(photo above via The Governor's Office) (image below by Becca Glaser)
With the regularity of a ritual, every year the advocates of high-quality public higher education make a pilgrimage to Albany. Every year, for over 40 years, the request has been the same: stop de-funding higher education. And nearly every year, for over 40 years, the Legislature and Governor do the same thing: cut funding and approve tuition hikes. As a result, annual per-student government expenditures in New York’s public higher education system languish at an average of $8,830; while private colleges nationwide spend an average of $23,100.
More than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, a college degree is what a high school diploma used to be. Yet, public and private higher education are increasingly separate and unequal -- and increasingly expensive.
It wasn’t always this way. CUNY was free for New Yorkers from 1847 to 1975, when the institution was majority white. The state imposed tuition through a Wall Street-aligned “Emergency Financial Control Board” in 1976. It was also the first year the university system enrolled a majority students of color.
The steady retreat of government from the provision of higher education as a public good has allowed Wall Street loan sharks to advance. Poor and working-class students have been the casualties, stuck relying on loans or longer and longer hours at low-wage jobs to get themselves through school.
The CUNY administration likes to tout the institution as the “American Dream Machine,” proclaiming in sunny subway ads that “80% graduate debt-free.” They don’t mention a darker truth: over 50% of those who enroll don’t graduate at all, falling prey to a lack of financial aid, the high cost of living in New York City, and the frequent unavailability of classes that are required for graduation (students call this “getting CUNYed”).
Facilities across CUNY are falling apart. And the faculty are increasingly overworked and underpaid -- over half of CUNY’s courses are taught by adjuncts making an average of $3,275 per course. With a full-time teaching load, that would bring you $19,650 per year before taxes, and put you in poverty.
This year in Albany was supposed to be different. On April 7, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that a deal had been reached regarding the state budget, including approval for his Excelsior Scholarship program, which is now being billed as the first tuition-free college plan passed by a state.
Cuomo is selling us a bill of goods.
He says his “Excelsior” plan makes higher education free for “middle class” families. He does not mention that it actually increases tuition by $1,000 over the next five years (pending approval from the Board of Trustees). Cuomo claims that low-income students currently can cover their tuition with existing state and federal aid, but this is not generally true. Decades of funding cuts, tuition hikes, absurdly low income limits and other restrictions on aid mean that thousands of students already struggle to pay tuition and their costs of living. Now, thanks to Cuomo, they may have hundreds of dollars more in tuition to pay.
The Excelsior Scholarship is a smokescreen for this backdoor tuition hike that will fall on many of the neediest students, who do not qualify for the aid that Cuomo touts. To maintain eligibility for the scholarship, students must take 30 credits per year -- an average of five classes per semester in a standard school year, which is more than the minimum for being full-time. This is an impossibility for students who must work to provide for their families or care for children. With this inordinate course load, students must also maintain a certain GPA, to be decided by their college.
Undocumented students remain completely excluded from financial aid.
It gets worse. The Excelsior program will also take from the poorest students to fill the coffers of the state. At current rates of enrollment, the $1,000 tuition hike could bring in over $274 million in additional revenue at CUNY alone, given its 274,000 full-time students. It could bring in an additional $400 million from SUNY’s 400,000 undergraduates.
Yet, the state plans to spend only $163 million on the Excelsior Scholarship, leading to a net revenue increase for the government, in part paid for by those students who can’t qualify for the scholarship because they are not able to take five classes at a time.
Cuomo’s plan aids middle-income students while turning poor and working class students into a profit center, continuing the 40-year trend of reducing access for the poor to public higher education and shifting the funding burden to students. It also makes no provision for badly-needed investment in the CUNY system: including infrastructure, adjunct pay parity, and support for struggling students.
And there’s one more thing. For those who are able to maintain four years of five classes per semester and meet GPA requirements each semester, Cuomo’s plan will force its recipients to remain in New York for the same number of years that they received the scholarship. If graduates move out of state, they will be charged with debt equivalent to the tuition covered by the Excelsior Scholarship, sending more young people into the jaws of the student loan industry.
We have a better idea.
Higher education is a free public good in dozens of countries across the world, all of which are less wealthy that the United States. It used to be the norm here too. It’s time to bring it back.
The Campaign to Make CUNY Free Again is gathering 30,000 petition signatures to place the “Make CUNY Free Again Law” on the ballot in November’s election. Our proposal will do what Governor Cuomo would not. It will end separate and unequal in New York City’s higher education system by requiring the City to ask the State to authorize a tax on the top 1%. The law will guarantee funding to CUNY on parity with the median per-student expenditure in the private sector, guarantee any New York City resident (U.S. citizen or not) tuition-free access to a college education or the remedial programs necessary to prepare for college, stipends to remove poverty as a barrier to student success, and equity in pay between part-time and full-time faculty and staff, and between the public and private sectors.
