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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


As we enter the final stretch of New York’s budget process for this year, community colleges are still a far distance from achieving our budget request.

The “one house” budgets emerging from the Senate and the Assembly provided $50 per FTE and $100 per FTE respectively. As you will recall, the Governor’s Executive budget had held community colleges flat.

SUNY community colleges had requested about $270 per FTE (full-time equivalent student) increase in base aid. At this level, the colleges would effectively be “held harmless”—neither gaining nor losing aggregate state funding year-on-year. Due to enrollment decreases across the system, even a $100 increase would result in the vast majority of SUNY community colleges (including MCC) receiving less funding in 2017-18 than in 2016-17.

As SUNY’s community college leaders have conveyed to our state delegation for the past few years, the FTE funding model no longer addresses the funding realities at our institutions. Even as FTE enrollment falls, headcount enrollment has declined more slowly because part-time enrollment is increasing. Each of these part-time students need counselors, advisors, librarians, and more—just like their full-time peers, but we do not receive equivalent funding for them.

We also know that the students we are serving are in need of more intensive services, such as mental health counseling, financial counseling and education, disability and interpretive services, legal services, and others that we are simply not funded to provide.

In addition, even as enrollment in some programs is falling, the demand for other programs is flat or growing. And, these in-demand programs tend to be more expensive. On average, career and technical, STEM, and health care programs cost about 40% more to run—for reasons that range from class sizes to capital investment. Yet, we receive the same FTE aid (and tuition) regardless of program costs.

The complexity of this picture has led SUNY to request that the state convene a working group to define a new model for community college funding, but again this year, it does not appear this request will advance into the budget.

So, we are back to advocating for an increase in base aid: $270. Our understanding is that the higher education budget will be finalized by early next week, so if you want to make your voice heard, now is the time. If you have questions or need more information, contact Acting Government Relations Liaison Clayton Jones.

Please share your thoughts on the blog.

Anne M. Kress
Office of the President
03/22/2017