(04-12-2017 09:37 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote: This could be great for the SUNYs in the short run.
But in the long run this could hurt the SUNYs because taxes will have to be raised to fund this program, and New York is already seeing people flee from the high cost of living. And the only people who will stay because of this program are the low-productivity workers who won't benefit from moving out of state.
Yeah, I don't want to think about the costs. Infrastructure, staffing, and then shoving the burden even further onto out-of-state students.
It's a conundrum. I worked for a really good public school, and while the students got a good product with stellar faculty, the overall morale at the place blew. Felt entitled to Ivy League service and features, would promote working at the place like it was a private liberal arts school, but would throw your state title and the civil service hierarchy at you in an instant. Faculty, administrators, and staff leave, and then find better prospects in these "downgrade" institutions, but, again, find success and lose the hypocritical nonsense. So, you can fool some people with that nonsense when you recruit...after awhile, the secret's out (thank heavens for the internet), and now you have a school who can't get what it wants in staffing and faculty because it doesn't respect the people they have (who they wanted just the same before they could get them).
What I really don't envy is what is to become of Stony Brook. Those guys went straight up so fast...this only makes it all the more competitive and perhaps issue prone. When I graduated high school, I would have gotten in without a hiccup. Today, I might not. That's less than twenty years, and that kind of change in an arena that is known for its glacial speed for change? Man, I bet the faculty there are miserable, even the tenured ones (because, even though you have that, you have department chairs and deans calling HR trying to lure you to retire to give up your staffing spot).
I used to love the idea of good public education. I'm afraid I'm no longer embracing that. I know how the sausage is made all too well now.