End NYU and Columbia’s Property Tax Exemption and Give CUNY the Funds It Needs to Thrive (original) (raw)
Hunter College 68th St. campus. Courtesy.
Budget cuts threaten the basic functioning of CUNY’s 25 colleges.
Alexa D’Angelo Jan 18
On Tuesday, Dec. 12, New York State Sen. John Liu and Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani unveiled a proposal to end Columbia and NYU’s property-tax exemption. The bill directs their exempted $327 million dollars in property taxes toward funding the City University of New York (CUNY). As a current PhD candidate, former undergraduate student and forever champion of CUNY, I am elated by this proposal.
CUNY has struggled under years of inadequate funding — a consequence of austerity politics that have shaped New York City and State budgets since the 1970s. Many of CUNY’s 25 colleges suffer from an aging infrastructure and lack of proactive public investment in the physical structures in which CUNY students are expected to learn. In fact, only 8% of CUNY’s buildings are considered be in a “state of good repair,” with the current backlog of deferred maintenance estimated to cost $5 billion.
A recent example of CUNY’s failing infrastructure came just one week prior to the Liu/Mamdani proposal. On Dec. 4, students at Hunter College received an emergency alert that due to a steam leak, the East Building was closed until further notice. Students were told to leave via the safest exit; classes were moved online; and students were barred from accessing the library. Seeing the alert on my phone evoked my own experiences with Hunter’s failing infrastructure — standing in the North Building as an odorous brown liquid dripped from a burst pipe above my art locker. I recalled stepping onto the elevator unsure of whether I was headed to class or entering the Tower of Terror ride at Disney — and many instances when escalators became stairs for days at a time.
Twelve CUNY colleges are among the most successful schools moving low-income students into the middle class.
Despite calls for A New Deal for CUNY from students, staff and faculty — led by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) — CUNY has seen lean budgets under Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams. Though the state’s CUNY budget for fiscal year 2023-24 increased by 103million,a103 million, a 103million,a150 million cut from the City paired with low student enrollment have left CUNY in fiscal crisis. Moreover, the CUNY budget is projected to worsen under Adam’s “Eliminate the Gap” initiative in the coming years.
At the same time, Columbia and NYU have become two of New York City’s biggest landlords, all while exhausting the city of needed property taxes through continued expansion.
Budget cuts threaten the basic functioning of CUNY’s 25 colleges and necessitate new streams of funding for the CUNY system to maintain operations and address infrastructure needs. Of particular concern, cuts to CUNY will be felt most by a student populace that are overwhelmingly from families earning less than $30K per year. By contrast, 62% of NYU and Columbia students come from families with incomes in the top 20% of U.S. households.
During my time at Hunter, I watched the construction of the Leon and Toby Cooperman Library unfold, with new spaces erected to facilitate long hours of studying, rooms for group-project meetings and open spaces for socialization — moving students squatting on hallway floors into spaces built for learning. Though I never experienced the library in its completed form, it offered a small glimpse into what a supported CUNY might look like — one in which CUNY spaces promote learning. CUNY programs thrive with the resources they require. CUNY services meet the mental health needs of students. CUNY food pantries and SNAP-enrollment programs fill the critical gap of feeding food-insecure students. CUNY community colleges have the resources they need to serve every student that passes through their doors… This is the University I imagined as I watched the construction of a new library unfold, and it’s one that we can build with dedicated funding.
Why should New York City and State invest new resources in CUNY now? In 2020, a study from the Brookings Institute ranked twelve CUNY colleges among the most successful schools moving low-income students into the middle class. An analysis from the NYC comptroller reports that CUNY students make up 10% of the private-sector workforce in New York City. In 2019, CUNY graduates earned approximately 57billionandcontributed57 billion and contributed 57billionandcontributed4.2 billion in income taxes to the State of New York. CUNY students and graduates are the backbone of the New York workforce and an engine for the New York economy. As the city seeks to recover from the damage imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, college degrees will be an even more important contributor to financial and career success for young people, as well as an indispensable asset to a thriving economy for the region as a whole. Failing to invest in the future of CUNY and its graduates now sets the stage for more costly economic burdens in the future.
New York’s legislators owe the CUNY system financial investment and political commitment that is commensurate with the invaluable contributions of the CUNY community. A CUNY with resources more aligned with those serving the children of the top 20% could propel the next generation of CUNY students into the middle class and benefit not only the students, staff and faculty that make up the CUNY community, but New York City as a whole.
Alexa D’Angelo is a PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (SPH), where she also received her master’s degree and has served as a PSC steward. She earned her bachelor’s from Hunter College.