The Chancellor's position is also handsomely compensated with many non-salary perks: a $90,000 a year allowance for housing costs plus a car and driver, for total compensation that approaches half a million dollars.
It is imperative that the struggle for a free and open CUNY end such outlandish pay packages and force the Chancellor and his trustees to swallow their own medication and submit to 'salary austerity.'
"The FY 2009 CUNY budget request calls for a 5% increase in tuition this year and increases matching the Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) in the future. Since HEPI has averaged a 5% per annum increase since 1990, the Compact, in practice, calls for endless substantial increases in tuition." Link
Part of the Neoliberalization of CUNY is shifting the cost of education from corporations, the state and the wealthy - those who can and should bear the cost of public education - to those least able to pay, the students themselves.
"From 1989 to 2006, tuition and fees rose 94 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, while the state's contribution fell 35 percent and the city's by 24 percent. After financial aid is factored in, students still paid 26 percent of CUNY's revenues last year, up from 11 percent in 1989." Link
Tuition payments as a percentage of the CUNY budget have doubled since 1990. 1990 - 19.9% of the budget 1994 - 31.7% of the budget 2000 - 37% of the budget 2006 - 42% of the budget
The CUNY Compact
The CUNY Compact is Chancellor Goldstein's proposed solution to "too little revenue and too little investment" in CUNY. His solution to the defunding of CUNY is more of the same. To further the neoliberalization of CUNY and therefore increase the cost of public education to people of color and the working class.
"The proposed “Compact” of the CUNY Budget Request sends the wrong message; that CUNY can build new programs with only a small marginal new net investment of public dollars. The “Compact” proposes that only 30% of the cost of new programs will be funded with public money and that the rest of the funding for Compact initiatives will come from tuition increases, enrollment growth, restructuring, and philanthropy." Link
What this means is continuous tuition increases, larger class sizes, increased course loads for faculty, more adjuncts, and a reliance on the wealthy to selectively fund programs.
Under the CUNY Compact the power elite will continue to shape our CUNY. It is therefore imperative that the community, students, staff and faculty counter this hegemonic vision with our own liberatory imaginations. We must reimagine what a liberated CUNY might look like in the 21st century.
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