State University of New York

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Public higher education in New York State has an ironic history. The University of the State of New York (SUNY) arguably constitutes the oldest public educational government in the world. But its regents, who oversee all educational institutions in New York, traditionally championed New York's numerous private colleges and discouraged public rivals. Thus, New York, a leader in state control of education, was the last state to create a public higher education system.

When Democratic legislators proposed a $50-million state university in 1946, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, a social progressive and fiscal conservative, blanched at the price tag, but he appointed a commission to design such an institution. Its proposal merely incorporated the existing state-supported institutions into an umbrella organization under the regents' control. However, some members, including several Dewey advisers, wanted a state university free from regents' control. Their portrayal of private institutions' discrimination against Jews and African Americans, particularly by medical and dental schools, convinced Dewey to support an independent state university that, beyond the regents' control, could administer schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, and public health.

This plan eventually prevailed. On 4 April 1948, Dewey created the State University of New York, incorporating more than thirty existing state-supported institutions of higher education outside New York City and envisioning future medical schools and community colleges. The initial state university consisted of eleven state teachers colleges, six agricultural and technical institutes, five institutes of applied arts and sciences, three temporary veterans colleges, the New York State Maritime Academy, and six "contract colleges" administered by private institutions. Opponents delayed implementation for a year. Finally, on 4 April 1949, the leaders of the various units and the first president, Alvin Eurich (1949–1951), gathered in Albany to formally inaugurate SUNY. Few could have imagined that the fledgling university, with fewer than 30,000 students and just over 2,000 faculty, would grow to become one of the world's largest.

The political imbroglio left scars. Eager to include the legislation among his 1948 presidential election credentials, Dewey compromised. SUNY would create neither research universities or liberal arts colleges. The teachers colleges (except Albany) were barred from training secondary school teachers for a decade, retarding their possible evolution into liberal arts colleges. Private fundraising was banned for two decades. And the regents over-saw SUNY's budget.

Not surprisingly, SUNY's first decade was unexceptional. It acquired medical schools in Brooklyn and Syracuse and a small liberal arts college in Binghamton, and opened a small campus on Long Island. But enrollment remained under 40,000, and SUNY's second president, Frank Carlson (1951–1957), was dismissed for campaigning to purchase Syracuse University as the flagship campus for the system.

In the late 1950s, however, several important developments took place that would spur SUNY's growth in the decade to come. The ban on training secondary school teachers expired. The launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik spurred an increase in spending on education. The first "baby boomers" entered adolescence. And Nelson Rockefeller was elected governor of New York State.

Rockefeller's Heald Commission laid the basis for expansion. Bonds issued by the State University Construction Fund and the first tuition charges would finance capital costs. Budgetary control was extricated from the regents. Potential opposition from private colleges was avoided by offering them public funds for construction and student aid. A parallel structure, City University of New York (CUNY), was created in 1961 as a downstate equivalent of SUNY.

Expansion followed swiftly. The teachers colleges expanded enrollments and evolved into liberal arts colleges. Research universities emerged at Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, and Stony Brook. Community colleges mushroomed, eventually totaling thirty. A sixty-four-campus system enrolled 280,000 students in 1970. By the late 1960s, SUNY was being compared to the California system and SUNY Chancellor Samuel B. Gould (1964– 1970) appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

SUNY's upward trajectory soon flattened. Gould retired in 1970; the New York economy slowed; student protests tried taxpayers' patience; and even Rockefeller believed SUNY was overextended. Gould's successor, Ernest Boyer (1970–1977), faced immediate fiscal restraints and then retrenchment, as well as renewed warfare with the regents. Although enrollment (361,000 by 1980) continued to rise, SUNY's prestige declined, while the frustrations over missed opportunities grew. The 1980s and early 1990s witnessed rising tuition, flat enrollments, and shrinking state budgets. The state's share of SUNY college and university budgets plummeted from 90 percent in the late 1980s to well under 50 percent a decade later, necessitating a vocabulary shift from "state-supported" to "state-assisted."

Mid-1990s prosperity underwrote some regeneration. The University Centers at Buffalo and Stony Brook were admitted into the American Association of Universities, while Binghamton was hailed as a "public Ivy." Former teachers colleges evolved into mature, comprehensive colleges. Improved state budgets held tuition constant and funded overdue renovation and construction. SUNY entered the new millennium with 373,000 students, 15,000 faculty, 64 campuses, 1.9 billion alumni, and a physical plant valued at $11 billion.

