The State University of New York (SUNY) \u2013 64 higher education campuses with nearly half a million students \u2013 is the largest university system in the United States. Therefore, when university administrators join the state’s governor in turning SUNY into a loyal servant of big business, that fact has significant ramifications.<\/p>\n
The university’s new mission became increasingly evident in the spring of 2013, when Andrew Cuomo \u2013 New York’s pro-corporate Democratic governor \u2013 began barnstorming around the state, calling for a dramatic \u201cculture shift<\/a>\u201d in the SUNY system. Faculty, he said, would have to \u201cget interested and participate in entrepreneurial activities.\u201d The situation was \u201cdelicate<\/a> because academics are academics \u2026 But .. you’d be a better academic if you were actually entrepreneurial.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuomo’s barnstorming tour was a key part of his high-powered drive to get the state legislature to pass Tax-Free New York<\/a>, a scheme to provide 10 years of tax-free status to private businesses, their owners, and their employees that relocated to SUNY campuses, university communities, or a few private colleges. This corporate welfare plan, renamed \u201cStart-Up New York,\u201d was enacted by the legislature in June with great fanfare about economic development and job creation \u2013 although, at the time, New York State had already spent about $7 billion<\/a> annually for economic development without any evidence that this funding produced anything useful.<\/p>\n Actually, Start-Up New York is only one component of a drive by the governor and SUNY’s bedazzled chancellor, Nancy L. Zimpher, to create a business-oriented university. Among other things, New York State’s new SUNY 2020 program provides for a $165 million Emerging Technology and Entrepreneurship Complex<\/a> on the SUNY Albany campus and encourages the hiring of faculty on the basis of their ability to fund themselves<\/a> through outside income. In addition, Cuomo established the SUNY Networks of Excellence<\/a>, designed, as a SUNY Albany press release noted, \u201cto foster entrepreneurialism and economic growth through public-private partnerships and give researchers the tools they need to bring their ideas to market.\u201d The governor noted that this SUNY program would \u201cdraw new venture capital to invest in commercialization activities\u201d and \u201cwill help bring our best ideas to market right here in New York State.\u201d<\/p>\n The jewel in the crown, however, is SUNY’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. Developed and headed by Alain Kaloyeros \u2013 a wheeler-dealer who, with an annual salary of $1.3 million<\/a>, is the highest-paid public employee in the state \u2013 this enterprise was begun with a 20-year $1 billion investment by New York and has reportedly drawn in $17 billion<\/a> of investments from the nation’s biggest corporations, such as IBM and Intel.<\/p>\n Governor Cuomo, absolutely delighted by this thriving public-private partnership, has made Kaloyeros his top advisor on higher education and has given him the green light to create such SUNY partnerships elsewhere. The first, Nano Utica<\/a>, was announced in October, and involves a $200 million state investment in a computer chip manufacturing and research center to be run by Kaloyeros’s Nanotech College and the SUNY Institute of Technology. Announcing the venture, the governor declared that \u201cthis partnership demonstrates how the new New York is making targeted investments to transition our state’s economy to the 21st century and take advantage of the strengths of our world class universities.\u201d<\/p>\n Only a few days later, the news broke<\/a> in the Albany Times Union<\/em> that \u201cthe NanoCollege has been aggressively acquiring real estate property from Albany to Rochester,\u201d and was \u201cquietly seeking developers for a similar [chip manufacturing] facility in Syracuse.\u201d Amid talk of billions of dollars in private investments, the article noted delicately that the Syracuse venture \u201cwould likely need an educational component to fit in with Cuomo’s strategy of using the SUNY system to attract high-tech employers.\u201d<\/p>\n Local campus administrators have been quick to jump on the bandwagon. In an article (\u201cSUNY Cortland’s Entrepreneurial Spirit\u201d<\/a>) published in the summer 2013 issue of SUNY Cortland’s alumni magazine<\/a>, Erik Bitterbaum, the campus President, declared that his school was \u201ctaking steps to make sure our campus culture nurtures the spirit of entrepreneurism, one of the primary strategic goals [of the SUNY system] \u2026 Our graduates have built companies, restaurants and theme parks,\u201d he boasted \u201c[And] own chain franchises, run mom-and-pop business and open health-, wellness- or fitness-related enterprises.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201c[B]usiness economics is now one of our most popular and fastest-growing majors \u2026 the College has an active Entrepreneurship Club.\u201d And SUNY Cortland recently began offering a two-course sequence in \u201centrepreneurism.\u201d<\/p>\n Other SUNY campuses were not far behind. In the fall of 2013, SUNY Albany hired an Associate Vice President<\/a> of Business Partnerships and Economic Development to manage and advance public-private partnerships at the university, including the Emerging Technology and Entrepreneurship Complex and the Start-Up New York program. Even before that, the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences called a special meeting of department chairs to hear a presentation about Start-Up New York by the campus President’s Chief of Staff and to address such questions as: \u201cWhat kinds of businesses could your faculty potentially foster? Where would those businesses be located?\u201d Other campus ventures included what the administration described as \u201cthe Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!)<\/a>, an eight-month program that teaches middle and high school students how to start and run their own REAL businesses.\u201d At SUNY Delhi<\/a>, the campus President told the press that she was hopeful that, under Start-Up New York, her college could work with a manufacturer on a new \u201cbiodigester\u201d that would make good use of cow manure.<\/p>\n Turning a public university into a generator of private business activity and development seems a considerable departure from SUNY’s official mission statement<\/a>, which promises that the university will \u201cprovide to the people of New York educational services of the highest quality.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, is it appropriate for an educational institution to be so thoroughly devoted to the fostering of \u201centrepreneurialism?\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Lawrence Wittner<\/strong> (http:\/\/lawrenceswittner.com<\/a>) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY\/Albany and writes for PeaceVoice.<\/a> His latest book is \u201cWhat’s Going On at UAardvark?\u201d \u2014 a satire on the corporatization of higher education.]<\/i><\/p>\n