RECOGNIZING THE EXCESS DEMAND. Inside Higher Education reports an intriguing proposal from the New York State university at Buffalo.

At a time when most state leaders in New York are talking about cutting back, John Simpson sounds emboldened by comparison.

Simpson, president of the State University of New York’s Buffalo campus, says the state’s $2 billion budget shortfall presents an opportunity. With a renewed sense of urgency, Simpson is pressing lawmakers to enact a series of reforms that would challenge longstanding traditions in New York. Simpson’s recommendations include allowing Buffalo, and perhaps a few other significant research campuses in the 64-campus system, to raise its tuition at a higher rate than the rest of the four-year SUNY campuses.

The proposal is a long way from being implemented. It's encouraging to read something that isn't obeisance to access-assessment-remediation-retention or devoting more resources to beer and circus.

Clearing out the subprime components of the New York system will not be easy.

While tuition is an important issue, [Stony Brook president Shirley] Kenny says she’s equally concerned that the state doesn’t allocate enough of its own funding to the research centers within SUNY. But there are political realities that make it hard to believe lawmakers would fund university centers at a higher rate if it meant having to close or cut the funding of some of the SUNY colleges with dwindling enrollments, she said.

There's excess capacity in access-assessment-remediation-retention. It makes no more sense to preserve it now than it did to preserve Chrysler in 1979.