In a half-century, New York built a system that serves over one-third of its high school graduates and whose acronym is widely respected in academia. But this extraordinary investment and SUNY's many educational achievements have failed to bring public esteem, due in part to the absence of a flagship campus or big-time athletics. SUNY's fiftieth anniversary passed nearly unnoticed and campuses increasingly distanced themselves from the acronym. SUNY's history illustrates the difficult process of creating institutions of mass higher education, especially in northeastern states with prestigious private institutions. SUNY thrived under Governor Rockefeller's aegis but did not sustain the broad public support necessary to replicate the California model.

Bibliography

Abbott, Frank C. Government Policy and Higher Education: A Study of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, 1784–1949. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1958.

Bleeker, Samuel E. The Politics of Architecture: A Perspective on Nelson A. Rockefeller. New York: Rutledge Press, 1981.

Carmichael, Oliver Cromwell. New York Establishes a State University: A Case Study in the Process of Policy Formation. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1955.

Glazer, Judith S. "Nelson Rockefeller and the Politics of Higher Education in New York State." History of Higher Education Annual 9 (1989): 87–114.

Smith, Richard Norton. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.

"SUNY" redirects here. For the American historian, see Ronald Grigor Suny.

Not to be confused with University of the State of New York.

Not to be confused with City University of New York (CUNY).

For other uses, see University of New York.

State University of New York
Motto	To learn, to search, to serve
Established	1948
Type	Public University System
Chancellor	Nancy L. Zimpher
Vice-Chancellor	Dr. John J. O'Connor
Faculty	83,547[1]
Students	438,361
Undergraduates	386,818[1]
Location	State-wide, New York, United States
Campus	64 campuses[1]
Website	suny.edu

The State University of New York, abbreviated SUNY (pronounced /ˈsuːniː/) is a system of public institutions of higher education in New York, United States. It is the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the world,^[2] with a total enrollment of 438,361 students, plus 1.1 million continuing education students spanning 64 campuses across the state. The SUNY system has 83,547 faculty members and some 6,650 degree and certificate programs overall. SUNY includes many institutions and four University Centers: Albany (1844), Binghamton (1946), Buffalo (1846), and Stony Brook (1957). SUNY's administrative offices are in Albany.

The State University of New York was established in 1948 by then-Governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey, through legislative implementation of recommendations made by the Temporary Commission on the Need for a State University (1946-1948). The Commission was chaired by Owen D. Young, then-Chairman of the General Electric Company. The system was greatly expanded during the administration of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, who took a personal interest in design and construction of new SUNY facilities across the state.

SUNY comprises all institutions of higher education statewide that are state-supported, with the exception of the institutions that are units of the City University of New York (CUNY).

Contents 1 Organization 1.1 Presidents and Chancellors 2 Campuses 2.1 University Centers/Doctoral-Granting Institutions 2.1.1 University Centers 2.1.2 Other Doctoral-Granting Institutions 2.2 University Colleges 2.3 Technology Colleges 2.4 Community Colleges 2.5 State-wide colleges 2.6 State-wide awards 3 Rankings and statistics for the University Centers 4 Athletics 4.1 Division I 4.2 Division II and III 4.3 Rivalries 5 References 6 External links

Organization

SUNY is governed by a Board of Trustees, which consists of sixteen members, fifteen of whom are appointed by the Governor, with consent of the New York State Senate. The sixteenth member is the President of the SUNY Student Assembly. The Board of Trustees appoints the Chancellor who serves as SUNY Chief Executive Officer. The SUNY Chancellor is Nancy L. Zimpher.

The state of New York assists in financing the SUNY system, which, along with CUNY, provides lower-cost college-level education to residents of the state. SUNY students also come from out-of-state and 171 foreign countries, though tuition is higher for these students. Although tuition is higher for these non-resident students, their tuition is subsidized by New York State taxpayer dollars.

Tuition costs at SUNY schools for an undergrad degree is less than two third's the cost of most other state run college institutions in the U.S.. For example: Tuition at the New York State University at Buffalo (^[3]) per semester for an undergrad degree is $7,456.50 or $14,913.00 per year respectively. Undergrad tuition for non-resident students at the State University of Maryland (^[4]) is $11,251.50 per semester or $22,503.00 per year. Another example is: University of Oregon is $11,859.00 per semester and $23,718.00 per year (^[5]./0910_cost_of_attendance</ref>) These tuition disparities can easily be researched by comparing all other state university systems across the nation.

There are a large variety of colleges in the SUNY system with some overlap in specialties from site to site. SUNY divides its campuses into four distinct categories: university centers/doctoral-granting institutions, university colleges, technology colleges, and community colleges. SUNY also has a unique relationship with its statutory colleges which embeds state-owned, state-funded colleges within other institutions such as Cornell University and Alfred University. Students at the statutory colleges have the benefit of state-subsidized tuition while receiving all of the campus life amenities of the host institutions.

