(ALBANY, NEW YORK) - With the State Budget deadline on Monday (April 1st), United University Professions (UUP) and other advocates of Public Higher Education seized on the sense of last-minute urgency last week during a rally held in Albany to urge Lawmakers to support State University of New York (SUNY), the City University of New York (CUNY) and its Community Colleges.

“There was a time when a SUNY education was truly affordable, accessible and of the highest quality,” said UUP President Fred Kowal, who was one of a dozen Unionists, students and Lawmakers speaking in support of Public Higher Education against a backdrop of more than 100 sign-waving advocates who filled a section of the Capitol’s Million Dollar Staircase.  “Unfortunately, all we can say right now is that the quality remains, thanks to the committed work of UUP Members, PSC Members, and NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) Members across all the campuses we serve.”

For UUP, the urgency is heightened this year by the State’s threat to close SUNY Downstate University Hospital - a Teaching Hospital that serves as a linchpin in the medical education of hundreds of students a year, many of them Students of Color.

The Health Sciences University to which the hospital is attached is part of the State’s Public Higher Education System - as are the three other SUNY Health Sciences Centers in Stony Brook, Syracuse and Buffalo.

UUP has fought long and hard to get the State to regard these specialized parts of SUNY as what they are: Valuable components in the State’s Public Higher Education, every bit as much a part of public higher education as the four-year colleges and universities.

UUP supported both the Senate and Assembly One-House Budget Bills, which provided funding and included language to keep Downstate hospital open.

UUP’s 2024 Budget Agenda called for $139 million to be allocated directly to the 18 distressed four-year campuses to close their budget deficits, along with $110 million across SUNY to enhance academic programs and student services.

In addition to the concern about Downstate, UUP is pressing Lawmakers to ensure funding for the smaller campuses - and especially those with the highest need, goes where it should and where Lawmakers intend it to go.

“They shove the most money allocated at the campuses at SUNY that have plenty of resources,” Kowal said of SUNY’s handling of last year’s money for the distressed campuses, which SUNY reallocated so that the bulk of it went to the University Centers instead. “And they are trying to close a Public Teaching Hospital in the heart of Central Brooklyn.”

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Photo Courtesy Of UUP’s Website.