> ...similar defunding is under way nationwide. “In most states,” The New York Times reports, “it is now tuition payments, not state appropriations, that cover

> ...similar defunding is under way nationwide. “In most states,” The New York Times reports, “it is now tuition payments, not state appropriations, that cover most of the budget,” so that “the era of affordable four-year public universities, heavily subsidized by the state, may be over.” Some people here on HN already know (I think?) of my 30 seconds of fame that came from being targeted by SUNY for retaliation for my successful run for Student Body President (chronicled in a video project called Campus Coup[0], made by a bunch of us who were there). But what you might not know is that during that time, I had the pleasure of meeting and receiving the support from many of the brightest faculty (and other) reformers of higher education. Their counsel helped me understand and formulate the following conclusion: A great move right now is to let the state continue to withdraw funding and at the same time supplant its control over Student Union Buildings, Offices of Residence Life, Offices of Academic Affairs, Academic Deans, and many other areas where it exerts undue control and coercion. The reality is that, at many of the most politically prominent campuses in the USA - UConn, UMD, Cornell, and my alma mater, New Paltz, among many others - all the best campus functions are being run by faculty or students already, with relatively little management from state officials. In my estimation, it's possible at each of these schools (and many others) to eliminate or nearly eliminate 3-5 top Student and Academic affairs officials, and their support staff, without anyone noticing for days or even weeks and without any long-term negative impact. It is also likely possible to eliminate their counterparts at the state level, ie SUNY SysAdmin. This amounts to a savings of thousands of dollars per student per year in SUNY - in fact, it makes it easy to imagine completely eliminating state involvement at these schools. I'm not familiar with the numbers in the other state systems. It's a very exciting time to be an education activist; there are some incredible students leaders on these campuses, and their level of understanding and sophistication is far beyond what we demonstrated in 2005-2008. The internet has fomented a culture of knowing every detail of budgeting and recent history, and this has rendered a lot of what "administrators" used to do irrelevant. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lhBceaH_G4&list=PL11F04BB4661C2CC3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lhBceaH_G4&list=PL11F04BB46...