SUNY Administration has begun implementing a strategic plan that will aim to revitalize New York state’s economy and improve the quality of life for its citizens.
The plan, dubbed The Power of SUNY, emphasizes SUNY’s involvement in six other areas that will be implemented throughout the next five years.
Ideas in the plan include encouraging entrepreneurial partnerships with local businesses, working toward reducing barriers to an educated population from birth through retirement and creating a healthy population and diverse health care workforce.
Other parts of the plan focus on improving research and energy-related technologies, supporting campuses by emphasizing their communities, and displaying how SUNY can have an impact on global neighbors.
David Belsky, communications director for SUNY, said the plan focuses on creating a better future for communities in New York.
‘Improved academics and excellence for the University system are a vital part of the plan, and that is what will allow SUNY to benefit the state,’ Belsky said.
But Matt Birkhold, a Binghamton University sociology graduate student and member of Concerned Binghamton Students, thinks otherwise.
Birkhold said that The Power of SUNY plan clearly demonstrates the SUNY system is more concerned with creating economic growth than educating its students.
‘The whole goal of the plan is to create economic growth in the state, as opposed to the mission of the education system for the sake of education,’ Birkhold said.
CBS consists of graduate and undergraduate BU students who advocate changes in response to the way money is being allocated within the SUNY system.
The group is not registered with, nor does it receive funding from, the SA.
Birkhold stated that the plan fails to address that SUNY is run more like a business than a school. To rely on an entrepreneurial model to fund the SUNY system, he said, creates a major conflict in and of itself.
‘The Power of SUNY simply fails to address the root of the problem,’ Birkhold said. ‘As state and federal dollars for education have been cut over the last 15 years, universities have relied more and more on dollars from private corporations.’
Belsky explained the SUNY Administration has implemented measures that deal with the fiscal restraints that every campus and state entity is susceptible to.
The SUNY system has faced a loss of $674 million over the last three years ‘ or over 30 percent of its operating budget from the state budget cuts.
‘It is a good thing that the SUNY Administration is thinking about ways to contribute to rebuilding New York state’s economy,’ Birkhold said. ‘It is a shame, however, that they have not taken the time to understand the root of the economic crisis and are instead coming up with a solution that is equivalent to putting a Band-Aid over a bullet wound.’