Leadership Quote by George Pataki

Pride is doing a lot of political work here. Pataki’s line isn’t just a victory lap for SUNY and CUNY; it’s a preemptive framing device that turns messy, contested institutional change into a clean before-and-after story with a single author. “When I took office” centers him as the hinge of history, implying that whatever came before was deficient and whatever exists now is the product of competent executive will.

The phrase “totally different institutions” is strategically vague. It sounds transformative without naming the trade-offs. In New York’s higher-ed battles, specifics are where you get cut: tuition policy, faculty lines, maintenance backlogs, governance, union relations, state appropriations, and the slow privatizing creep of “efficiency.” By avoiding details, Pataki claims the aura of reform while letting supporters project their preferred meaning onto “different” and letting critics do the opposite. It’s a politician’s version of a Rorschach test.

The mention of both State University and City University matters, too. SUNY and CUNY carry different constituencies and symbolic roles: SUNY tied to statewide development and regional campuses; CUNY tied to New York City, immigrant mobility, and the promise of public higher education as an escalator. Pairing them signals managerial breadth and political reach: not just a governor for Manhattan donors or upstate towns, but a steward of the whole system.

Contextually, Pataki governed through an era when higher education was increasingly asked to act like a market actor while still serving as a public good. This sentence tries to resolve that tension with a simple claim: change happened, and it should be credited, not litigated.