SUNY report issues new strategies for recruitment, programs, sustainability:
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/s...3b218155c.html
"The SUNY system had its first uptick in enrollment in a decade last year, but a report issued Tuesday recommends a broad series of moves to expand the system’s research initiatives and increase its potential economic impact across the state, while reaching out to groups of potential students that typically drew little attention in the past.
The report calls for investing in more faculty and research to strengthen programs in areas of projected growth – namely artificial intelligence, biotechnology, the production of semiconductors and their packaging, sustainability and renewable energy.
It recommends that SUNY do more to recruit students from populations not traditionally sought after, such as those from “high adversity” neighborhoods who need more support, but whose success would pay off in generational wealth and upward mobility.
And it calls for the most financially challenged schools within the system – including Buffalo State University and SUNY Fredonia – to implement cost-savings plans to erase deficits running in the millions of dollars and balance their budgets, rather than rely on bailouts.
The SUNY Report on Long-Term Enrollment and Financial Sustainability comes the year after Gov. Kathy Hochul provided the biggest injection of state aid for the State University of New York system – $163 million – with the requirement that SUNY follow up with an extensive summary of how its 64 campuses are faring and a roadmap for the future.
The 72-page report celebrates a 1.1% gain in total enrollment while calling for a variety of new strategies to make a SUNY education accessible to all New Yorkers and retooling programs to reflect today’s students and their needs.
The report called the increase a “small annual jump that also represents a huge leap in reversing long-standing trends.”
It also called a 4.3% increase in undergraduate first-time enrollment – a critical metric for forecasting future overall enrollment – an even more encouraging development that signals a renewed interest and confidence in the value of SUNY’s educational offerings.
The report also addressed how SUNY can continue to grow and maintain enrollment, while also outlining strategies for long-term financial sustainability. It cites several SUNY schools that it tasked with devising their own sustainability plans to combat big deficits, including SUNY Fredonia, Buffalo State and SUNY Potsdam.
Fredonia recently announced it would cut 13 low-performing degree programs, most in humanities subjects such as philosophy and languages, to address a $10 million shortfall, while Buffalo State imposed a hiring freeze to start reducing a $16 million deficit before a new president takes over in July.
“Fiscal health is everyone’s job, and SUNY is ensuring campuses have the resources they need to succeed and the support to make the tough decisions fiscal sustainability requires,” the report says.
Key enrollment targets for SUNY include scaling strategies for retention and completion that were developed and tested at City University of New York campuses and are being implemented at 25 more SUNY schools, including the University at Buffalo, Buffalo State and SUNY Erie Community College.
The initiatives – Advancing Success in Associate Pathways for two-year community colleges and Advancing Completion through Engagement for four-year bachelor’s programs – target students eligible for federal Pell grants for high financial need. They also provide a slate of resources including additional tuition and fee support, travel and textbook expenses, personalized advisement, academic support and career development activities.
Hochul’s 2023-24 SUNY Transformation Fund provided $75 million for campuses to improve their support services using these programs.
Students who need more support to succeed are now being viewed as investments in the state’s workforce and economic growth, rather than beneficiaries of charitable aid.
“It’s fundamental to both SUNY’s goals and its mission that we work aggressively to help all New Yorkers understand we have a place for them, and help them claim that place,” SUNY Chancellor John B. King said.
“It’s particularly crucial to expand our outreach to historically underserved populations, from first-generation college students to older students to those hailing from urban and rural communities where college attendance has historically been low,” he said. “Equally important is to provide the supports students need to succeed once they enroll.”
The SUNY report lists 14 groups it will target for recruitment, including Pell-eligible students, first-generation college students, adults in the workforce, students with some college credit but no degree, veterans, student parents, formerly incarcerated students and students from high schools and neighborhoods with “high levels of adversity.”
The report says 25 SUNY campuses are currently using Landscape, a free online tool provided by the College Board to assist colleges in targeting and assisting students from low-income backgrounds, high-crime areas, substandard housing and other barriers to stability that prevent them from completing their degrees.
Besides supporting students through the ASAP and ACE programs, Hochul’s budget directed $10 million in state aid to provide more mental health services this year. SUNY has expanded its Student Tele-Psychiatry Network to provide students at 56 campuses with free tele-psychiatry sessions.
Hochul devoted $1 million in operating funds to support food pantries and other strategies, such as helping students apply for SNAP benefits, at its state-run schools for the first time, the report says.
SUNY schools will be looking to ensure that individual students have access to childcare, public transportation and other basic needs, as well as beefing up programs serving students with disabilities, the report says.
To help fund the new initiatives, SUNY schools are directed to revisit their academic portfolios to ensure they are offering desirable programs that will help fuel workforce needs, including more short-term microcredentials for specific careers offered in partnership with business and industry pipelines.
“Soon, SUNY will have microcredential programs at 57 of its 64 campuses, and a catalogue of over 600 microcredentials,” the report says.
“The largest number of new microcredential programs over the next decade are expected in business, management, and public administration (41% of campuses); health and related fields (32% of campuses); math, computer science, and information sciences (31% of campuses), and visual and performing arts and communications technologies (31% of campuses).”
King recently formed four task forces to develop strategies for pursuing growth in the skyrocketing fields of AI, semiconductor packaging, biotechnology and sustainability/renewable energy, with an eye to identifying gaps that need to be filled for future economic growth.
SUNY is also committed to Hochul’s goal to increase the state’s health care workforce by 20% in 2027 through the combined efforts of SUNY academic programs and medical centers, the report says.
SUNY also wants to be in the forefront of climate change action. In September, it launched a cross-campus Sustainability Advisory Council to devise a climate action plan that includes green workforce development.
Hochul has also challenged SUNY and its two flagships, UB and Stony Brook, to double their research funding by 2030, including such strategies as investing in new and diverse faculty bringing existing research and grants.
The report said the SUNY system is on track to increase its total research funding from $776 million this year to $1.5 billion by 2033.
SUNY also wants to increase incentives for students to stay or go back to school, by offering credit for completed non-credit courses that could be built on to complete a degree.
And SUNY schools will also make it easier for students to transfer credits for advanced placement classes they take in high school to college, and to move credits from community colleges to baccalaureate programs – a move 20 campuses have initiated via the SUNY Transformation Fund, the report says.
SUNY students of the future will also have more opportunities to participate in research internships, and eventually every student will experience an internship or other hands-on learning opportunity to better prepare them for the workforce, the report says.
While 60% percent of employers prefer to hire graduates and workers with internship experience, a 2021 national survey found that only 35% of first-generation college seniors reported participating in an internship – far lower than their peers, the report states.
Many SUNY campuses are already investing additional state and federal aid into retention support, as well as applying for and getting more research grants. UB has increased its research spending by 20% in the past decade, to more than $425 million last year, and the university hired 154 new faculty in 2023 – the campus’s largest cohort in over 40 years, the report noted.
In addition to last year’s aid infusion, commitments in the State Financial Plan for $54 million in SUNY funding in each of the next two years will “fuel growth and stability across SUNY’s state-operated campuses,” the report says.
Community colleges will benefit from a guarantee that they will receive at least the same amount of aid they received the previous year, after decades of underfunding in prior state administrations.
The full report is available at suny.edu."
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SUNY Environmental Science & Forestry College ~ Syracuse-NY
