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By Carol Polsky
carol.polsky@newsday.com
One of the SUNY system’s foremost research institutions, Stony Brook University, will freeze hiring, cut salaries and budgets, and take more than 50% from its $80 million reserve fund this next academic year to offset mounting costs from the coronavirus pandemic, the school's president said in a letter last week.
All of Long Island’s colleges and universities are grappling with revenue losses and playing on their strengths to survive the challenges of COVID-19, their leaders say, as they prepare to reopen campuses with a mix of in-person, remote and hybrid courses.
“The bottom line: We know we have at least a $109.6 million deficit this year on the academic and research side, and it could become significantly worse, depending on the future impact of COVID-19 in our state and on our campus,” Stony Brook president Maurie McInnis said in a letter to faculty and staff. “The economic havoc COVID has left in its wake will be significant and long-lasting, and it is impacting Stony Brook’s financial health in multiple ways.”
Long Island schools refunded millions of dollars to students for room and board cut short when campuses shifted to remote instruction in March. Now, lowered density in dorms this fall will further impact revenue at schools that typically have many residential students.
Anticipated dips in enrollment, especially in international students, also will affect tuition income, while federal aid will cover only a portion of the costs of upgraded technology for remote instruction, upgraded ventilation and other measures to dampen the spread of the coronavirus, school administrators say.
To defray costs, schools have left positions unfilled, cut expenses such as nonessential travel, and in some cases furloughed employees.
Stony Brook, which had an enrollment of more than 26,000 in 2019-20, said it lost $34 million in refunded fees and $12 million in other income last spring, plus spent $9.3 million in COVID-19-related costs. The school anticipates a 17.5% drop in out-of-state and international students for a $20 million reduction in revenue, McInnis wrote. And, based on registration information, it expects a decrease in the number of student residents on campus from a capacity of 10,000 to 6,000, for an estimated loss of $38.9 million.
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As the financial prospects darken, several graduate students complained fall semester fee increases of about 18% are double what they had expected.
Jose Moscoso, 28, a PhD candidate in Ecology and Evolution and secretary of the Graduate Student Organization, said, "It's like them saying 'yikes we bled money' so now the poorest, lowest-paid employees on campus will have to carry this load. Why are we not seeing higher administrative pay cuts?"
McInnis said Stony Brook had used $13.4 million in federal support and achieved $18.7 million in savings from refinancing student housing loans. But costs continue to mount, including those at the university's hospital and clinic, which anticipate "an additional loss of between $60 [million]-$80 million in this fiscal year due to COVID," she wrote.