The discussions about costs for OOS in places like Colorado, Ca, Michigan are very interesting. NY losses some of its strongest students to OOS flagships. Families that can afford it are often willing to pay those costs because the schools are that much better (for those making the choice) than SUNY.
There are many defenders of the SUNY system who argue that there are SUNYs as good as the (top 40 or so) flagships. Yet, OOS students are not clamoring to get into SUNYs despite the fact that the oos tuition for SUNY can be less than attending their state school. Given how cheap it is, you’d expect a rush of applicants from all over the country.
For all the claims that costs have sky rocketed, Binghamton’s tuition is $6470 ($3245 a semester-'15-'16 according to their own web site) . Fees add about $1500 each semester. But for goodness sakes, an average day camp costs more. Yes there are other fees and yes there is the dorm issue. But let’s not confuse the cost of living in a country club with the cost of attending classes. Students must live on campus the first year and that is about 3 times the cost of the academics/tuition.
Binghamton OOS tuition is $19590. When you add the country club living you have costs at about $37371. In contrast, NYers going to Michigan pay $57,432. SUNY is a lot cheaper for OOS then many schools that attract many OOS, yet SUNY doesn’t attract strong OOS students. Those viewing the SUNY system as being good just the way it is should consider what keeps people from flocking to this wonderful bargain? It is long past time to re-vamp the SUNY system.
Binghamton out-of-state tuition and fees are $22,137. From Google:
TUITION AND EXPENSES
Cost of Attendance In-state: $24,251 Out-of-state: $37,371
Tuition and Fees In-state: $9,053 Out-of-state: $22,173
Room and Board $13,198
Books and Supplies $1,000
Other Expenses $1,000
twoinanddone, When the SUNY system was young each school was influenced by the schools they had been before the SUNY system was founded because they shard faculty members. Binghamton was originally Triple Cities College, a satellite for Syracuse University. Even as it transitioned into a university, the founding faculty remained influential. The humanities were very strong. Deflour was interested in growth, athletics and money and competing with her pals at Stony Brook. Many people with long histories with that school viewed her as a disaster. And in her final few years many or most of those who had supported her didn’t. Staff and faculty hired over about a decade couldn’t get out fast enough. So while few would argue that the SUNY system was ever excellent (or even very good) it started out as a collection of existing schools each with its own history. In fact, to deal with the resistance to the SUNY system from private schools and colleges, SUNYs that had been teachers colleges promised not to teach liberal arts for at least 10 years, thus encouraging the individual schools to function as they had previously. As Harpur morphed from a liberal arts college with an identity to a generic medium sized public institution without one, it lost some of what made it appealing to some people.
People are quick to point out that the SAT scores for students are still high. Yes, but is that any index of whether or not the school is a good one? NYers apply to SUNYs. At one point Binghamton was the smallest college within a SUNY university. Thus it got more applicants. But it isn’t anymore.
Oldmom4896, My information was from SUNY not from Google but what you list and what I’ve listed are pretty much the same. . I did not mention books or supplies since they vary widely and since there is no reason to expect that they would be different across schools. Regardless of the school, students will have to buy books at a cost set externally from the school. Binghamton states its tuition as $6470 for in state students.
There are 64 SUNY campuses. 460,000 students! Counting CC, 62 have undergraduate programs. Obviously in a system that size, there is a lot of diversity (including some real gems, like Geneseo, Cornell, FIT, Maritime, Binghamton). They may not be attracting OOS domestics, but Stony Brook, for example, is 12% international, and Buffalo is 18% or so. Albany has 17% international GS, and 7% UG. That said, many SUNYs have real budget problems.
I think it is a great mistake to think the problem a SUNY failure or a UVa success. Public education is underfunded, and it happened fast. The Great Recession devastated budgets. Pointing to a dozen, a half dozen, flagships doesn’t acknowledge what is happening in the same state’s second or third tier. People want to believe that there is an alternative to spending $250K for an undergraduate education, but I have doubts that public colleges will be a true and equal alternative.
So what exactly is the data to support this supposed decline in State U’s?
The percent of budget coming from the state is down. So what? What exactly does that mean all by itself?
I look around my state of Colorado which has about the lowest level of state support in all 50 states. The schools at all levels within the state system (not just the flagship) seem to be doing fine. They serve more students than ever, so access seems to be OK. They employ more people than ever. The campuses are beautiful.
