Talk:Statutory college

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An entry from Statutory college appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 17 March 2004.

[edit] Outside of NYS?

Do Statutory/contract colleges exist outside of New York State? If so the article needs globalized.. —Cliffb 06:59, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Excellent question. While I'm not aware of the term "statutory college" or "contract college" being used outside of NYS, I believe that there are other examples of the statutory college concept found elsewhere. I've heard that the medical school at Baylor University gets ongoing, significant financial support from the state of Texas; I could check into this further shortly. Maybe I'll stumble across other relevant examples, too. (And, in the interest of article improvement, I believe that a majority of funding for NYSCC at Alfred University is of private [non-state] origin; I'll check on that one shortly, too.) Thanks again for asking :-) —Catdude 04:22, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Accuracy dispute

We have had a complaint form the administration of one of these colleges, which shows thta most of the paragraph I removed was either inaccurate or incorrectly weighted, but also disputes the following: The first paragraph of the article incorrectly describes the statutory colleges as "administratively affiliated with the State University" and that "SUNY ultimately has little control over these colleges." . Could this be checked please. Guy (Help!) 09:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The following link is a letter written by then-attorney-general Eliot Spitzer, about Cornell's statutory colleges: <http://www.oag.state.ny.us/lawyers/opinions/2005/formal/2005_f2.pdf>. Basically, he concludes that because Cornell is private, agreements between Cornell and a state agency can be formalized in a contract. (Two state agencies cannot do this because contracts must be between two parties and two different state agencies are both part of the same entity — New York; two agencies can only create memoranda of understanding for interagency agreements.)

Some interesting quotes from the letter are

1. “Statutory or contract colleges” are defined by the Education Law as “[c]olleges furnishing higher education, operated by independent institutions on behalf of the state pursuant to statute or contractual agreements. ... Although operated by independent institutions, they are part of the system of the State University of New York (“SUNY”) ... and thus subject to the general supervision of the SUNY trustees,"
2. “Cornell has significant autonomy over academic activities at the colleges but is accountable to the trustees of the State University of New York and other state agencies for the manner in which public funds are expended.”
3. Cornell has been expressly authorized “as the representative of the [SUNY] trustees” to administer the Statutory Colleges

as to the establishment of courses of study, the creation of departments and positions, the determination of the number and salaries of members of the faculty and other employees thereof, the appointment and employment thereof, the maintenance of discipline and as to all matters pertaining to its educational policies, activities and operations, including research work.

(I assume that this letter applies to all statutory colleges, and not just Cornell's. Emphasis not in the original letter.)

The disputed sentence in the lead section could certainly be reworded to better reflect the complexities of the relationship between the statutory college's parent institution and the state, but I think that this letter does more to support the statement than disprove it. Can you elaborate on what Alfred's/The College of Ceramics' administration disputes about the article and the statement in the previous comment in particular? Is the letter a private communucation, or could it be shared here? Also, what is disputed about the section (about the New York State College of Ceramics) that was removed? I think that the removal of the section has made the article quite unbalanced, giving Cornell a section but omitting special mention for Alfred's statutory college. Perhaps we modify the disputed part of the section and restore the undisputed part. btm _talk 07:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Not being privy to the e-mail disputing material in this article, I naturally don't know what was said in the e-mail, but I have restored information regarding Alfred University that I do feel is accurate, based upon recent communication with key AU officials. Some modifications were made to a few pieces of deleted information, which were then added to the AU section. If anyone has any "red flags" to what was wrote, please raise them, but as btm indicates, this article has a big hole in it without substantive mention of NYSCC and its structure/nature. Thanks to all who have tried to improve this article, including to any AU officials :) —Catdude 03:48, 16 May 2007 (UTC)