In his annual address to lawmakers this week, New York’s governor, Eliot Spitzer, will propose adding 2,000 faculty members to the state’s public universities and creating an endowment for the institutions, reports today’s New York Times.

The faculty proposal was included in a preliminary report issued last month by a commission that the Democratic governor created to recommend how the state can improve its universities and use both public and private institutions to help fuel the economy.

But, the newspaper said, it remains to be seen how much money the governor is willing to devote to his higher-education proposals, given that the state faces a budget gap of more than $4-billion.

It was also unclear whether Mr. Spitzer would advocate plans to put in place other recommendations of the higher-education commission, according to the article. The panel, for instance, has also urged the state to reinvigorate its higher-education system by establishing a $3-billion research fund to support economic development and by allowing some campuses of the university systems to set higher tuition rates than others. —Sara Hebel