OPPORTUNITY DENIED
A Report by The Friends of CUNY
In Response to the Master Plan 2000-2004
August 24, 2000
PREFACE
This document was prepared by The Friends of CUNY, an organization of concerned citizens that includes alumni, professors, lawyers and representatives of community and civic advocacy groups. The Friends have carefully reviewed the City University of New York Master Plan 2000-2004, prepared by the University for submission to the New York State Board of Regents, in compliance with Section 6206 of the State Education Law, and approved by the CUNY Board of Trustees on May 26, 2000. The Master Plan is a patchwork of initiatives grounded in the recommendations of the Mayor’s Advisory Task Force on the City University of New York (Schmidt Commission) that lacks a coherent and integrated framework.
The intention of the present document is not to comment on each provision of the Master Plan but to highlight proposals that would profoundly and negatively alter the University, limit access and restrict CUNY’s ability to serve all New Yorkers. No extended discussion is offered of proposals that The Friends would endorse, should funding be available. We do endorse certain funding proposals, which are listed in section 7 of this document.
I. INTRODUCTION
The City University of New York is and remains one of the most spectacular success stories in the history of American higher education. For more than 150 years, serving primarily those excluded from or unable to afford private universities, CUNY has offered high quality education to the poor, the working class and the immigrants of New York City and has produced graduates who have immeasurably enriched the life of the city, state and nation.
Toward the end of the 1960s, CUNY’s Board of Trustees, influenced by the civil rights movement and responding to the manifest will of the public, opened wide the doors of CUNY to all those demanding entrance, assuring all high school graduates despite possible inadequacies of preparation, entrance to the University. Thanks to Open Admissions, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, including substantial numbers of women and people of color, have had their lives transformed as a result of being able to acquire a college education. CUNY’s mission was bold and straightforward: Access and Excellence. This mission is now threatened by a Master Plan which, under a guise of "raising standards," would limit access to the University.
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When the University embarked on a policy of Open Admissions, thereby reaffirming its founding principle, "to educate the children of the whole people," it recognized that non-traditional student populations would bring special needs as well as special assets. Programs were designed to ensure that under-prepared students could succeed in college-level work and that educational deficits would be made up while students pursued courses of study in the liberal arts and sciences as well as in professional and technical fields. That CUNY has achieved its goal of excellence during the years when students have required remedial support is abundant:
• Between 1983 and 1992, CUNY baccalaureate graduates earned more doctorates than graduates of Columbia, New York University the University of Chicago and SUNY at Albany combined.
• CUNY has been rated by Standard and Poors first in the nation in producing bachelor degree alumni who rise to top positions in business.
• CUNY’s Graduate School and University Center has a number of Ph.D. programs ranking among the top in the United States in their respective disciplines.
• Brooklyn College’s Freshman Year Program received the Hesburgh Award in 1998.
• John Jay College of Criminal Justice graduate program has been ranked number one among 3,500 such programs by U. S. News and World Report; CUNY Law School is second in the country for its clinical training program; Hunter School of Social Work is among the top 15 Schools of Social Work in the nation.
And many more examples could be cited.
In spite of CUNY’s achievements and the recognition both its programs and its graduates have received, the University has suffered for over a decade from chronic under-funding — under-funding which has become more severe since 1996 and which has reached crisis proportions in several areas, notably the ability of the University to hire full time faculty. Rather than address the funding issue, the Mayor and the Governor have alleged a "crisis of standards," perhaps in order to justify their lack of support for the institution.
In May 1998, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani issued an executive order appointing a Mayoral Advisory Task Force on the City University of New York to explore "the continuing and long-standing decline in the educational standards at the City University. . . " The order asserted that "recent graduation rates and other measures of educational quality and performance indicate that CUNY’s current policies and practices have not maintained the high level of educational quality that CUNY should be providing its students to its students. ..."
The political nature of this Task Force was apparent from the fact that the majority of its members and some of its key research staffers were mayoral appointees and/or known critics of CUNY and
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public higher education. The Task Force secured private funding from conservative think tanks to conduct its activities. (The Friends of CUNY published a detailed analysis of the Schmidt Commission in August 1999.)