SUNY and the City University of New York are entirely different university systems, despite the fact that both are public institutions which receive funding from New York State. Also, SUNY is not to be confused with the University of the State of New York (USNY), which is the governmental umbrella organization for most education-related institutions and many education-related personnel (both public and private) in New York State, and which includes, as a component, the New York State Education Department.

Presidents and Chancellors

SUNY System Administration Building in Albany

Executive	Title	Term
Alvin C. Eurich	President	January 1, 1949 – August 31, 1951
Charles C. Garside	Acting President	September 1, 1951 – March 31, 1952
William S. Carlson	President	April 1, 1952 – September, 1958
Thomas H. Hamilton	President	August 1, 1959 – December 31, 1962
J. Lawrence Murray	Acting Chief Administrative Officer	January 1, 1963 – August 31, 1964
Samuel B. Gould	President Chancellor	September 1, 1964 – January 11, 1967 January 12, 1967 – September 30, 1970
Ernest L. Boyer	Chancellor	October 1, 1970 – March 31, 1977
James F. Kelly	Acting Chancellor	April 1, 1977 – November, 1977
Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.	Chancellor	November, 1977 – January 31, 1987
Jerome B. Komisar	Acting Chancellor	February 1, 1987 – July 31, 1988
D. Bruce Johnstone	Chancellor	August 1, 1988 – February 28, 1994
Joseph C. Burke	Interim Chancellor	March 1, 1994 – November 30, 1994
Thomas A. Bartlett	Chancellor	December 1, 1994 – June 30, 1996
John W. Ryan	Interim Chancellor Chancellor	July 1, 1996 – April 20, 1997 April 21, 1997 – December 31, 1999
Robert L. King	Chancellor	January 1, 2000 – May 31, 2005
John R. Ryan	Acting Chancellor Chancellor	June 1, 2005 – December 19, 2005 December 20, 2005 – May 31, 2007
John B. Clark	Interim Chancellor	June 1, 2007 – December, 2008
John J. O’Connor	Officer-in-Charge	December 22, 2008 – May 31, 2009
Nancy L. Zimpher	Chancellor	June 1, 2009 - present

Campuses

See also: List of State University of New York units

University Centers/Doctoral-Granting Institutions

University Centers

SUNY Albany

SUNY Buffalo

• University at Albany
• Binghamton University
• University at Buffalo
• Stony Brook University

Other Doctoral-Granting Institutions

See also: Statutory college

• State University of New York Downstate Medical Center
• State University of New York Upstate Medical University
• State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
• State University of New York State College of Optometry
• Four statutory colleges located at Cornell University
  • New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (which includes the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva)
  • New York State College of Human Ecology
  • New York State College of Veterinary Medicine
  • New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations
• One statutory college located at Alfred University
  • New York State College of Ceramics

University Colleges

SUNY New Paltz

• Buffalo State College
• Empire State College
• State University of New York at Brockport
• State University of New York at Cortland
• State University of New York at Fredonia
• State University of New York at Geneseo
• State University of New York at New Paltz
• State University of New York at Old Westbury
• State University of New York at Oneonta
• State University of New York at Oswego
• State University of New York at Plattsburgh
• State University of New York at Potsdam
• State University of New York at Purchase

Technology Colleges

• Alfred State College
• State University of New York at Canton
• State University of New York at Cobleskill
• State University of New York at Delhi
• State University of New York at Farmingdale
• State University of New York at Morrisville
• State University of New York Institute of Technology
• State University of New York Maritime College

Community Colleges

• Adirondack Community College
• Broome Community College
• Cayuga County Community College
• Clinton Community College
• Columbia-Greene Community College
• Corning Community College
• Dutchess Community College
• Erie Community College
• Fashion Institute of Technology
• Finger Lakes Community College
• Fulton-Montgomery Community College
• Genesee Community College
• Herkimer County Community College
• Hudson Valley Community College
• Jamestown Community College
• Jefferson Community College
• Mohawk Valley Community College
• Monroe Community College
• Nassau Community College
• Niagara County Community College
• North Country Community College
• Onondaga Community College
• Orange County Community College
• Rockland Community College
• Schenectady County Community College
• Suffolk County Community College
• Sullivan County Community College
• Tompkins Cortland Community College
• Ulster County Community College
• Westchester Community College

State-wide colleges

• Empire State College
• SUNY Learning Network

State-wide awards

• SUNY Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence

Rankings and statistics for the University Centers

Ranking and value:

Campus	US News and World Report, "Top Universities" ranking	Kiplinger's Personal Finance, "Top 100 Values" ranking	Kiplinger's Personal Finance, "Top 100 Values" ranking for out-of-state applicants
Albany	Tier 3	67th	46th
Binghamton	77th	5th	1st
Buffalo	121st	89th	77th
Stony Brook	96th	34th	35th

