Stony Brook University's annual field trip to Albany has always been based on not-so-secret undercurrents of money. Among other things, it seeks to put students face to face with the legislators who determine the state university system's funding.
This year Albany day may prove to be especially important as Stony Brook struggles to expand amidst a shrinking national economy and a state budget deficit.
Despite those factors, the state government is allocating $3.41 billion to SUNY for the 2008/2009 fiscal year, up 1.8 percent compared to last year’s allocation.
Stony Brook hopes to get what it sees as its fair share of this allotment. Last year, SBU received $205.9 million in state support. SUNY Buffalo is the only SUNY school that receives more state funding than Stony Brook.
Buffalo's enrollment was 27,823 in fall 2006, the latest numbers available. In fall 2007, the latest numbers that were made available by the university, Stony Brook had a total enrollment of 23,354.
According to Dan Melucci, Associate Vice President for Strategy and Analysis, SUNY divvies up its state funding in a formulaic manner, based on enrollment, and a 12-point matrix that helps determine cost-per-student (science majors are more expensive than music majors, etc.)
According to the Stony Brook University 2008-09 Needs Analysis Report, Stony Brook plans to increase enrollment by more than 5,000 students between 2006 and 2012, to a total of 27,900, including 3,300 undergraduates (2,000 of them at Stony Brook Southampton) and 2,000 graduate students.
Stony Brook is requesting 291 new full-time, tenure track faculty to be added through 2012, 250 for the main campus and the rest for the school of medicine. This is part of an effort by Stony Brook to achieve the faculty-student ratios of the national universities it views as its peers in the Association of American Universities, a group of research universities. Stony Brook views the top 20 public research universities in the A AU as its "peer group."
According to the report, 46 percent of the instruction at Stony Brook is done by full-time tenure track faculty. At AAU public universities, this figure is 65 percent. An addition of 291 faculty will bring it to that level, the report said.
SUNY support for Stony Brook has increased by 31 percent since the 2005-2006 budget. But most of this money went toward helping close a historical utilities budget deficit, according to Melucci. For years, he said, Stony Brook's utilities expenses were under-funded by the state, and the sharp increase over the last two years represented a successful endeavor to catch up.
SUNY’s fiscal year is set to end July 1.