For 40 years, the political class has pushed higher education farther out of reach for poor and working-class New Yorkers. If our campaign is successful, on November 7, 2017 we the people will go to the polls to have our say: education is a human right.
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The Campaign to Make CUNY Free Again is an independent initiative of CUNY students, faculty, staff, and community members in New York City. On Facebook & Twitter @MakeCUNYfree.
Signed:
Erik Forman (@_erikforman) teaches in the public K-12 and higher education system in New York City and is the co-founder of the NYC Social Justice Curriculum Fair.
Tim Hardin is an Inwood-based activist, Army combat veteran, and NYC DSA organizer who attends BMCC and advocates for a free CUNY, single-payer healthcare in NY, and other local and state grassroots campaigns.
Jennifer Hyman graduated from Hunter College with a BA in Political Science and Philosophy and from SUNY Binghamton with an MA in Social, Political, Ethical, and Legal Philosophy in 2011.
Rosa Squillacote is a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center; Hunter College adjunct professor and alum; and organizer with the CUNY branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Joseph van der Naald is a PhD student in the program in sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Conor Tomás Reed is a CUNY doctoral student, scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and organizer in the Campaign to Make CUNY Free Again.
Joseph Sellman is a community organizer and regional board member of Citizen Action New York, an active member of Voices of Community Activists and Leaders (VOCAL-NY), and an ‘83 alum of Baruch College.
Meghann Williams is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Hunter College and is president of the Hunter College Graduate Student Association.
Tiffany Berruti is a queer undergraduate activists at Hunter College, and is currently involved in NYC DSA.
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On Tax Day, hundreds of thousands of protesters will take to the streets to demand President Trump release his tax returns and hold the wealthy accountable for taxes that the rest of us pay every year.
Our group, the Center for Popular Democracy, will be among those calling for a tax system that ensures everyone contributes their fair share to our country so that all Americans, regardless of socioeconomic status, have the opportunity to reach their highest potential. We cannot allow Wall Street banks and billionaires to use their wealth and power to repeatedly shortchange us.
The nine largest banks in America, for example, have used loopholes and other tax dodging schemes to lower their tax rate from the official rate of 35 percent to just 18.6 percent, a lower rate than what millions of middle class families pay. That tax dodge alone has allowed the banks to avoid paying some $80 billion in taxes between 2008 and 2015.
These figures do not include offshore tax havens, where Fortune 500 companies have stashed $2.6 trillion in profits on which they owe $767 billion in taxes. That's enough to pay the cost of Bernie Sanders' debt-free college plan and more. They also do not account for the taxes dodged using the "carried interest" loophole which makes it possible for one hedge fund manager who makes $4.6 million per day to pay a tax rate lower than what a teacher or firefighter might pay.
These billions of dollars could have been used to fund public programs that provide critical services that millions of New Yorkers rely on, like public housing, healthcare, and education.
In fact, even some of New York’s wealthiest residents agree. In March, 80 wealthy New Yorkers wrote to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, urging him to increase taxes on the rich to provide infrastructure services that benefit all New Yorkers. “We need to invest in pathways out of poverty and up the economic ladder for all of our fellow citizens, including strong public education from pre-K to college. And, we need to invest in the fragile bridges, tunnels, waterlines, public buildings, and roads that we all depend on” they wrote.
The state also recently passed its state budget which included a two-year extension on the “millionaires’ tax” expected to “offset the state’s $3.5 billion deficit and fund income tax cuts for people making under $300,000,” as reported by Reuters.
New York should lead the way forward by making the “millionaires’ tax” permanent and closing loopholes that have allowed Trump’s donors and the wealthiest executives on Wall Street to avoid paying huge sums in taxes in recent years.
Most Americans know that our current tax laws are steeply slanted in favor of the rich and powerful – and they are not happy about it. A Pew Research poll found that roughly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans “are bothered a lot by the feeling that some corporations aren’t paying what’s fair in federal taxes, and 61 percent say the same about some wealthy people.”
Trump has his own sordid history with the IRS. The New York Times obtained documents showing Trump reported a staggering loss of nearly one billion dollars in 1995, which could have allowed him to legally avoid paying federal taxes for 18 years.
In 1789 Benjamin Franklin wrote, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Almost three centuries later, only one of these things is certain and the other is unfairly avoided by those with wealth and privilege.