The 2000-2004 Master Plan document is based on key recommendations of the Schmidt Commission Report and explicitly seeks to implement recommendations of that Report. The document concedes that the University administration is in the process of implementing the new policy directions outlined by the Schmidt Commission, even though the 2000-2004 Master Plan has not yet received Regents’ approval.
While the Master Plan claims to be a plan for "institutional renewal" and that implementation of its recommendations would lead to an institution "based on high standards and accountability," policies implemented thus far more reflect the agenda of the Schmidt Commission than sound educational judgment and standards or accountability.
• Admissions policies for Fall 2000 are a pastiche of complicated rules, which leads to confusion among students and the public. Private colleges and universities recognize this and actively recruit CUNY students.
• Students are shifted around in the admissions process in an attempt to show that present policies do not affect minority enrollment at senior colleges.
Because the 2000-2004 Master Plan is built around a number of key themes, which recur throughout the document and inform the initiatives entitled "Vision for the Future," we shall first, in the pages that follow, discuss the philosophy underlying the Plan. We shall then, in a systematic fashion, highlight the provisions of the Plan, which, if carried out, will have a negative impact on CUNY and its ability to serve all New Yorkers. We then shall briefly review the initiatives contained in the Master Plan that we would welcome if adequate funding becomes available. We will conclude by making a recommendation to the Board of Regents that the Master Plan Proposal be referred back to the CUNY Trustees for further study and revision.
2. PHILOSOPHY OF THE MASTER PLAN
While, as has been observed, the Master Plan is a patchwork document that does not present a coherent and integrated set of proposals, the philosophy underlying the document is clearly stated in the Preamble, (pp. 1-25). This philosophy is drawn from seven key recommendations of the Schmidt Report, to which was added, at the May 26, 2000 meeting of the Board of Trustees, an eighth stipulation concerning curriculum.
The key recommendations of the Master Plan are as follows:
a) "A university system that includes first-rate graduate and professional programs and
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highly selective colleges." (p. 2)
While The Friends of CUNY believe that the University should have first-rate graduate and professional programs, as indeed it has, we adamantly oppose the creation of highly selective colleges. Difference between colleges based on programmatic and geographic considerations now exist and should continue to exist; however, the tiering of colleges will inevitably lead to the favoring of some and neglect of others. It is a fantasy to believe CUNY can compete with residential institutions for highly qualified students who want to go away to college and who have the means or who are offered scholarships to do so. CUNY must serve, to the best of its ability, its natural pool of students — City students of limited means residing at home.
b) "The University [should] organize itself around clear and objective standards" (p. 3)
"Clear and objective standards" have been equated by the current CUNY Board and administration with standardized tests. Success on standardized tests has been shown time and time again to correlate with family income, and such tests have limited predictive ability The Friends of CUNY oppose the over-reliance on standardized tests as a threat to access to the University.
c) "CUNY [should] replace its student assessment program with nationally-normed placement and exit instruments, and senior colleges admit only those students who are prepared to succeed in college-level work." (p. 3)
By placing an iron curtain between pre-college work and "college-level work," which can only be pierced by passing a standardized test, CUNY is not only out of step with the findings of current pedagogical research and the almost universal practice of American public higher education, it is endangering the ability of thousands of New York City students to pursue a college education.
d) "Congruence ... between the K-12 curriculum and the demands of college-level study." (p. 4)
The Friends of CUNY strongly support efforts of the University to work with public schools to ensure that high school graduates are fully prepared for college. The Friends recognize, however, that this is a long-term effort and one which, if it is to be successful, will demand a significant allocation of new resources.
e) "Strengthen the quality and consistency of the teacher education programs." (p. 4)
As the major source of teachers for the New York City public schools, CUNY should do all in its power to provide the best training possible to students seeking to enter the teaching profession. However, unless serious efforts are made by public authorities to make teaching in New York City a more attractive career, highly qualified students are unlikely to choose it.
