The CUNY Compact

The CUNY Compact is Chancellor Goldstein’s proposed solution to “too little revenue and too little investment” in CUNY. His solution to the defunding of CUNY is more of the same. To further the neoliberalization of CUNY and therefore increase the cost of public education to people of color and the working class.

“The proposed “Compact” of the CUNY Budget Request sends the wrong message; that CUNY can build new programs with only a small marginal new net investment of public dollars. The “Compact” proposes that only 30% of the cost of new programs will be funded with public money and that the rest of the funding for Compact initiatives will come from tuition increases, enrollment growth, restructuring, and philanthropy.” Link

The Compact argues that this defunding of CUNY can continue because the costs can be passed onto the student through continuous tuition increases, larger class sizes, increased course loads for faculty, more adjuncts, increased specialization programs for the “gifted” and “talented,” and a reliance on philanthropy – leaving the quality of higher education to the whims of the wealthy.  In other words, the CUNY Compact will deny more and more people of color and the working class access to higher education, continue the funding of programs conducive to maintaining the existing social order of oppression and exploitation, and speed up the defunding of programs and teachers committed to radical social change.

The CUNY Compact argues that all new programs can be funded with only 30% of the money coming for the state and city.  This is because the rest will come from restructuring (read: increased class size and teacher work loads) and enrollment growth [15%], philanthropy [14%], and tuition increases [41%].  This means students will bear the greatest financial cost increases – Goldstein announces: let the privatization of public education commence unabated!