SU and SUNY-ESF’s chapter of NYPIRG to advocate for higher education reform in Albany

The Syracuse University and SUNY-ESF chapter of NYPIRG will travel to Albany on Thursday to advocate for higher education reform in the state capital.

Higher Education Action Day is an event held every February by SU and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s chapter of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

The day in Albany gives chapter members and other students who signed up for the trip the opportunity to potentially sit down with members of the New York state legislature to talk about issues that concern students of higher education, said Conall McNelis, the project leader for the SU/SUNY-ESF NYPIRG chapter’s higher education platform and a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.

These issues mainly stem from funding. In Albany, NYPIRG will lobby for reform in tuition hikes and The New York State Tuition Assistance Program (TAP), McNelis said. The chapter hopes to meet with Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter (D-Syracuse) and State Sen. David Valesky (D, IP) in an open forum discussion for about 20-30 minutes each, McNelis said.

Tuition hikes have continually gone up at the same time the state continually cuts funding, McNelis said. He added that while tuition usually covers roughly 40 to 45 percent of costs on college campuses, tuition hikes and state funding cuts have increased that percentage to about 60 percent, so students are paying for more than just their education.

NYPIRG will also advocate in Albany for more funding from TAP, a program created in 1974 to assist students with funding for higher education. The maximum award from TAP is $5,000, McNelis said. The initial amount of money the program awarded students increased through the 1980s, McNelis said, but eventually stopped.

“Five thousand dollars gets you, what, like maybe a class or two here?” he said with a laugh. “… It makes little to no difference. I might be paying for one class or college textbooks.”

In Albany, NYPIRG will push legislators to increase TAP’s maximum award funding to $15,000 or $20,000, McNelis said.

“We really have a chance to have our voices heard and most importantly to us is putting a face to the name, so to speak. You know, we are college students, we are going through these problems right now,” McNelis said. “If we wrote them an email, they’d be like, ‘OK, very nice, yadda yadda yadda.’”

McNelis said the meetings are effective because at the very least, students get to have hands-on conversations with the legislators. But, he said, changes in funding for college tuition is probably not something students will see for another year or two.

“To me, it’s an effect that we probably won’t see until down the line, but to me there’s no other way — it’s the best way possible to go about it as long as we’re talking about it hands-on,” McNelis said.

He added that Higher Education Action Day is an opportunity for NYPIRG and individual students, and said that while it may not directly affect their college tuition, it could eventually help with graduate school costs or college costs for their siblings and children.