By Ariana Costakes
Since entering Brooklyn College in the spring of 2005, Ingrid Feeney, 25, has struggled to remain enrolled. A year later, unable to register for classes due to an outstanding debt to the college, she was forced to take a two-year leave of absence.
“After four semesters of maintaining a 4.0 average, I had to drop out because I owed the school over two grand,” she said. “My registration was cancelled and that started the two years in limbo.”
Feeney is one of many CUNY students who struggle to remain enrolled due to financial difficulties. She was able to enroll again in the fall of 2008, but has struggled ever since to balance full-time restaurant work with her studies in order to pay rent and tuition.
Since 1975, when CUNY ceased to be a free university, tuition has risen steadily due to state budget cuts in public education. Last year, Governor David Paterson cut CUNY’s budget by $45 million, resulting in a $600-per-year tuition hike for senior colleges and a $300-per-year hike for community colleges.
In October, in a second attempt to fill the state’s budget deficit, Paterson proposed an additional $51 million cut in funding for the 2009-2010 academic year.
Additional funding cuts could result in tuition hikes for the spring 2010 semester, forcing public university students to bear the brunt of the state’s financial imbalance.
When asked how an additional increase in tuition would affect her, Feeney responded:
“It will effectively screw me harder than I am screwed already. Currently I live in a vermin-infested basement and my bank account is overdrawn. Maybe if Paterson gets his way I'll have to start eating the vermin, because dropping out of school again for financial reasons is not an option.”
The New York State Assembly passed a budget deficit reduction plan on Dec. 2 that included a 5 percent reduction in funding for CUNY. This plan did not include cuts to the Tuition Assistance Program, the state financial aid provider, as proposed by the governor. Despite the sweeping nature of these cuts, which include a 5.4 percent drop in funding for the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, Governor Paterson insists this plan will not keep the state fiscally stable in the long run. Last Tuesday he unveiled an “austerity plan” that outlined his intentions to cut even more funding for education, transportation and healthcare. This plan specifically mentioned a tuition hike for CUNY and SUNY in the next fiscal year.
Feeney is not alone in her concerns about the rising tuition. Rebecca Feinstein, 23, a Brooklyn College senior, works the night shift at a psychiatric facility. She works Monday through Friday from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., takes classes in the morning, then sleeps in the afternoon. She comes to class four days a week without having slept all night.
“Sometimes I have to leave class and go sleep in the library,” she said. “I find myself dozing off and get nervous. I don’t want to start snoring in the middle of a lecture!”
Feinstein admits that her work schedule takes a toll on her academic performance.
“When I’m tired I get grumpy and I start hating the work, hating the readings, hating the professors,” she said. “I’ve had professors tell me to ‘drop the attitude’ because I was mouthing off. I just have no patience anymore.”
She said these outbursts are uncharacteristic of her.
“I used to be such a positive, cheery person. That’s why they hired me at the hospital,” she said. “But now I’m so edgy…it’s almost like I’m a different person.”
Like Feeney, Feinstein has no choice but to work these long hours. She lives on her own and receives no financial aid or help from her parents. She said another round of tuition hikes would completely throw off the delicate balance she maintains.
“Right now I’m just scraping by,” she said. “If tuition goes up another $600, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The rising tuition is especially worrisome for students as they struggle to pay exorbitant city rents and to hold down or land jobs in an increasingly competitive market.
But even students who continue to live at home with their parents are struggling to get by. Carmen Vasquez lives with her mother and brother in Inwood. She attends Hostos Community College part-time while working full-time in retail to help her mother support her adolescent brother. Over the summer, she applied to City College and was accepted. Carmen and her mother painstakingly worked out a budget under which she could attend the senior college, but when the tuition increases were announced, calculated that they simply couldn’t afford the extra $600 per year. Though tuition at Hostos rose by $150 per semester, it was still much cheaper on the whole than City College. The transfer was simply too risky for her and her family.
“It was risky in the first place but now it’s just impossible,” she said.
Vasquez remains at Hostos and hopes to complete her Associate’s Degree in marketing next semester.