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f) "Rethink system governance." (p. 5)
The restructuring of the University currently in progress is leading to a centralization of decision-making and curtailment of presidential authority and responsibility, which The Friends of CUNY opposes. CUNY has prospered in the past because it has contained strong, independent colleges, which have attracted capable leaders. The central administration has neither the staff nor the knowledge of local conditions to superintend effectively the operations of each college. Indeed, this seems inconsistent with the intention expressed in the Master Plan to focus on, among other things, ‘regenerating the strengths of its colleges and its faculty.’ (p. ii)
g) "University-wide fiscal management and accountability and performance-based budgeting." (p. 5)
Performance-based budgeting may be an attractive concept, but performance measures must be carefully specified. Tying allocation of resources to success on standardized examinations, for example, or to graduation rates, rather than to measures of "value added," could severely damage those senior colleges, which primarily serve disadvantaged students and would impact heavily on all community colleges. Until an equitable system of performance measures which takes account of the unique characteristics and the population served all colleges is agreed on, The Friends of CUNY oppose performance-based budgeting.
h) Core Curriculum (pp. 6-7)
State Education regulations specify minimum liberal arts and sciences credit numbers for each undergraduate degree program. It is the responsibility of the faculty of each college to decide which liberal arts and sciences courses make sense for the degree programs it offers and for the college as a whole. All degree programs require approval by the State Education Department. The Friends of CUNY oppose any attempt by the Board of Trustees to mandate University-wide distributional requirements or a University-wide core curriculum.
3. ACCESS
The Friends of CUNY believe that the University, if it is to be faithful to its historic mission, must continue to provide the broadest possible access to CUNY colleges for all the people of New York. We view the over-reliance on standardized tests for admission and at key points in students’ academic career as constituting a serious threat to access to the University, excluding students without fair consideration of their potential to succeed or their past successes — even successes within CUNY.
Addressing access, the current Master Plan proposal calls for "more meaningful educational opportunities at institutions of public higher education . . . the widest range of students, including, importantly, those who are among the most highly qualified as well as those who are inadequately prepared for college.... The University’s leadership has determined to focus on a
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wider range of students. . . . introducing more rigorous standards for admission." (p. ii) Unfortunately, the use of standardized tests in an effort to identify "the most highly qualified," is likely to disadvantage the poor, immigrants and minorities. Research has repeatedly shown that scores on both the SAT and the ACT correlate highly with parental education and income.
It is incumbent on the University to ensure the quality, appropriateness and use of assessments that determine initial placement, progress and transfer of students within CUNY. According to the best practices recommended by professional organizations and testing experts throughout the country, multiple measures should be used in such high stakes assessment. In the proposed Master Plan, the use of multiple measures is flawed or missing at the key points of access.
Admissions — Initial Placement in Baccalaureate Programs
Since the Trustees intend, through the implementation of Master Plan, to "sharpen the mission" of each college, an admissions process that provides the "broadest possible access" would guarantee a student’s entrance to one of 17 colleges, and, at the same time, it would assess a student’s potential for success in the college he or she enters.
Effective September 2000, admission of recent graduates from domestic high schools to baccalaureate programs will be determined by an index that incorporates "college admissions average; combined SAT or ACT score; number of academic courses completed in high school, high school English average, number of Math units and high school math average" (p. 96). It would seem, therefore, that for these recent graduates, ‘multiple measures" were to be used in the initial admissions process. Nonetheless, the following problems remain:
• Because of CUNY’s policy of not providing remediation at the four-year colleges, admission is actually determined not by multiple measures but by one measure: a student’s demonstration that he/she is not in need of remediation. A student may show this absence of a need for remediation by obtaining particular scores on the SAT or ACT or by obtaining particular scores on the Regents. But this is very different from evaluating "readiness for college level work" by considering a variety of a student’s abilities.
• Despite our general support for multiple measures, we are concerned that some elements of the CUNY index will work against the very students CUNY is supposed to serve. At CUNY, for example, SAT scores only modestly predict what a high school senior’s grade-point average will be in the first semester of college (.20).
• The admissions index is too narrow. Information about a student’s motivation and ability to learn is also to be found in letters of recommendation, an applicant’s statement, and from interviews. These are elements used by admissions committees in the most selective colleges throughout the country but missing from the CUNY senior college indices.