If they are declining because of reduced state support, I’m hard pressed to see any evidence of that.
If you want to go back to the good old days, keep state support flat but cut the enrollment and employment by half. Things will be great if you happen to be in the half that survives. That’s what it was like back in the good old days.
But many NY residents seem to spend money sending their kids to other “public colleges” in other states, rather than their own. There seem to be plenty of NY kids at other schools that are not private, in other states. Even in Virginia, there seem to be some NY kids not only at a “flagship” like UVa, but also Wm & M, VT , JMU, GMU. In Virginia , it Is not just about UVa. I have been surprised by the OOS interest there seems to be in some of our public schools.
“People want to believe that there is an alternative to spending $250K for an undergraduate education, but I have doubts that public colleges will be a true and equal alternative.”
First, I firmly believe that there are many public institutions that offer a better education than many privates that charge $250K. Many flagships are extraordinary in what they can offer the talented and outgoing student. Some appear on lists of the world’s best universities.
Second, I don’t believe it’s the DUTY of a public institution to offer everything that the $250K school does. And frankly, I think it’s unfair to expect it to.
What concerns me is that a bachelor’s degree even at a modest no-name state school is now costing in the $100,000 range. For many students, that’s still not much of a realistic option.
My OTHER concern is the quality of education available at these modest no-name state school considering much of its faculty is likely to be grossly underpaid – and frankly exploited – adjunct faculty. The very nature of their job forces them to teach at more than one institution, making them less available to students, and much less likely to do research which helps them stay up-to-date with their field.
Before 1969, CCNY and CUNY had sterling academic reputations which made them almost comparable to the Ivies or peer elite institutions of that era. The reputation was also not limited to the NE judging by what I’ve heard from older relatives…including ones in California, faculty members at my LAC, and at a few elite Us where I took classes/visited.
Incidentally, one magazine piece on General Colin Powell made an implication that he chose CCNY over NYU because it was much cheaper and thus, implying it had an inferior academic reputation.
An anachronistic assessment which drew much scorn and derisive laughter from older lifelong New Yorker neighbors who were around during the '50s and knew that back then it was a no-brainer to chose CCNY over NYU on academic grounds alone even assuming tuition was the same. According to them…including a few NYU alums from that era…NYU was widely considered a second-tier private college for CCNY/CUNY rejects among NYC/Tri-State locals.
mamalion, Binghamton has had continuous/unrelenting budget problems. And even when the economy was humming, the state was crying poverty and implemented cutbacks, freezes, furloughs, and reversals of plans, thereby simply squandering what had already been spent with the old plans in mind. This was probably a attempt to keep various unions from requesting wage increases. At one point there was a proposal to cut the bathroom cleanings as a cost cutting measure. I kid you not. You can probably google and find references to it. I don’t know if that ever really happened. But there were simultaneous cut backs while money was being spent for outrageous things. And of course there were the scandals and the lies to parents and the basketball fiasco. Classrooms were dated and lacked the type of electronics that were readily available to local elementary schools. To say it wasn’t state of the art is an understatement. The number of students was increased pretty dramatically while the staff was cut. Students had to wait weeks for basic services. Students couldn’t get classes they needed and were crammed into lecture halls. I don’t get the sense that has changed although I’ve asked about it. Nobody has offered the impression that things are running well now.
In contrast to the universities in many states across the country, the idea of a state system was never welcomed by powerful people in the state of New York. The reason is obvious. Their children were going to private schools: There was an abundance of well established private schools in NY long before SUNY was even conceptualized. They, and those that supported the private schools,
were concerned that a state system would compete to the determent of the private schools. At the time, many promises were made to placate the private school contingency-including the focus on tech, limiting many to 2 years, along with other promises that would set SUNY schools apart from (and keep them inferior to) private schools. In contrast, flagships in other states were developed much earlier to address the lack of schools in many regions of this country. Most were built to be superior not inferior, places of higher learning. Naturally when you aim for excellence the result is different then if you aim to avoid the perception that the schools are anything but intended for those who can’t afford anything else.
About this comment “First, I firmly believe that there are many public institutions that offer a better education than many privates that charge $250K. Many flagships are extraordinary in what they can offer the talented and outgoing student. Some appear on lists of the world’s best universities.” I totally agree. But SUNY was designed to not be comparable to private schools. And that was certainly a successful mission.
