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New plan for SUNY doesn’t break from systemness

January 27, 2022

When you introduce a new idea to higher education, there is inevitably discussion, debate and discord. This has certainly been true with the notion of “systemness,” which we introduced to SUNY and the higher education sector around a decade ago.

In fact, we were delighted to see the term invoked in a Jan. 6 article in Higher Ed Dive discussing a recent proposal by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to reinvigorate SUNY. But we were disappointed to read that the new proposal, which includes creating further differentiation in the SUNY system with two tiers of research universities, was viewed as “breaking” from SUNY’s systemness.