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• Campus admissions committees, which could develop policies that encourage access, are hampered by the requirement that students complete remedial work before entering a four-year college. These committees, which include faculty, will "consider the applications of students who do not meet the established admissions criteria but who nevertheless demonstrate the potential to succeed at a CUNY senior college." They will also select students who are not recent graduates of domestic high schools. We view the establishment of these committees as a positive step. However, if a student fails to meet the "no remediation necessary" standard, a college admissions committee can only admit a student conditionally until he or she demonstrates "college readiness."
• The "Prelude to Success" Program is not fulfilling its goals. The "Prelude to Success" Program is the program whereby students conditionally admitted to a senior college who could not pass one or more of the skills placement tests are enrolled in a community college and taught on the senior college campus by community college faculty. Dealing with this sort of academic limbo has proved frustrating and discouraging for students, many of whom choose private colleges where they can receive the supplemental instruction they require without complication. Were the "Prelude to Success" Program to form an integral part of the senior college curriculum, with courses taught by senior college faculty, it would undoubtedly be more attractive to students.
Exit from Remediation — One Test Determines an Academic Future
• The ACT test is being instituted without assurance of its validity for CUNY students or appropriate faculty development as the sole criterion for exit from remediation in reading, writing and ESL. Until now, at some colleges, along with Writing Assessment Test (WAT) scores, measures such as portfolio assessment were developed to provide a comprehensive picture of a student’s writing ability. And, it should be noted, students were able to take certain academic courses while they worked on their skills, a practice supported by current research in language development.
• The validity of the ACT test as an exit from remediation has not been established for CUNY students, and no evidence has been produced to show that students who pass that ACT test are more likely to succeed in college than those who do not. It is being instituted without giving time to those who teach ESL and remedial courses to familiarize themselves with the tests and to revise their curricula accordingly,
• Beginning Fall 2000, the new policy will lock students out of all academic courses until they pass the tests. Students who cannot take academic courses are ineligible for tuition assistance (TAP). Without financial aid, many students will not be able to enroll at CUNY. At the very least, students should not be barred from beginning regular academic courses without evidence that those who pass the new ACT test are more successful than students who do not.
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Community College Graduation and Certification for Upper Division Work
In the interest of "developing clear performance standards and accountability measures at all levels," CUNY is introducing a proficiency exam as certification for the upper division.
• Although the proficiency test reflects the kinds of work students do in an English class, it is only one measure of their writing and reading abilities. The exam is scheduled to be administered to 4000 to 5000 non-CUNY transfers this fall without penalty and then put into place in Spring 2001.
• The proficiency test is likely to penalize those for whom English is a second language as have the WAT and the Reading Assessment Test (RAT). According to a study by the Language Forum and the CUNY ESL Council, many students fail those tests, yet they are successful, even highly successful, in their academic courses.
• It makes little pedagogical sense to use a single test to determine students’ ability for upper division work, when their academic records after sixty credits will clearly demonstrate their competence in a variety of contexts. Problems with writing, which are scarcely limited to CUNY students, should be addressed by creating conditions within all regular academic classes that encourage frequent written work and good writing. We support the comprehensive Writing Across the Curriculum Program proposed in the Master Plan, faculty development in the teaching of writing and class sizes that makes it reasonable to assign more writing.
• The imposition of a writing proficiency exam for graduation as a condition for graduation at the associate level creates an indefensible hurdle for students who against all odds have fulfilled all other requirements, including English. Over half come from households with an annual income of $20,000 or less, three-fifths attend school part-time at some point in their college careers and are increasingly compelled to stop out for one or two terms before graduating. Half of them work full or part-time while attending college. The writing proficiency required for graduates of many associate programs to succeed in the occupations they have prepared themselves for may be quite different from the kinds of writing proficiency required in the upper division of a baccalaureate program.
Restricting Access
The cumulative effect of the admissions and testing policies spelled out in the 2000-2004 Master Plan will he to restrict access and discourage student attendance at CUNY. The apparent substantial shortfall in community college enrollment this fall is a first indication of what will inevitably follow. While certain elements of the new admissions policies — particularly the creation of campus admissions committees at the senior colleges — show promise, they are
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negated by the determination to admit to the senior colleges only those students who require no special academic support.
Community colleges ought to be a point of access for all students with a high school diploma or its equivalent. Access is denied, however, when students cannot take academic courses — and are therefore ineligible for financial aid — until they have passed a single test.