Selectivity:

School	Selectivity rating	Percent students admitted
Albany	78	52%
Binghamton	93	35%
Buffalo	85	52%
Stony Brook	89	43%

• Selectivity according to US News and World Report Rankings 2007. Percent admitted is from CollegeBoard.com and recent as of 3/2008

. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/ranknatudoc_brief.php

Admission criteria (according to SUNY):

School	Middle 50% SAT	Students in top 10% of class	Middle 90% GPA
Albany	1110-1260	15%	88-94
Binghamton	1200-1380	50%	92-95
Buffalo	1110-1290	24%	89-95
Stony Brook	1130-1270	Not reported	87-93

School	NSF Funding Rank	Funding Dollars (USD)
Albany	77	203,997,000
Binghamton	210	250,405,000
Buffalo	58	258,952,000
Stony Brook	71	213,547,000

Athletics

Every school within the SUNY system manages its own athletics program, which greatly varies the level of competition at each institution.

Division I

• The four university centers all compete at the Division I level for all of their sports. All but Binghamton field American football teams, with Buffalo in Division I FBS (formerly Division I-A) and Albany and Stony Brook in Division I FCS (formerly Division I-AA). The four Cornell statutory colleges compete as a part of the Ivy League, an FCS conference that chooses not to participate in the FCS postseason tournament.
  • A small number of community colleges compete at the NJCAA Div. 1 level.

Division II and III

• Most SUNY colleges, technical schools and community schools compete at the NCAA or NJCAA Div. II or III level.

• Three SUNY campuses (Environmental Science and Forestry, Canton and Delhi) are members of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

Rivalries

The most prominent SUNY rivalry is between the Albany Great Danes and Binghamton Bearcats. The two both belong to the America East athletic conference. Frequently referred to as the I-88 Rivalry, Binghamton and Albany sit at either end of Interstate 88 (roughly 2.5 hours apart). Both teams are known to post the highest visitor attendance at either school's athletic events.

SUNY Oswego and SUNY Plattsburgh also share a notable rivalry in Division 3 Hockey, with that game almost always having the SUNYAC regular season title up for grabs.

SUNY Cobleskill and SUNY Delhi rivalry is mainly involving basketball, cross country, and previously track, although Cobleskill track and field competes at the NCAA Division III level starting spring 2009. They are in fairly close proximity to each other. The SUNY Delhi 2003-2004 basketball season was canceled after a basketball game was called with 48 seconds left after several SUNY Delhi basketball players nearly started a brawl in the Ioro Gymnasium at SUNY Cobleskill on Wednesday February 4th 2004.

There is an unusual sports rivalry between SUNY-ESF and Finger Lakes Community College, with both campuses sponsoring nationally-ranked teams in timber sports (woodsmen's teams).

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} SUNY FAST FACTS 2008 Academic Year
2. ^ "Short History of SUNY". The State University of New York. SUNY. http://www.suny.edu/student/university_suny_history.cfm. Retrieved 2009-04-05. 
3. ^ http://src.buffalo.edu/studentaccount/falltuition.shtml
4. ^ http://www.umd.edu/catalog/index.cfm/show/content.section/c/49/s/962
5. ^ http://financialaid.uoregon.edu

External links

• State University of New York
• State University of New York Press

v • d • e Units of the State University of New York University Centers Albany • Binghamton • Buffalo • Stony Brook Other Doctoral- Granting Institutions College of Environmental Science and Forestry • HSC Downstate • HSC Upstate • NYS College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (Cornell) • NYS College of Ceramics (Alfred) • NYS College of Human Ecology (Cornell) • NYS College of Veterinary Medicine (Cornell) • NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations (Cornell) • State College of Optometry University Colleges Buffalo State • Brockport • Cortland • Empire State (multi-site) • Fredonia • Geneseo • New Paltz • Old Westbury • Oneonta • Oswego • Plattsburgh • Potsdam • Purchase Technology Colleges Alfred State • Canton • Cobleskill • Delhi • Farmingdale • Maritime • Morrisville • SUNYIT Community Colleges Adirondack • Broome • Cayuga • Clinton • Columbia-Greene • Corning • Dutchess • Erie • Fashion Institute of Technology • Finger Lakes • Fulton-Montgomery • Genesee • Herkimer • Hudson Valley • Jamestown • Jefferson • Mohawk Valley • Monroe • Nassau • Niagara • North Country • Onondaga • Orange • Rockland • Schenectady • Suffolk • Sullivan • Tompkins Cortland • Ulster • Westchester Online Program SUNY Learning Network

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