Across the 64 campuses of the State University of New York (SUNY), approximately 417,000 students attend class each year, nearly 375,000 as undergraduates. Tracing its roots to Potsdam, a school founded in 1816, the formal incorporation of SUNY in 1948 made it the last official state system to come into existence in the then 48 contiguous states. Today, nearly 31,000 faculty members and over 50,000 staff power the energy of the system stretching from Buffalo to Stony Brook.

In May 2007, New York’s Governor Eliot Spitzer established a State Higher Education Commission to take an informed look at the enterprise. Quoted as saying, “New York has ‘slipped in stature’” and that its once-powerful position in national research has “faded,” the Governor recognized that the New York colleges and universities not only do good by educating people — a noble and honest pursuit — but they also provide the work force that feeds the state’s economy. Six months later, the 30 members of the Commission issued their report, proposing among other things changes in funding mechanisms (tuition increases and better loan programs), more flexible regulatory and governing structures, improvements in facilities maintenance and a “capital re-investment” program, the hiring of an additional 2,000 faculty (250 of whom are to be “eminent scholars”), developing Educational Partnership Zones in “high-need school districts” and — my personal favorite — ensuring high-school graduates are well prepared for college.

What a robust agenda! Colleagues, polish your resumes. Construction companies, ready your backhoes. And the commission has not yet completed its assignment. In the coming six months, the group is going on a listening tour — hosting public hearings and engaging in discussions with as many of the stakeholders in higher education as it can find. The chairman, former Cornell President, Hunter Rawlings, says he is “confident the report will be stronger because of this period of dialogue.” Perhaps. But it may also be a harvesting of constituency wish lists. A bundle of desires.

What does stronger mean? Even more recommendations? Or, perhaps it means adding a disaggregated realistic price tag to its letter to Santa Claus. And, most important, let’s hope the commission outlines who is going to pay the bill.

As part of the assignment, I hope the commission will suggest where their ambitions compete with New York’s other priority needs and wishes. Are they ahead of or behind health care, the environment, infrastructure, support for the elderly, immigrants, homeless children, the unemployed, and security concerns? Will there be winners and losers at the end of the day? How are higher-education goals related to the other objectives of New York?

Yes, New York is the Empire State — the gateway to the New World, the home of the Big Apple. It should provide a cost-effective, first-rate higher education to everyone who will benefit from one — by maintaining everything from world-class community colleges to professional schools. But the commission owes it to the governor, to the citizens, and to the rest of the higher education community to recommend goals and funding arrangements that are plausible as well as inspirational. It should make choices and recommendations as well as provide an encyclopedia of alternatives.

I await the final report. The college presidents, deans, students, faculty, and business leaders on the commission have enough brain power among them to offer suggestions that can truly transform New York States’ higher-education community, and by doing so, place SUNY in a position to serve as a role model for the rest of the nation. With size, prestige and national visibility comes power. This is an agenda loaded with jobs and patronage; favors to be asked and done. This is the stuff of politics and life. I hope the task force uses its platform wisely, discreetly, judiciously, boldly, with fiduciary care, and gives us a hint about how New York is going to pay for it all. As the saying goes, “money buys honey.”