<p>From the COHE:</p>
<p>"Since 2000, the system, which enrolls nearly 465,000 students, has been led by two other chancellors, an interim chancellor, and an "officer in charge," who held the chancellor's authority after the most recent interim officer resigned. Ms. Zimpher began the job in June 2009, two years after the previous chancellor had stepped down.</p>
<p>The frequent changes at the top have come during a period when the state budget has been battered by two national recessions. New York lawmakers had to close a $21-billion revenue shortfall, an amount equal to 38 percent of the budget, for the 2010 fiscal year, and the state projects a revenue gap of nearly 15 percent for the 2011 fiscal year, which began on April 1.</p>
<p>Gov. David A. Paterson's proposed budget would cut SUNY's funds by $170-million, an amount that represents nearly a quarter of the cuts for all state agencies. Those cuts would come on top of more than $400-million in reductions in state aid that the system had to absorb for the 2009-10 budget year.</p>
<p>A lack of money from the state has already contributed to the overall decline in New York's public colleges, according to a report from a gubernatorially appointed commission in 2008 that studied SUNY and the City University of New York.</p>
<p>Revenue shortages created a $5-billion backlog in building maintenance at the state and city systems and forced campuses to compromise academic quality by hiring too many adjunct and part-time faculty members compared with tenure-track professors, the report said. The commission also estimated that the state had lost 27,000 research-related jobs and as much as $2.2-billion in research grants and because of the declining quality of its public colleges.</p>
<p>Overregulation by the state has also hampered the system by limiting the constituent universities' abilities to earn and spend their money, the report said. For example, the universities are not allowed to lease their land, and they must go through "layers of micromanagement" for purchasing and contracts, the report said."</p>