CUNY needs more money, desperately

Where’s the leak?” The custodian’s voice in my classroom snapped me back to reality. After two years of remote learning, my classmates and I had just returned to campus — a campus in even worse physical shape than we’d left it in 2020. My fellow students and I looked around and noticed that water was dripping from the ceiling tiles onto my statistics professor’s computer. The water damage from the leaking ceiling ruined the machine, and so — just a few minutes into the class — our lecture was over, and we couldn’t learn the concepts we were meant to cover that day.

It was funny, but I know that’s not what I’m in school to do, and this isn’t a one-off experience. Faulty elevators and escalators, blocked-off public areas and leaks are all problems that we deal with as CUNY students all the time. It hasn’t always been this way: In the past, CUNY was the crown jewel of New York City’s higher education system, and we didn’t have to fight so hard for basic needs.

CUNY not only used to be the crown jewel of New York City’s higher education world, but it also used to be fully, 100%, free for its students. But in the 175 years since City College was founded — and the 61 years since CUNY as we know it became a system — the concept of education as a public good has dissolved bit by bit, line item by line item in state budget after state budget. Sticking with recent memory alone, if CUNY’s budget had increased at the same rate as inflation since 1990, its annual budget would be $920 million larger today.

Instead, state funding for CUNY has almost been cut in half since 1990. And here we are, with dilapidated infrastructure becoming so ubiquitous that the problems caused by the lack of funding are now recurring memes on Instagram.

It’s not just about physical infrastructure but human infrastructure. CUNY’s reliance on adjunct faculty has meant long waits for me to take courses required for my major. The lack of full-time professors impacts how often core classes are offered, and several of my Hunter friends have had to stay longer than four years to complete their degrees because of these constraints. That can jeopardize their access to financial aid through the state’s Tuition Assistance Program, which is only provided for four years of study. The adjunct faculty at Hunter is excellent, and several adjunct professors are some of my favorite professors, but they simply do not have the time or resources to give you the same individualized instruction as full-time professors.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can and we must, do better for CUNY. This budget season, I and the thousands of CUNY students, faculty and staff have real hope that we can win the funding we so desperately need. Gov. Hochul’s executive budget proposes $1.5 billion for CUNY and SUNY over the next five years, a step forward. But in order to reverse the decades of disinvestment CUNY has suffered, we need more.

We need a New Deal for CUNY. That means more than $500 million for CUNY alone in operating aid and more than $1 billion to address years of foregone capital needs. With that investment, we could hire the full-time faculty, academic advisers and mental health counselors we so need to begin to have student-to-full-time-faculty ratios close to the national average. We could finally return CUNY to the tuition-free college system it once was. We could fix our crumbling ceilings.

Attending CUNY is why I moved to New York from Louisiana almost four years ago. Coming from a state without strong investments in public schools, transportation and health care, I am proud of the legacy of CUNY as New York City’s great equalizer. CUNY has provided me with an opportunity no other college here could: to live in New York City to get a quality education and enjoy this wonderful city that I now consider home without going completely broke.

Still, my appreciation for Hunter, its faculty and my classmates comes with an understanding that CUNY could be so much better.

CUNY is one of the most respected urban university systems in the nation, but the decades of cuts its budget has had to endure is shameful. Whether we are first-generation or fifth-generation, students who go to the nation’s largest and best network of urban public colleges and universities should not be faced with less individualized attention, greater financial burden and dilapidated infrastructure and equipment. We deserve a New Deal for CUNY now.

Todd lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and is in his final year of a BA at Hunter College, CUNY.