The restriction of access through the use of standardized tests and other means is likely to impact heavily on the poor and on minorities, as has been shown. The 2000-2004 Master Plan pays scant attention to the question of diversity among the student body and makes no provision for its maintenance — this despite the fact that the State Education Law (Section 6201.3) defines CUNY’s purpose as academic excellence and "equal opportunity for students, faculty, and staff from all ethnic and social groups and both sexes."
4. THE UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE
Very nearly 80% of CUNY’s students are undergraduates, the vast majority of them studying courses in the liberal arts and sciences. The Master Plan pays very little attention to traditional undergraduate education and contains a number of provisions which will, if implemented, impact negatively on the undergraduate experience of the great majority of CUNY students.
The Flagship Environment
The Master Plan proposes, as a "Vision for the Future," the establishment of a "flagship environment" that will foster national prominence in targeted undergraduate liberal arts and sciences programs, particularly in areas where high academic quality allows CUNY to play a unique role among institutions." (p. 25)
• Whether these programs are targeted because of their extant high academic quality or because of their potential for high academic quality is unclear. But the programs cited in the Master Plan, with few exceptions, are new ones that have strong potential for licensing and selling intellectual property, such as photonics, new media and structural biology.
• The relationship of such research-oriented programs to undergraduate education is tenuous at best, and it is greatly to be feared that resources will be diverted from core undergraduate programs to finance "flagship programs."
• While elaborate plans are presented for photonics, which is basically a research program, no plans are presented for two areas designated as "flagship programs:" Computer science, where there is substantial unfulfilled undergraduate demand, and foreign languages, which could be of enormous importance to the University’s polyglot student body with properly structured programs.
• It is unclear how programs which are primarily oriented toward research, such as photonics and structural biology, could operate across campuses, and colleges which are not the primary locus of such programs might find themselves with faculty hired in these programs whom the colleges can otherwise not use.
• The relationship between "flagship environment" "flagship programs," and ‘flagship campuses," is not spelled out, nor is the relationship between the "flagship environment" and the "highly selective colleges" envisaged in the proposed admissions policies. A concentration of flagship programs at one or two campuses would inevitably lead to the creation of a "flagship campus" and the tiering of colleges to the impoverishment of the CUNY system as a whole. Each CUNY college has its own purpose and mission, and each serves a particular programmatic and/or geographic constituency. The creation of flagship campuses will break the ties between colleges and their historic constituencies and lead, in the case of those not perceived as flagship, to a downgrading of the students and the degrees they earn.
Faculty Renewal
The Master Plan proposal rightly recognizes that faculty renewal is one of the most serious problems facing CUNY and speaks of a five-year initiative to recruit highly qualified full-time faculty. The objective is to steadily increase the full-time/part-time faculty ratio over the next five years with an eventual goal of 70/30 of full-time to part-time faculty. While The Friends of CUNY view this as a laudable goal, we are most concerned that it be accomplished in such a fashion as to serve the needs of the entire University.
• The only plan cited for this replenishment is tied to "the creation of a flagship environment" with "cluster hiring" in "programmatic areas of importance." "Cluster areas are selected for their projected and emerging importance to society and the economy, their relevance to educational need, and their intellectual breadth and depth as appropriate for a major academic institution." (pp. 26-27) While it is not made explicit, it would seem "cluster areas" are coterminous with "flagship programs."
• The University’s need for new faculty is great in all areas but it is greatest in core liberal arts and sciences disciplines such as English, social sciences, and mathematics, where the vast majority of undergraduate courses are taught by adjuncts. A faculty hiring initiative targeted at flagship programs such as photonics and structural biology would do little to diminish reliance on adjunct faculty in the University as a whole.
• In the face of continued reliance on adjunct faculty in some programs, it is essential that adjuncts who now teach the majority of courses be involved in faculty development. Even when the target of 30 % adjuncts is reached, faculty development must include them.
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The Honors College
The 2000-2004 Master Plan proposes an Honors College to be "embedded" in the flagship environment but does not spell out how this is to be done in such an environment. The Honors College would be the University’s "site," so to speak, for educating, advising, and mentoring academically talented students from the honors programs of a small number of CUNY colleges in ways to enhance these students’ already notable talents. That purpose, however, is not necessarily in line with the stated aims of the flagship environment, and it could be argued that the aims and goals of each are adversarial to one another. This latter point is especially significant in light of the fact that the Honors College is to admit incoming freshmen.