Sabina Santiago, a Brooklyn College junior, said that increased tuition would force her to also rethink her financial plan.
“If they cut that funding I'm not sure that I will have enough money to pay for tuition and books,” she said. “There is always the option of a loan, which I took out for my freshman year because I wasn't getting aid, but I don't like loans so I will feel really scared that I would have to save money and maybe get a loan as well if financial aid was cut back.”
Santiago also works full-time and like Feinstein, works night shifts, sometimes coming to class without having slept.
“It's especially hard to work the night shift and have to get up early for school the next day,” she said. “I feel like I might fall asleep in class sometimes.”
Santiago wearily described how her work schedule affects her academic performance.
“I will be so tired from work that by the time I get home I'm really too exhausted to finish a paper or read the chapters I need for the next day's class,” she said. “It seriously affects me when I go to school then straight to work or vice versa. There really is no time in between […] to really concentrate on my school work. I'm finding it hard to meet deadlines, I feel like I am just doing things to hand them in instead of putting more work or concentration in it. I can't seem at times to catch up. Where most people have weekends to work on things, I can’t because I work the whole weekend.”
Though enrollment at CUNY is up 12 percent from the 2008-2009 academic year, the dismal economy combined with tuition hikes have made graduating in a timely manner difficult for some students.
If Rudi Vaccari, 22, were to take 18 credits in the spring, he would graduate from Lehman College in June with the rest of his friends. This year, he says, he can only take three classes. Only three of the classes he needs are being offered in the evenings or on weekends. He can’t take morning or afternoon classes because he works construction 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday.
“They offered me more hours, and I can’t really say no,” he said. “Other people are getting laid-off right now.”
Vaccari said that, though he will be spending more money in the long-run taking classes only part-time, he can’t afford to take more than nine credits or take days off from work.
“I just can’t cough up that extra $1,000,” he said.
Olga Slastnaya, 32, came to the U.S. from Russia 13 years ago. Since then she has worked in a diner, in a lingerie boutique, as a nanny, a bartender, a taxi driver and as a receptionist at a women’s health clinic. This fall she began her studies in Business Administration at Baruch College. She said that, with the economic crisis and the increase in tuition this year, she is really feeling the pinch.
“Last month I applied for food stamps,” she said. “I know it is nothing to be ashamed of but for me this was very difficult.”
Slastnaya, a single mother of two, receives state and federal financial aid but still works over 40 hours a week as a nanny to pay the rent on her two bedroom apartment in Queens.
“I watch other people’s kids so I can take care of my own,” she said, “It’s a shit.”
Professor Roni Natov speaks with dozens of students every day in her counseling office. She said she has noticed an increased level of financial and academic stress among students this year:
“I don’t know how they finish one book or read anything…Even the ones who get financial aid; they are going to get out with so much debt!”
She said she has also noticed more students dropping out mid-semester:
“I know of at least two students who have disappeared, you call their number and their phone is disconnected,” she said, “Students need a lot more financial support.”
Even members of the CUNY administrative staff are noticing a difference in students’ ability to pay their tuition this year. Yasmin Ali, director of the Enrollment Services Center at Brooklyn College, said she has seen an increase in students signing up for an installment plan offered through Sallie Mae. This plan allows students to pay their tuition in several installments interest-free. There was formerly an $18 fee for enrollment in this plan but CUNY waived it when the latest tuition hikes were enacted.
“Since CUNY is funding the $18 enrollment fee, more students chose to finance their education through this option than last year,” she said.
As CUNY’s budget is whittled down more and more, low-income inner-city students are forced to dig deep to fill the state budget deficit out of their own pockets. Speaker Sheldon Silver said in a press release on Dec. 2 that the State Assembly attempted to make well-rounded cuts that wouldn’t place the burden exclusively on low-income New Yorkers.
“We remain committed to making the same sacrifices that everyday New Yorkers have been making already,” he said, “without allowing the cuts to fall disproportionately on one segment of the population.”
Nonetheless, the cuts by nature will only negatively affect those who are already struggling. One can only hope Albany spares CUNY further budget cuts in order to preserve it as one of the country’s best options for quality affordable education.
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