Chancellor Zimpher delivered her second annual State of the University Address Monday, coining a new word – Systemness – and outlining how SUNY will use it to cut costs, enhance productivity, and increase access and completion. In case you missed it, here are the highlights:
Cutting Costs
- Regional Administrative Centers will centrally process payroll, benefits, purchasing, travel, and other basic administrative services for campuses in each region.
- Over the next three years, all SUNY campuses will shift—at minimum—5 percent of their administrative spending to academics and student services – resulting in at least $100 million to bolster academic instruction and other students support services.
- Performance-based allocations will be made using indicators, such as graduation rates or a diversity index, to determine the amount of funding each campus will receive.
- By summer 2013, a plan for all SUNY campuses to operate on common Information Technology (IT) data systems will be in place, with full implementation by summer 2014.
Enhancing Productivity
- K-12 leaders across New York will partner with SUNY to end the need for remedial education in our lifetime.
- SUNY will use strategic enrollment management to determine workforce demand by region and adjust program offerings and enrollment patterns at campuses to directly meet those needs.
- SUNY will invest resources, and look to external support, to realize major initiatives found in The Power of SUNY. Success will be tracked by the SUNY Report Card.
Increasing Access & Completion
- Every AA or AS degree from a SUNY community college will satisfy general education requirements at SUNY’s four-year institutions by fall 2013.
- Open SUNY will be the nation’s most extensive distance learning environment, connecting students with faculty and peers from across the state and throughout the world and giving them access to the best in open educational resources.
- Plans to create Strive-like networks are well underway in Rochester, Albany, and Harlem. Just last month, SUNY announced the beginnings of a first-ever rural Strive-like education partnership in Clinton County.
- SUNY Works is helping to ease the burden of debt for students who need an income while enrolled in college and, by incorporating paid internships in their field of study within the curriculum, helping them to gain invaluable work experience while making money.
- Every SUNY campus will set targets to improve its completion rates and develop a plan to realize those targets.