Honors colleges are not generally established for students whose course of study is geared toward the acquisition of professional or technical knowledge. Rather, they are established for students whose course of study is toward a liberal education.
In addition to this paradox, the concept of a CUNY-wide Honors College raises numerous questions:
• The Honors College would seem to be an attempt to recruit talented students who are currently going elsewhere. As has been previously mentioned, CUNY stands little chance of recruiting students who want a residential experience and who either have the means or are given scholarships to attend residential colleges
• The designation of "honors student" will thus be assigned to students prior to their academic accomplishments at a CUNY college. Currently, CUNY students characterized as "honors students" in their respective honors programs achieve this designation on the basis of their present academic accomplishments in a CUNY college.
• It has not been unusual at CUNY for currently designated honors students to undergo some form of remediation in the early part of their education and move onto prestigious doctoral programs and graduate fellowships. The irony of all this is that CUNY proposes to use scarce resources to engage in recruitment battles for academically talented students with residential universities and colleges whose environment requires "diversity" enrichment, whereas CUNY contains the most diverse student population in United States higher education. Under past policy, the University had been able to develop academically talented students of color within its ranks without recruiting in advance for them.
• Precisely what the CUNY-wide nature of the Honors College would be is not spelled out in the Master Plan, which speaks in general terms of "special opportunities to experience the talent and expertise that exist across the campuses," as well as CUNY’s "most sophisticated instrumentation and facilities.," and a "cultural passport" for those students "to experience the cultural institutions of New York City." How these students will relate
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to existing colleges within the University is problematic.
• If the University really wants to encourage students to succeed academically at the highest levels and take full advantage of the cultural institutions of New York City, it could provide scholarships for gifted students currently enrolled, of which there are a great many, that would relieve them of the burden of having to work excessively at paid employment in order to finance their studies.
The Community Colleges
CUNY community colleges enroll a third of the University’s undergraduate students. They are the point of access for large numbers of working class and minority students who have not received a quality high school education, for large numbers of immigrant students, and for adults seeking a better life. Yet the only attention they receive in the 2000-2004 Master Plan — apart from passing mention of narrowly constructed AS or AAS degree programs which fit the priorities of business and technology — is as service institutions to the senior colleges, meeting the needs of under-prepared students.
While CUNY community colleges have historically been committed to Open Admissions and developmental education, they are also multi-faceted institutions providing career education in a broad spectrum of fields, liberal arts education, transfer preparation and community outreach. In the past, these diverse missions have been viewed as complementary. Together they have enabled community colleges to address students’ varied aspirations, academic needs and learning styles. And they have enabled non-traditional students to explore knowledge and alternative paths to personal and professional development.
The current emphasis on the community colleges’ increased role in educating under prepared students, combined with years of defunding, a precipitous decline in the number of full-time faculty and class sizes far larger than they should, is rapidly leading to a decline of public confidence in the institutions, which were once considered among the best in the nation.
The Friends of CUNY call upon the Board of Trustees to address the very real needs of the community colleges by formulating a plan for their enhancement that will:
• Recognize and support their multifaceted missions.
• Allocate sufficient numbers of full-time faculty to them so as to ensure the high quality education of all students.
• Since so many adjuncts currently teach in community colleges, fund faculty development programs that involve full-time and part-time faculty.
• Reduce class size.
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Retention
Retention of students throughout their college careers is one of the most complex and difficult problems facing CUNY. The only mention it receives the 2000-2004 Master Plan proposal is in the heading on p. 94. We call on the Board of Trustees to formulate a comprehensive plan to address the issue of student retention.
5. SHARED GOVERNANCE
Many of the problems of the Master Plan could have been avoided had CUNY’s Board of Trustees engaged CUNY’s faculty in good faith consultation. Shared governance is a time-honored practice in higher education for shaping academic policy. Unfortunately, the 2000-2004 Master Plan proposal is the sole creation of the CUNY administration and Board of Trustees and does not benefit from the professional judgment of CUNY’ s faculty as a whole.
