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To handle Buffalo's bright students (more than 85% of this year's freshmen are from the top fifth of their high school class), Meyerson is planning 20 subordinate nondegree colleges for commuters as well as residents. Each will have its own master and will offer courses and social activities appealing to students of a particular lifestyle. At the moment, 21,735 students are crowded onto Buffalo's old 178-acre campus, and enrollment is expected to reach 41,000 within six years. That is no problem. S.U.N.Y. is about to build an entirely new 1,200-acre campus for Buffalo in suburban Amherst. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with preliminary plans including a mile-long central building, the project will cost about $600 million.
The Public Swarthmore. At Binghamton, the goal of President Bruce Dearing is to maintain the humanistic emphasis of a small, lively liberal arts college (3,166 students) even while developing a full-scale graduate program. S.U.N.Y. acquired the school in 1950 from Syracuse University, swiftly built it into a school often described as "the public Swarthmore." Dearing, who taught English at Swarthmore for ten years, is convinced that Binghamton can combine quality with quantitative growth, but concedes that he will "start dragging my heels" when enrollment approaches 10,000.
More than half of this year's Harpur freshmen were in the top tenth of their graduating class. The school is especially strong in Renaissance studies under Humanities Chairman Aldo Bernardo, who passed up an Ivy League Italian Chair from his alma mater, Brown University, to stay with S.U.N.Y. In just four years, Music Chairman Philip Nelson has added 24 teachers, given his department a national reputation. Such performing artists as Pianist Jean Casadesus, the Guarneri String Quartet (see Music) and the New York Woodwind Quintet all teach at Harpur.
Miami Beach North. The Albany center, which began as a state normal school in 1844 and is the oldest institution in the S.U.N.Y. system, is striving for problem-solving competence in the social sciences. One example is its new Graduate School of Criminal Justice, headed by Richard Myren, a chemist with a law degree. He is collecting an interdisciplinary team of sociologists, psychologists, historians and lawyers to apply their combined knowledge to the problems of crime, the courts, prisons and police. Declares President Evan Collins: "We're in a position to bring in the best faculty in the country—and we're doing it."
More than 10,000 students applied for the 1,500 freshman openings this year at Albany. Part of the appeal is the most striking physical setting of any S.U.N.Y. campus. Designed by Edward Durell Stone, even down to the burgundy carpets in the student lounges, it cost $110 million and features four 23-story towers, overlooking a central cluster of academic buildings within a columned walkway. A few student cynics dub it "Miami Beach North," but Governor Rockefeller proudly orders pilots of his private plane to fly over the campus