The administration is presenting the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act (PHEEIA) as a means to deliver us from the Governor’s evil budget cuts: make the university more autonomous, they’re saying, to liberate the university from the meddling influence of politics in Albany. Well. Looking past its meaningless and condescending name, any the actual proposal is nothing more than the resurrection of old arguments and old struggles, only recast in newer catch- words and phrases: globalization, innovation, economic vitality, resilience, flexibility; the list goes on. No doubt these vacuous utterances stem from the minds of bureaucratic manipulators who either don’t know what they’re talking about—which they do—or have something to hide.

The business press can usually be counted on to provide at least a glimpse of truth on these matters, and Buffalo’s Business First doesn’t disappoint. From their Jan. 15 “SUNY may receive tuition flexibility”:

If the bill’s intentions sound familiar, that’s because it is based on similar legislation crafted last year by the University of Buffalo.

Namely, the UB 2020 Flexibility and Economic Growth Act, which stalled in the legislature. Going back even further, Pataki’s cronies on the board of trustees proposed in their now-infamous 1995 manifesto “Rethinking SUNY” the same few changes:

to allow “market forces” to determine tuition and offerings—now being called differential tuition, with the free-market-cargo-cult’s lingo being out of vogue; increased public-private partnerships—now the leasing public taxpayer-owned land by appointed, not elected, administration officials and board trustees; and a gradual system of tuition increases—now called, obviously, rational or flex tuition.

In the PHEEIA, a newer proposal is the containment of revenue by the university, where revenue from tuition and other money-making ventures wouldn’t go to Albany, as it does now, but instead remain within the university. Nominally, this is proposed as a way to reduce red-tape and micromanagement, but is clearly intended to keep Albany’s hands off the revenue derived from those public-private partnerships the administration is salivating over.

In short, they’re pushing to dismantle and privatize the state university system.

But is it any surprise? Keynes once wrote that “The power of vested interests is usually exaggerated when compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. . . . Indeed the world is ruled by little else . . . Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” The administration, in distress, is only grasping at straws here, only acting within the space they encounter, picking up the ideas lying around. And we find that, in fact, this turns out to be more than just figurative. Commenting on the PHEEIA as proposed by the governor, the Higher Education Committee chairwoman Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Queens) has said recently, “I think he opened a drawer, found an old proposal and pulled it out.” It’s no secret that the most facile way to ensure “fiscal vitality” in the short term is through the private sector. Like maggots in an open wound, private influence can be benign, even beneficial. But it makes no sense for the university to slash at itself, slicing open more wounds only for the purpose of stuffing them with maggots. Budget shortfalls can be resolved in other ways, and to see the administration gloss over them is disappointing.

The fact is this: flexible tuition will be flexible in only one direction. Up. What’s worse, it flexes gradually, cleverly avoiding those pesky students who make noise about the steep hikes that occur when the legislature is involved. It’s merely a throttling mechanism, not a “competition” facilitator. What that means is a 6-7% increase in tuition every year over the next ten years. That’s about a $7,000 increase by 2020. It’s good to remember here that forty years ago, SUNY and CUNY were just about free.

At that time, public education served its purpose: to provide affordable and accessible education to everyone, unfettered by the vacillations of the market and free of its totalitarian-style institutions (read: corporations). For the university to so openly and cynically betray this mission is disgraceful. Shame on the president; shame on the chancellor; shame on their sycophants masquerading as professors. How stupid it was to think President Stanley would be a relief from the the sneering and snorting Shirley Strum Kenny, who gobbled up as many tits and tats and quids and quos as was humanly possible.

The faculty and administration are not only aware of the trend toward privatization, but also of the risks of opposing it. Many will recall picknose Pataki’s 1996 ejection of then chancellor Thomas Bartlett for daring to protest cuts to the SUNY budget. Bartlett criticized Pataki and the trustees for “not understanding the role of public higher education.” When things get political, even campus presidents are at risk. It comes as no surprise, then, that when they aren’t openly cheering the implementation of the vitiated philosophy of “let the market take care of it”, they’re cowering in fear of being fired by its zealous adherents.

Students should be mobilized. Unions should be mobilized. This concerns everyone; as such, it can only be solved by everyone. It’s a shame that the campus is only intellectually organized around various “smelly little orthodoxies”, and socially organized according to specific interests. Brothers and sisters, comrades, friends, we need to unite. To be apolitical is to leave your fellow students at the mercy of ideology. And beware of compromisers—the truth seldom lies, but when it does lie it lies somewhere in between.