The dissemination of the final version of the 114-page document (without attachments) took place at the close of the academic year, only two weeks prior to adoption by the Board. Furthermore, no public meetings were held with the duly elected representative body of CUNY faculty, the University Faculty Senate (UFS), on the academic and curricular merits of any version of the Master Plan, despite the fact that By-laws 8.6 and 8.14 of the Board of Trustees of CUNY affirms the centrality of faculty and their elective representatives in academic and instructional matters.
Comprehensive representation of the liberal arts, the Master Plan states, can take the form of either a core curriculum or a distribution requirement. But CUNY faculties’ review of their colleges’ general education requirements, says the Master Plan, offers the occasion for revamping those requirements along the lines of core curricula alone, such that the Master Plan can assert that the Chancellor shall initiate in 2000-01 "movement toward establishing core curricula throughout the University." (p. 7)
If strong, comprehensive requirements in the liberal arts can take the form of either a "core" or a "distribution," what reasons have been given to prefer a "core" to "distribution"? If college faculties are reviewing their general education requirements, what reasons have been given that their reviews should lead them to revamp those requirements along the lines of a "core" rather than "distribution"? If the Chancellor is initiating movement toward the establishment of "cores" throughout CUNY, what reasons serve as the impetus for this initiative rather than one toward "distribution"?
The answers to these questions are simple. No reasons have been given. The faculty bodies recognized and designated to give reasons, one way or the other, on curricular matters have not been consulted and, thus, have not been able to vet those aspects of the Master Plan prior to its adoption by the CUNY Board of Trustees and to its submission to the New York State Board of
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Regents. Hence the impression is left in the Master Plan that the Chancellor will initiate a major curricular effort throughout CUNY without the considered opinions of duly elected faculty and governance bodies.
Only the faculty has the professional competence to design curriculum. Insisting on faculty governance is not a matter of claiming territory. Within CUNY each college faculty has designed general education requirements that are appropriate to the degree programs offered by that college. Only the faculty of the University can decide whether University-wide distributional requirements or a University-wide core curriculum is desirable or, given the enormous variety of associate and baccalaureate degree problems, even possible. Only the faculty can decide whether a University-wide requirement in American history is appropriate. If the Board and the Chancellor begin mandating curriculum, CUNY’s reputation as an institution of serious intellectual inquiry and the value of its degrees will soon begin to suffer.
6. FINANCIAL PLAN
It is far from clear that the financial plan presented in the 2000-2004 Master Plan document is adequate to achieve the goals proposed.
• The Master Plan calls for an additional $141.7 million in programmatic support over the next four years. In addition it projects extremely low cost increases of 1 .5% annually for inflation and other mandatory increases, totaling $93.7 million. A budget level from public funds of $1.6 billion is projected for FY2004, an increase of $235.4 million over the current budget and an average growth rate of 4.4%.
• To supplement tax-levy funds the University plans to raise $20 million from other sources to support the Expanding Technology in Teaching and the CUNY-wide Economic Development Initiatives.
The modest price tag attached to the Master Plan is largely illusory:
• In addition to an unrealistically low inflation figure, the budget projection does not include any collective bargaining settlement. This is especially problematic because of the intention to increase full-time faculty lines. A realistic inflation figure and even a standstill contract would be likely to at least double the projected budgetary growth rate.
• While the Board may hope to raise money from non-tax levy sources in support of University-wide initiatives, its track record in this area, up to now, has been virtually nil. If funds are not raised from non-tax levy sources, will the designated initiatives be curtailed or abandoned?
• The Master Plan provides for the hiring of 600 new faculty at a cost of $33.8 million (p.
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113), an average of $63,000 per line. This is an extremely low figure in many of the areas designated for Flagship Environment. In the photonics project, for example, mention is of hiring "five or six renowned scholars" (p. 28). Here we would be talking about $150,000 per line, at least.
• No figures are given for costs associated with changes in admissions, assessment, recruitment and retention. The administrative costs of the introduction of standardized tests and the proficiency examination, the great expansion in what College testing offices are required to do, the high costs of the Prelude to Success program, etc., are nowhere accounted for. The elaborate recruitment plan outlined (pp. 100-107) will require that additional resources be allocated to the Office of Admissions Services and college admissions offices.