Re CUNY. yes before SUNY, they were outstanding. And, they appear to be getting back to their roots.
For all of what you wrote in #89, that does not seem to have prevented SUNYs from gaining good academic reputations (e.g. Stony Brook, particularly in math, physics, and computer science). Or are you saying that they may lack some of the non-academic features that many college students desire?
"There seem to be plenty of NY kids at other schools that are not private, in other states. Even in Virginia, there seem to be some NY kids not only at a “flagship” like UVa, but also Wm & M, VT , JMU, GMU. In Virginia , it Is not just about UVa. "
Yes because no SUNY holds a candle to any of the schools you just mentioned. It is true that Binghamton students may have higher SATs but that really only suggests that students are graduating high school with high SAT scores. It says nothing about the quality of SUNY. Spend a few hours on any one of those campuses and spend a few hours at a SUNY to compare. None do. I’ve been to all listed above. all are better places to spend time than SUNY. Binghamton can still over-fill its classrooms because students can’t afford those other schools or they can’t gain access to them or they simply want to stay closer to their high school friends and their homes or they’ve never been to one so they can’t make the comparison. There are at least 20 others you could add to that list.
usbalumnus, Stony Brook’s science departments have stronger reputations than nearly any of Binghamton’s departments but that is mostly confined to reputations of the science faculty and their productivity and grantsmanship. My impression is that Stony Brook is not viewed as a desirable destination for strong science undergrads from other states (except maybe NJ, Ct). Not in the least. It is not mentioned as an alternative to UC’s or Michigan or Wisc, or Urbana for students from the midwest or the west. I’ve never heard of someone from places like Maine, Ohio or Indiana torn between Michigan and Stony Brook, for example. It could happen but it is much rarer than a student being torn between a top shelf private school and Michigan or Michigan vs Wisconsin. Those schools I just listed are viewed as desirable destinations for students from NY and from everywhere in the US.
Yes SUNYs attract international students but that is another thing that means little about the quality of the college education. SUNYs could probably fill their entire class with students from China-wanting what having a US degree appears to give them. But you could start a school called Podunk U and if you set the tuition at the same rate, you’ll have a rush of applicants from China. They aren’t seeking out SUNY for its known quality.
SUNYs could become much better. They have so much room to improve. But that will happen only if people are willing to admit that the system has been languishing for a long time. If people buy the PR and pretend that SUNYs are “Public Ivys” nothing will change.
I guess it depends on your definition of “just fine” and “better than ever”.
As I stated before, the best public unis, on average, could afford to pay faculty just as well as the best privates back in the '70’s. That is not true now.
State funding has recovered to pre-recession levels. However, outside of UF, student enrollment has increased, so state funding per student is down (but tuition revenue is up).
At UF, Faculty salaries have been flat. In addition, at the other 11 publics, tenured faculty hiring has not kept up with student enrollment.
In most other metrics, UF has significantly improved (research funding, student quality…)
Cost of living adjustments, nice if you can get them…
A great example of the increase in student-to-faculty ratios is UCF:
Very few public colleges can go the full pay OOS student route for revenue. U-M, UVa, UNC, a few of the UCs, etc, are the exception. In fact, UIUC is an example of a great University that wants to increase it’s “Domestic” OOS %, but is finding it a hard go. Other schools (many in the Big10) are falling back on international students. Of course, that has it’s own challenges.
International students, unlike full pay OOS, require particular supports (ESL, writing centers, visa, orientations, etc). Universities sometimes worry about spending any extra tuition collected on supporting their success.
One of my kids went to Virginia Tech. They have around 30% OOS. I was surprised when he told me where the kids came from on his freshman floor-Rhode Island, NJ, Md, Ca, etc. I think he had one international student on his floor from South America. It seemed interesting to me that a kid from California would come all the way to Virginia Tech to go to school, when California has such great options. But those kinds of things are happening , even at non flagships.
CA kids who want the classic college football experience frequently end up at OOS publics, because Cal and UCLA (and to a lesser degree Davis) are near impossible to get into.
Yeah, I figured it was a result of no access to the big California schools. Just surprised to find kids coming from so far away. Going to Colorado sounds more common and probably is!