As the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Board of Trustees voted Monday to raise tuition, students and professors took to the streets in protest. For nearly four hours, protesters rallied outside Baruch College, marched around the block and stormed Third and Lexington avenues.
The shouts and jeers didn’t stop the Trustees from raising tuition $300 annually for the next five years. Currently, the in-state price tag of CUNY’s four-year colleges is $5,130, but by 2015, undergraduates will be shelling out $6,330 per year.
Andrew Katz and Olivia Waxman asked CUNY students and professors about the sacrifices, if any, they’ll have to make now:
[simpleviewer gallery_id=”56″]
In July, the New York State legislature authorized CUNY and State University of New York to raise tuition $300 annually for full-time, in-state undergraduates at the senior colleges over the next five years, and proportionately for graduate, doctoral, and non-residents at the senior and community colleges, beginning fall 2011. New York politicians and CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein have hailed the planned tuition increases as a step that provides stability and much-needed revenue to a university whose operating budget has been slashed by $300 million in the last four years.
“In some years there were very steep tuition increases—15, 20, even 30 percent—while in other years, sometimes over a period of consecutive years, there would be no tuition increases,” Goldstein said in an Aug. 9 statement. The hikes are expected to generate $50 million in revenue for CUNY just after the first year. Whether students will pay the tuition increases depends on how much aid they receive from the state’s Tuition Assistance Program; students who receive the maximum amount will not have to pay the new tuition, for instance.
But CUNY students are not the only ones feeling the pinch. A College Board study published last month found that average tuition and fees at public four-year colleges nationwide have grown faster than those at private universities for the fifth straight year. In fact, several CUNY schools boast some of the lowest net prices among public, four-year colleges across the country, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s College Affordability and Transparency Center.
Yet, even the most modest increases may be too taxing for a student body that is already cash-strapped. Fifty-four percent of CUNY undergraduates come from families that make less than $30,000 annually, and nearly 60 percent rely on state and federal financial aid to pay for school, according to the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents CUNY faculty. Forty-four percent are first-generation college students, and 74 percent are students of color.
Leave a Reply