UB President To Retire Following Albany’s Failure

University of Buffalo President John Simpson announced this afternoon he is retiring as the college’s President effective of January 15.

In a press release, he states that his motivation is mainly because he wants to be closer to family, but he adds that “the difficult decision has been made somewhat easier by Albany’s failure to give UB and SUNY policy tools.”

“UB’s promise, and its potential to transform this community, have been threatened severely by repeated budget cuts and, most recently, by the latest setbacks from Albany,” Simpson said.

This past session state lawmakers failed to pass SUNY empowerment legislation that would have allowed campuses to set their own tuition, to an extent, and also give them power to make purchases without prior approval from the state legislature.

The project grew out of a pilot program that was proposed for the University of Buffalo, called UB2020. The idea being that by the year 2020, University of Buffalo would be a state of the art medical campus.

Following Albany’s failure to pass SUNY empowerment legislation, Simpson sent an email to colleagues suggesting it would be optimistic to think that project could be done by 2030.