It's still unclear how SUNY will be affected by the state budget, reports Lori Shull at the Watertown Daily Times. The system got back $86 million that had been cut in earlier proposals, during the weekend's negotiations. But how that cash will be divvied up is the key question now:
Though some of the money has been returned to higher education, SUNY's four-year schools will not see any of it. The system's three teaching hospitals will see a restoration of $60 million of the $170 million that was to be cut from their budgets, in addition to the cuts from the universities attached to them. Like most other state agencies, the SUNY system was pegged to receive a 10 percent cut, or $100 million, with the additional cut out of the hospital budgets. The teaching hospitals, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse; Downstate Medical University, Brooklyn, and Stony Brook Sciences, Long Island, cannot continue to function under those cuts. Instead, other four-year schools will likely have to cut from their budgets so more money can be sent to the medical centers.
Binghamton University
David Zax reports at Fast Company that a Binghamton University researcher has picked up $450,000 from the National Science Foundation (and $50,000 from Google) to help make software greener. Yeah, you read that right - everything can be greener now:
"Saving energy is an activity that should come from many layers," said Binghamton's Yu David Liu, the recipient of the grants, who has been at the university since 2008, in a release. And it should even come in lines of computer code. As readers of our earlier post on the "greenest" code will no doubt remember, there is some debate over what code is, in fact, greenest. Some codes may run faster in some instances; other codes in others. This is one of the questions Liu wants to tackle, who has noted that none of the mainstream computer languages support "energy-aware programming." But it's not the only one. In fact, there are a number of outstanding research questions in the small field of green programming. In a fantastically complex, million-line-long program, how do you map the energy-consumption patterns of the program as a whole, given consumption patterns of its parts?
Higher ed salaries
Higher ed officials top the state's highest paid officials list, reports Andrew Poole at the Hornell Evening Tribune. In first place, former Binghamton University basketball coach Kevin Broadus, with more than a million dollars in salary. High paid doctors at downstate medical institutions come next, and then other SUNY and CUNY employees.
Upstate rankings
Here's a full look at the rankings of upstate's selective colleges - we mentioned the top schools yesterday but neglected to share the link to the rankings.
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