“The University Dismantled Before Your Very Eyes:” CUNY’s Budgetary Shortfall Forces Colleges to Scramble

Words by Luca GoldMansour
Cover photo courtesy of PSC CUNY

CUNY faculty and staff are demonstrating solidarity with students as they gear up for a battle with Governor Cuomo, Chancellor Matos Rodriguez, the Board of Trustees, and union bureaucrats.

Professor Pamela Stemberg thinks that CUNY, with all of its educational resources, should be at the forefront of New York State’s strategy to deal with the coronavirus and its economic and social fallout. Stemberg, a member of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the CUNY faculty and staff union, sees the potential for creative solutions to the challenges facing New York State that CUNY’s purported affordable and quality education can provide, but having organized CUNY faculty and staff for years, Stemberg has never seen the university in more dire straits. “We need to be educating New Yorkers. This shows a lack of vision and respect for our education system among CUNY leadership,” Stemberg shares.

Just after the coronavirus made the state its global epicenter, CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez announced in May that there was “no doubt that the road to recovery for New York goes through CUNY.” Matos spoke of a public university ready to help overcome the challenges New York faces. But with the 2020 Fall semester wrapping up, those bearing the brunt of a new episode of accelerating austerity are voicing that “Chancellor Matos and the Board of Trustees cannot and do not serve the CUNY community,” as Stemberg states plainly. Stemberg is one among many who have grown livid with the administration’s submission to market forces in the wake of the pandemic and are gearing up for battle with Governor Cuomo, Chancellor Matos Rodriguez, the Board of Trustees, and union bureaucrats. 

At every stage, the administration seems more willing to fight those they claim to work for rather than confront powerful interests which would further privatize CUNY. As the CUNY administration continues what they describe as difficult but necessary adjustments to revenue losses from the pandemic, critics say that “preemptive and disproportionate” budget reductions have left colleges scrambling to identify savings, all despite unused federal aid granted in the CARES Act, which included specific provisions for keeping staff on payroll. In August, a judge denied PSC CUNY’s motion to sue Chancellor Matos Rodriguez and CUNY after they declined to reappoint contracts, effectively laying off 2,800 employees, most of them adjunct professors and part time staff, and then proceeded to renege on their contractual obligation to a wage raise to match inflation in November.

CUNY’s austerity has forced colleges to diminish course offerings and expand class sizes to unprecedented levels, even as tuition continues to rise. PSC recently filed a petition for a reduction in class sizes. “We're seeing class sizes balloon like crazy. At City College there's been a couple bad cases of that, but Medgar Evers has been one of the worst, with seventy-five students in required intro classes,” said Robert Balun, a PSC alternate delegate and member of “Rank and File Action”, a grassroots organization of labor activists at CUNY.

At City College alone, a November budget briefing to the faculty senate reveals a goal of seventeen million dollars in cost reductions, with fifteen million already identified by every division of the college. “The CUNY administration is balancing its budget on the backs of students and the backs of employees. And the crisis continues, this sort of death by 1,000 cuts, this spiral,” Balun asserted.

“The CUNY administration is balancing its budget on the backs of students and the backs of employees. And the crisis continues, this sort of death by 1,000 cuts, this spiral.”

- Robert Balun, A PSC alternate delegate and member of “Rank and File Action”

As for City College, two of the seventeen-million-dollar target for cost savings had yet to be identified by November. Every school has been targeted for cost savings, however not all were targeted equally.

In addition to the target savings, the briefing also recommends a continued hiring freeze, as well as an OTPS freeze, which accounts for spending on supplies and equipment. Finally, the budget briefing notes that if the CUNY administration and Albany propose in their next budget a cut of more than 20%, that, “system wide adjustments would be necessary.”

“You are watching the university be dismantled before your very eyes,” Stemberg noted.

There is movement inside PSC towards strike readiness, but it is meeting resistance among the PSC executive committee. A new resolution was finally offered on November 25, 2020 asserting that “a strike authorization vote and, if needed, a strike, could create the political leverage needed to prevail against the challenges PSC members may face this spring and after.” For Balun this resolution is a positive development, but doesn’t go far enough, “The good thing is that we can begin to start organizing to fight back, the problem is we should have been doing this two years ago.”

 “We won’t let this happen, and ultimately the person who needs to know that is Cuomo,” Stemberg declared. After offering “no consultations to faculty, to PSC, to the University Student Senate, or to any of our democratic governing structures,” it is clear that the Chancellor and The CUNY Board of Trustees “serve the governor,” as stated in Stemberg’s words. Cuomo’s 2020 budget withheld 20% of state funding to CUNY’s total budget. Stemberg also shared, “Robert Mujica, the budget director of New York was appointed by Cuomo and serves on (CUNYS)  board of trustees.”

Amanuel Hailu, a student in the City College Young Democratic Socialists of America Society, is fed up with CUNY’s sorry state of affairs. “Many students would be surprised to learn that prior to 1976, CUNY provided a free and quality education, and that’s what students should demand today, especially when we are all currently paying full tuition for Zoom lectures. We need that kind of student solidarity more than ever today. City College has a proud history of student led strikes, like in 1969 when students demanded open admissions and Black and Puerto Rican studies programs,” Hailu stated.

Over 2,700 students at Columbia University have now pledged to withhold their tuition in response to increased budgetary austerity, and as Stemberg notes, “If they are organizing a student strike at Columbia, then maybe students should be organizing a strike here as well.” With Columbia and CUNY student strikes and occupations happening in ’68 and ’69, perhaps history is set to repeat with consecutive strikes occurring once again.

If City College and CUNY are to emerge from this historic crossroads still synced to their legacy as “the people’s university,” many believe that it will be accomplished by the same means which secured that legacy in the first place, student and faculty strike.