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The University of Alaska system is currently dealing with what President Jim Johnsen on Tuesday called an "existential threat" in the form of a 41 percent cut to the state's contribution, imposed by Alaska's governor.
Into that mess, a low-level employee at the State University of New York system last week tossed a far less serious, if unwelcome, stink bomb.
SUNY Online, the New York system's distance learning arm, paid for a sponsored post on Facebook that crossed the news feed of Sine Anahita, a professor of sociology at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks who heads the university's Faculty Senate.
“Worried about the future of Alaska’s universities?” the post said. “SUNY is accepting students now. You can bring the State University of New York home with you and complete your degree from a name you can trust, 100% online!”
Anahita said the ad troubled her.
“Our students are feeling very stressed right now. Students don’t know whether they can continue at the University of Alaska,” Anahita told Alaska Public Media. “There’s just lots of anxiety and fear. And it sounded to me like the SUNY people were taking advantage of our students’ fear.”
Like many public universities, the 64-campus SUNY system has been eyeing significant online growth, and in a state like New York, whose potential college populations are in decline, that usually means looking elsewhere.
Exactly who at SUNY decided to look to Alaska for potential students isn't clear, and its officials declined to say. But why SUNY took aim at Alaska is pretty obvious, and stated directly (if subtly) in the Facebook post itself.
The message is clear: if any current or prospective University of Alaska students are worried that the massive budget cut ordered by the state's government will hurt their ability to pursue their educations, SUNY is here to help.
Officials at the Alaska system were stung by the perceived incursion, particularly at such a sensitive time.
“This is a very difficult time for the university, as you can appreciate,” Robbie Graham, associate vice president of public affairs at the university, told Alaska Public Media. “And it’s really hard to see those kinds of comments and those kinds of solicitations from a fellow university during a really difficult time like this.”
Officials at SUNY had little to say about the situation, beyond a statement noting that senior administrators there withdrew the ad promptly once it came to their attention.
"As part of our continuing efforts to promote the high-quality education offered with SUNY Online, we posted an advertisement that was regrettable and was immediately taken down, and have since contacted the University of Alaska to extend our regrets," said Holly Liapis, press secretary for the SUNY system.
Jim Jump, academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Va., writes the “Ethical College Admissions” blog on Inside Higher Ed. While the National Association of College Admission Counseling said in its statement of principles that colleges "will not knowingly recruit or offer enrollment incentives to students who are already enrolled, registered, have declared their intent or submitted contractual deposits to other institutions," Jump said he did not see SUNY's actions as a "grievous ethical violation."
It isn't uncommon for colleges and universities to offer help to students enrolled by their peers -- though usually in situations that more clearly are in the students' interest, such as when a college closes or a natural disaster occurs, impairing an institution in Puerto Rico or New Orleans, for instance.
But the timing, coming as the Alaskan university wrestles with a budget crisis, is what makes SUNY look particularly bad, Jump said.
"There's a line between what is legitimate recruiting and what is exploiting," he said. "Putting a post on Facebook right in the middle of all this caused some wounds for students and folks in Alaska. It makes it look more unseemly."
But "the fact that it appears to have been a mistake, rather than calculated, changes the ethical parameters to some extent," he said. "If it’s a screwup and they walked it back, they seem to have handled it properly."
