such a high priority issue.”