A official-looking flyer found at an NYU student center, telling tuition-challenged students to consider CUNY instead, was a fake. As NYU spokesman John Beckman put it, "Another satirical triumph for desktop publishing." Still, it provoked a discussion about private and public universities, especially as college tuition costs have grown about 450% since 1982-1984. Now the group responsible for the stunt writes to us. Take a look at the statement from "Students Creating Radical Change"......

A reader sent us a scan of a flier she found at NYU's student center, "It’s a flier for a NYU financial aid plan that basically tells students that can’t afford NYU to go to CUNY," and points out it's crazy that "NYU can’t give its students decent financial aid even though John Sexton flies to Abu Dhabi every other week and we keep buying new buildings all over the city." The school's tuition......

As part of his plans to close the budget gap, Governor David Paterson proposed a $600 tuition hike at City and State University of New York schools. Naturally, students are not taking this well and the Post has some sad quotes. From Queens College student Lilliana Ramnath who works part time at a medical office and is a single mother: "I think I'm going to have to take a year or two off, at the......

It's never been a better time to be a nerd in CUNY's Honors College; besides the free tuition, the free admission to dozens of institutions like the Metropolitan Opera and the Museum of Modern Art, the braniacs now get to take classes at a fancy four-story brownstone on the Upper West Side. The university bought the Gothic revival Steinhardt Building (pictured) from the 92nd Street Y and started holding seminars there this semester. According to......

Among the many cuts making up Governor Paterson's latest request that $1 billion be cut from the state budget is one to cut $51 million from the City University of New York. That amounts to a 7% cut, which is in line with the cut the SUNY system is making. CUNY told the Daily News the cut is "very significant" and it's unclear whether tuition will be raised, but added "We have an obligation to......

Today, timed with the NY State Commission on Higher Education's release of a report about higher education, the NY Times reports Governor Paterson will ask "the Legislature to create a low-cost student loan program to make New York more competitive with other states." The report outlines concerns about the SUNY and CUNY schools maintaining quality with insufficient funds--the two systems have more than 600,000 students over 87 campuses. You can read the whole report (PDF)......

Controversy is swirling around a course offered at Hunter College that an untenured professor says he was pressured to “teach.” The course was paid for last year by the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition [IACC], an industry group combating the proliferation of cheap counterfeit clothes, jewelry, accessories, etc. Hunter students were enlisted as free labor to develop a guerrilla marketing campaign for the IACC as an attempt to change attitudes about knock-off goods; the result was a......