"CUNY: An Institution Adrift"

July, 1999

University Faculty Senate

The City University of New York

Response to the Report of The Mayor’s Task Force, "CUNY: An Institution Adrift"

Executive Summary   1

Introduction   3

CUNY’s Budget and Fiscal Realities   4

Standards at CUNY    7

Remediation at CUNY   9

Governance and "System Architecture" at CUNY  13

Conclusion   15

The Executive Committee, The CUNY Faculty Senate

Bernard Sohmer, Chair (Trustee, CUNY Board) (The City College)

Cecelia McCall, Vice Chair (Baruch College)

Susan O’Malley, Secretary (Kingsborough Community College)

Karen Kaplowitz, Treasurer (John Jay College of Criminal Justice)

Members at Large:

Lenore Beaky (LaGuardia Community College)

Martha Bell (Brooklyn College)

Anne Friedman (Borough of Manhattan Community College)

Fred Greenbaum (Queensborough Community College)

Kenneth Sherrill (Hunter College)

Sandi Cooper, Ex Officio (The College of Staten Island)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Report of the Mayor’s Task Force, "CUNY: An Institution Adrift," is seriously flawed and requires careful analysis. The recommendations of the Mayor’s Advisory Task Force (the "Schmidt Commission") would, we believe, do the following: exclude thousands of deserving New Yorkers from access to CUNY including students from all ethnic, racial and gender groupings but disproportionately African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American; create a ghetto-like separation between levels of colleges under an authoritarian central administration; exclude any exercise of professional intellectual judgment in favor of performance standards that are quantifiable, "objective," and computerized; devastate professional faculty responsibilities for governance as well as rights of tenure and free inquiry; end full access in the senior and community colleges.

The Task Force’s recommendations are especially distressing given the following correct assertions and findings by the Task Force, its accountants, and its consultants: the Task Force Report proclaims that "CUNY’s historic mission--to provide broad access to a range of higher education opportunities of quality suited to New York City’s diverse population and to the City’s needs--will be more important in the 21^st century than ever before" (p. 5). The Report goes on to point out that "income disparity in New York City is greater and growing much more rapidly than in the nation as a whole" (p. 17), and that "income disparity in New York City is more and more dramatically tied to education." The Report "supports CUNY’s continuance as a discrete and independent public university system focused on New York City’s special needs and opportunities" (p. 17). The Task Force sees remediation as "appropriate and valuable" for CUNY (p. 21).

The "Review of CUNY’s Revenues and Expenditures," prepared for the Task Force by PricewaterhouseCoopers, reveals that from 1980 to 1997, New York State funding for CUNY decreased by a shocking 40% in constant dollars, and New York City funding decreased an astonishing 90%. Since 1976, the proportion of classes taught by full-time faculty to those taught by part-time faculty has shifted, the Task Force finds, from 60%–40% to 40%–60%. A RAND Institute appendix, "The Governance of the City University of New York: A System at Odds with Itself" by Brian Gill, finds the University micromanaged by a politicized Board of Trustees.

Yet few of these critically important findings are reflected in the Task Force Report’s overall rhetoric and proposals.

We reject the destructive ideas of the Mayor’s Advisory Task Force, while supporting its positive suggestions. We therefore recommend:

* the restoration and preservation of full access to CUNY’s senior and community colleges;

* the appropriation of sufficient public funds for CUNY’s senior and community colleges;

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* the preservation of the faculty’s traditional responsibility for academic governance, academic freedom, and tenure;

* the restoration of the Supplemental Tuition Assistance Program (STAP) for students in remediation;

* the restoration of Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) for part-time students;

* the establishment of a commission of CUNY presidents, staff, faculty and outside higher education experts to consider new budget allocation models for CUNY;

* the rejection of high-stakes testing using a single instrument such as the SAT, in adherence to nationally-accepted practices as well as College Board principles;

* the continuation and expansion of carefully-monitored remediation in the senior colleges, including the opportunity of students to take appropriate college-level courses paired with remedial and developmental courses;

* the continuation of remediation in the community colleges;

* the rejection of outsourcing, vouchers or privatization of CUNY instructional activities, including remediation;

* the establishment of an independent and representative blue-ribbon panel to propose and screen candidates for appointment to the Board of Trustees, candidates who would be financially and politically independent of the Governor and Mayor;

* the restoration and maintenance of widely-accepted professional standards in the recruitment and selection of presidential and senior management appointees.

We agree with the Task Force’s analysis of CUNY’s current Board of Trustees as "dysfunctional" and with its recommendation for an independent selection panel. We also agree:

* that multi-year planning and budgeting, already proposed by CUNY should be implemented;

* that processes of data collection should be improved;

* that students’ financial aid should not be eaten up by remediation;

* finally, that there should be closer collaboration between CUNY and the Board of Education.

In the detailed analysis which follows, we examine CUNY’s budget and fiscal realities, standards and remediation, and issues of governance and "system architecture."