Unlike Donald Trump, most Americans don't mind paying their taxes. What they object to is letting the rich and powerful avoid paying theirs. It’s time for the one percent to step up to the plate.
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Tony Perlstein is Deputy Director of Campaigns for the Center for Popular Democracy. On Twitter @popdemoc.
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Council Member Jumaane Williams, the author (photo: William Alatriste)
Governor’s budget epitomizes the need to define what "progressive" means
The new state budget, like almost all budgets, has some beneficial things that should be celebrated. However, to call this budget “progressive” clearly means that in this era of Trump, the term is being stretched to the point of possibly having no meaning at all. And frankly, we should also examine what it means to be part of the "resistance."
The main example being touted is “Raise the Age,” which of course we should take time to celebrate and give credit where it’s due. It should also be put in perspective. This state was the second to last state to raise the age of adult criminal responsibility from 16 -- meaning 48 other states have been progressive on this years before us. So if this makes New York progressive, what were they? Additionally, what was just passed is a watered down version of what most advocates say would be most helpful.
Let’s also look at tuition-free college. Again, it sounds good when Governor Cuomo talks about it, and it is better than what we had -- but how many people does it impact? If you don’t finish your degree in four years, you’re not eligible, or you have to repay any scholarship money. This is unacceptable. For example, only 10.4 percent of first-time/full-time students from CUNY City College graduate on time.
The Excelsior Scholarship also doesn’t help the poorest students, who need the help the most. As we celebrate this win with pictures of Bernie Sanders, we must ask if this is really what he had in mind when he brought the issue to prominence last year.
Then there is 421-a, which has been euphemistically re-branded as the “Affordable New York” housing program. This is perhaps the single worst item in the state budget. The governor missed the mark completely and aligned himself more with Donald Trump, who helped create 421-a in the first place, than the New Yorkers in need of affordable housing.
First, the new program is completely unlinked with the renewal of rent regulations -- the only real leverage tenants had in extending rent stabilization laws along with the real estate tax break that is 421-a. Next, the revival of the 421-a tax abatement gives away billions to real estate developers without spurring true affordable housing. The new program is worse than the old one, which expired two years ago.
This tax break gives away a lot for very little. In essence, it takes away valuable resources from effective affordable housing strategies to instead line the pockets of wealthy developers, like the current president, who is one of the biggest recipients taking advantage of city taxpayers.
Over 10 years, this tax abatement will cost the city nearly a billion additional dollars in unrealized tax revenue, causing similar pain to the cuts we are facing from the president.
Adding insult to injury, the governor aligned with Senate Republicans and took away the city’s ability to do anything to shape the program -- an ability that existed in the previous version.
What’s worse still is that even after 421-a expired, new construction permits continued without pause, proving this tax abatement is an inexplicable, unnecessary billion-dollar gift to developers.
Let’s be clear, those touting this as a “progressive” state budget had the power to do all of this before the Trump Era, but chose not to. And even these measures are overly compromised, half-loafs of what they could and should be.
On a separate note, it’s unclear what benefit, if any, the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) played through aligning with Senate Republicans. Their existence doesn’t seem to have been necessary in getting a weaker than requested Raise the Age in exchange for a thorough tax giveaway to developers. The Assembly and Senate Democrats could have done that deal on their own.
Credit is deserved to the Senate Democrats and particularly to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie for any progress we do now have. With that said, they also must immediately begin work on strengthening Raise the Age, and go back to the drawing board with the failed new 421-a.
I don’t write any of this to say that there is nothing good in the state budget. But, my constituents and I expect more. New York City and New York State deserve better.
As an experienced community organizer, I am trained to celebrate the small victories along the way to the final goal. And yes, people who are pushed to do things they otherwise wouldn’t should be rewarded as well. That is part of the political game. But, it should be put in context.
We should see and acknowledge the differences between someone who has conviction to fight at all costs for progressive values and someone who wears whatever cloak is politically expedient.
The new state budget includes some good, even some historic things. But to tout it loudly as a “progressive” budget seems more on the expediency side than any true conviction. These false proclamations should make us question what the word “progressive” even means today. Are we allowing mediocrity in the name of the people, more for self-gain than public service?
I remember just a few years ago New York residents were too proud to let Rudy Giuliani get away with using New York to tout a vastly inflated record as a passport to the presidency. At this point, I hope that aligning with “progressive” actually ends up delivering what advocates truly want and residents desperately need. If not, I hope that people of conscience in New York, who kept Rudy in check, will have the same pride in 2020.
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Jumaane Williams is a City Council member representing parts of Brooklyn. On Twitter @JumaaneWilliams.
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