Dive Brief:
- Major cuts to the City University of New York have left schools with leaky roofs, inadequate facilities, crowded classrooms, depressed and disillusioned faculty and students and no choice but to close programs.
- The New York Times reports the strong legacy of opportunity within CUNY, and especially City College, is being threatened by questionable leadership and major budget cuts that are leaving faculty and staff with low morale and forcing students to pay more for degree programs of declining quality.
- At City College, which has been called the poor man’s Harvard, engineering experts found unsafe lab conditions, outdated technology, and bugs and rodents in college buildings during a visit for the school of engineering’s accreditation renewal.
Dive Insight:
Public higher education systems across the country have struggled to respond to major budget cuts, often resorting to steep tuition hikes, forgone building maintenance and cuts to services. CUNY is a system in a city within a state that has historically valued increased access to education. If CUNY is in danger, some question how the rest of the country can hope to escape a similar fate.
Some community colleges in Arizona are operating with no state appropriations and public colleges and universities from coast to coast have seen steep drops in the portion of their costs covered by state governments. Many have turned to out-of-state or international students who pay higher tuition. Nationwide, state support is in the middle of a slow climb, on average, but few can say it’s enough.