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INTRODUCTION

The objectivity of the Mayor’s Advisory Task Force on CUNY and the integrity of its investigation were compromised from the beginning. The Task Force was charged by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on May 6, 1998, in Executive Order 41, an order which asserted "the continuing and long-standing decline in the educational standards at the City University." The Task Force was directed to examine "the uses of City funding by CUNY, the effects of open admissions and remedial education on CUNY and on CUNY’s capacity to provide college level courses and curricula of high quality to its students," as well as "the best means of arranging for third-parties to provide remediation services to ensure that prospective CUNY students can perform college level work prior to their admission to CUNY." The Task Force was not asked to test the validity of these propositions. Thus, the charge and its accompanying message assumed that CUNY is deteriorating, that its standards are declining, that Open Admissions and remediation have been harmful to CUNY, that third parties should provide remediation to CUNY students, and that open admissions should be eliminated.

We believe members of the Mayor’s Task Force were chosen as those most likely to agree with the assumptions of the Mayor’s charge. The Task Force was chaired by Benno C. Schmidt, Jr., president of the Edison Project, which operates privatized, for-profit (formerly public) elementary and secondary schools. Herman Badillo, then the Vice-Chairman and now the Chair of the CUNY Board of Trustees, is the Mayor’s special education advisor and a long-time opponent of open admissions. Heather MacDonald, Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has a long record of attacking CUNY. Richard T. Roberts is the Mayor’s Commissioner for the New York City Department of Housing, Preservation and Development. Richard Schwartz, as the Mayor’s adviser on welfare reform, helped institute policies which denied CUNY students who were receiving welfare the right to perform their workfare at or near their colleges. Jacqueline V. Brady is a vice-president of an investment firm. Manfred Ohrenstein is a former New York State Senator. With the exception of its chair, not one of the Task Force members has had any professional experience with universities or with teaching.

Mr. Schmidt asked the RAND Institute, through its independent subsidiary, the Council for Aid to Higher Education, to conduct part of the study. Roger Benjamin, who headed this part of the inquiry, in 1997 authored The Fiscal Crisis of Higher Education, a study which advocates the reorganization of universities to make them more accountable, outcome-oriented, subject to rigid mission differentiation, and amenable to nonacademic, authoritarian styles of leadership. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was hired to study budgetary and fiscal matters. The Task Force’s Director of Research, Sally Renfro, is a current Mayoral appointee in the Department of Employment; by her own admission, she has had no experience whatsoever in higher education.

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Certainly, CUNY is not immune from review and recommendations for improvement. But traditionally, external studies such as the Wessell Commission (1976-77) have been conducted by nonpartisan, broadly-based and independent bodies served by professional staffs. Furthermore, colleges and their programs are subject to periodic external reviews by any number of professional accrediting agencies (Middle States, ABET, NCATE, for example). In addition, all CUNY colleges and departments participate in academic program review as mandated by the Board of Trustees in 1993. External and internal review and assessment are nothing new to universities.

But this politically-appointed and ideologically-driven Task Force has seen fit to ignore these independent reviews, as well as all countervailing evidence, preferring to omit all of CUNY’s triumphs in order to fabricate a litany of failure. At the same time, the Task Force also ignores the crucial fact that CUNY has suffered from more than two decades of State and City under funding.

CUNY’S BUDGET AND FISCAL REALITIES

A careful examination of the Task Force Report in tandem with the appendices by RAND and PricewaterhouseCoopers reveals that much valuable information never made it into the final Task Force Report. The resulting Report is therefore seriously flawed and misleading in its descriptions of expenditures for remediation and other University costs, as well as in its proposals for vouchers and tiering. And neither the Report nor any of the appendices place CUNY’s funding in a truly national context. Nor is there a recognition that levels of funding are related to student accomplishment and have educational consequences.

Government Defunding of CUNY

As documented in the RAND and PricewaterhouseCoopers reports, CUNY students pay tuition at a higher-than-average national rate for public institutions. The PricewaterhouseCoopers reports document that tuition at CUNY has increased swiftly and dramatically and now accounts for a very large percentage of CUNY’s operating budget because of drastic decreases in State and City funding. RAND and PricewaterhouseCoopers pull no punches when it comes to acknowledging the enormous decline in CUNY funding: "Since 1980, New York State’s constant dollar appropriations have decreased by 40% and the proportion of CUNY’s budget it funds has decreased by 11%" (PwC III, "Review of CUNY’s Revenues and Expenditures," p. 49). The PwC report continues, "The City’s appropriations for CUNY have taken an even more dramatic turn downward, comprising 19% of that budget in 1980 and 6% in 1997" (p. 51).

To partially offset the governmental defunding of CUNY, tuition was increased by an astonishing 93% between 1988 and 1997. As a result, "CUNY students are paying tuition higher than the national average at public institutions" (RAND, CUNY Statistical Profile: Vol. I, p. 37). And yet, despite this increase, CUNY’s unrestricted funds (tuition and City and State funding) decreased by 11% during this period (RAND, CUNY Statistical Profile: Vol. I,  pp. 4 - 5).