• Many of the faculty costs for initiatives in the Master Plan are hidden. The Master Plan consistently makes the point, and The Friends of CUNY would agree, that one of the University’s greatest need is for additional full-time faculty. Yet a number of the initiatives would take full-time faculty out of the University classroom, to be replaced, presumably by adjuncts. Prime among these is College Now and other forms of collaboration with the public schools. But also to be cited are the various faculty development proposals and writing across the curriculum programs where faculty who participate are often compensated by release time.
• No dollar amount is attached to the Performance-Driven Executive Compensation Plan. For the coming year, increases of over $5.8 million were awarded without a corresponding increase in the University’s budget.
• No cost projection is made for improvements in the University’s Management Information System. While such improvements are highly desirable and may indeed result in future savings, the initial investment will be considerable.
The Board makes the statement that it will ask the City and the State for in principle agreement with the Master Plan and for renewed support (p. 13). Unfortunately, the present Board has thus far not been successful in making a case to the public authorities for additional resources.
Given the scale of the Master Plan initiatives and the uncertain prospect of tax-levy funding, it would advisable to have well-defined priorities. Any such prioritization is totally absent from the current Master Plan Document. This being so, it is greatly to be feared that either money will be diverted from core undergraduate academic programs, which serve the vast majority of CUNY students, to fund Master Plan initiatives, or tuition will once again be raised, thus further restricting access to CUNY.
7. PROPOSALS WORTHY OF SUPPORT
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There are a number of proposals that The Friends of CUNY would support to the extent that adequate funding is available for their implementation. Among these are:
• Improving Teacher Education. CUNY trains the majority of teachers in the New York City public schools, and the assurance of high quality teacher education must be considered part of the University’s core mission.
• Expanding the Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning. CUNY is far behind national norms in the use of technology in teaching and learning. In order to remain a first class institution of higher education, CUNY must catch up.
• College Now and Other Collaborative Programs. As stated in the Master Plan, the key to assuring that students are fully prepared for College lies in collaboration with the public schools, and we fully support such collaboration. Nonetheless, the ambitious plans proposed will require significant additional funding.
• Student Support Services. Proposals for Student Support Services, including tutoring and supplemental instruction as well as advising and counseling, specifically acknowledge the University’s need to offer a variety of programs to serve a student body, diverse in academic preparation, emotional needs, age, immigration status, job and family responsibilities.
• Writing Across the Curriculum. The comprehensive WAC program outlined in the Master Plan offers a more effective way of addressing students’ difficulties with writing than reliance on over-crowded English composition classes and standardized tests.
• Articulation and Transfer. We support the CUNY Transfer Information and Program Planning System (TIPPS), which will make information concerning transfer readily available to students and their advisors. We also support articulation agreements among colleges. We oppose, however, policies leading to the automatic transfer of credit, mandated by the Board of Trustees, that have not received the approval of the faculties concerned.
• CUNY-wide Economic Initiative. The economic development initiative taking advantage of the State’s "Jobs 2000" programs offers attractive possibilities for CUNY graduates as well as important potential contributions to the New York City economy. The University plans to raise significant outside funds to support this initiative. Care must be taken not to strain existing University resources, which are already stretched to the limit.
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CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Among the most glaring deficiencies of the 2000-2004 Master Plan is the lack of any mechanism for assessment of whether or not goals are being attained. Goals are proposed, but no framework for their implementation within the larger context of University operations is given. No comment is offered on the enrollment projections, given in the appendices, and no indication made of how they were derived nor how they will be met. From what few figures are now available, the projections for Fall 2000 appear to be substantially inaccurate.
In light of this and in light of the issues raised concerning access and resources, The Friends of CUNY strongly recommend that the Board of Regents return the Master Plan to the CUNY Board of Trustees for further study and revision with the expectation that the Board submit a revised Master Plan that safeguards diversity, that identifies sufficient funding for any new initiatives and that provides a means of evaluating progress toward the accomplishment of goals. The 2000-2004 Master Plan proposal, as it now stands, is a fatally flawed document that ill serves the needs of CUNY students and the interests of New York City.
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