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But neither the Report nor the appendices supply a national context for this governmental defunding. Nowhere is it acknowledged that New York State is the only state that funds its colleges and universities less today than it did in 1988! And, indeed, nationally appropriations for higher education have increased by 44% over the last 10 years. Only New York State reduced appropriations during this same period. As a result, New York State now ranks 4^th from the bottom among the 50 states in operating expense support for every thousand dollars of personal income. Furthermore, the Task Force proposal to eliminate remediation from all degree programs, including associate degree programs, would eliminate CUNY’s eligibility for the supplemental funding which it receives from the State as an Open Admissions institution, further exacerbating its defunding. And finally, the proposed voucher program would shift even more funds from CUNY to private third-party providers.

As the result of this severe State and City underfunding, CUNY’s expenditures per FTE (full-time equivalent) student "fall far below national spending levels" (PwC III, p. 78). Indeed, as the PwC report shows, the national expenditure level per FTE student at the senior colleges is $13,696 but the CUNY senior college average expenditure is $9,754 (excluding CCNY because of its special programs such as Sophie Davis Medical Program). The community college picture is somewhat different: the national average for expenditures is $6,682 whereas the average for the CUNY community colleges is $7,079. However, tuition at CUNY is the highest among public community colleges. The annual State Budget Act requires a "maintenance of [funding] effort" by the City: this law has hampered attempts year after year by the Mayor to drastically cut the City’s funding of the community colleges. Nevertheless, the Mayor has succeeded in evading the intention of this law to the extent that the City funds, not the required 33% of the budgets of the community colleges, but only 21%.

Financing Remediation

The Task Force Report gives the mistaken impression that a disproportionate amount of CUNY’s budget is spent on remediation. First, the Report focuses on remediation to the exclusion of all other academic programs and activities of CUNY, making it seem as if CUNY’s budget is devoted largely to this activity. Second, the Report relies on a method of calculating the budgetary expenses that distorts the true picture. To cite one typical year (1997), CUNY’s operating expenditures were $1.3 billion. Of this amount, only $30 million, that is, 2.3% of the total, was spent on basic skills (remedial) instruction, including summer immersion programs. Of the total $1.3 billion, CUNY spent $597 million on overall instruction (excluding the Graduate School, Law School and University management); so the $30 million spent on remediation was only 5% of those instructional dollars.

Yet the Task Force Report claims that CUNY spends $124 million a year, not $30 million, on remediation. How can this discrepancy be explained? First, the Task Force Report data combine ESL costs with those of basic skills, even though CUNY’s own Board of Trustees’ policy rightly distinguishes between remediation and ESL. But even so, ESL costs are a very small proportion of CUNY’s operating expenditures: in 1997, ESL accounted for only $11 million or 0.8% of CUNY’s $1.3 billion expenditures, and for only 1.8% of CUNY’s overall

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expenditures for instruction (again excluding the Graduate School, the Law School, and University management).

More important, the Task Force Report data merged not only basic skills with ESL instruction but also continuing education, which is self-supporting, with all immersion programs.

But most important, the Task Force Report data are derived by calculating a percentage of every expense of the University: electricity, security, cleaning, for example; and a percentage of the salary of every administrator from the President on down, and of every faculty member, whether that faculty member was teaching basic skills or not. This inclusion of every indirect cost is a legitimate accounting technique, but it is not a legitimate or useful way of explaining and analyzing what actually takes place at CUNY. Using their method of calculation, the Task Force Report asserts that remediation at CUNY costs not $30 million a year, the actual amount, but $124 million a year. Then the Report concludes that its grossly distorted figure is distressingly high and creates the unfounded and unfair impression that remedial instruction is a drain on CUNY’s budget.

One could calculate which number correctly depicts reality by determining how much money CUNY would save if it no longer provided remediation. CUNY would not save money; CUNY would lose money. Arthur M. Hauptman’s RAND report, "Financing Remediation at CUNY on a Performance Basis: A Proposal," confirms this and even proposes that the revenue hole created by ending the current way of providing remediation could be offset by another tuition increase (p. 13)!

What the Task Force Ignores

The Report and appendices present data from 1980 to the present. By looking at CUNY since 1974, just before tuition was imposed, a more complete and more shocking picture emerges. In 1974, CUNY had 11,268 full-time faculty with a student body of 253,000; in 1998, with a student body of 198,000, CUNY had only 5,211 full-time faculty members. So while the student body declined by 21% during this period, the number of full-time faculty declined by 64%. The percent of CUNY’s senior college revenue that is derived from tuition has increased from 0% in 1974 to 19% ten years ago to 39% this year. The percent of CUNY’s community college revenue that is derived from tuition has gone from 0% in 1974, to 22% in 1988, to 42% this year. Also omitted from the reports is an analysis of CUNY’s contribution to the economy of New York State: CUNY contributes an estimated $13 billion--ten times CUNY’s annual budget--to the State’s economy each year.

The Report’s recommendation for performance-based budget allocating fails to acknowledge that CUNY has indeed begun allocating lines this way; however, we believe that performance-based funding should measure each college’s improvement over time and not be a funding competition between the CUNY colleges: the former approach would correctly acknowledge and respond to the diversity of college missions, the differences in admissions requirements, and the historical differences of the colleges’ funding levels. We also urge that a more open and thorough study be undertaken at CUNY of the performance indicators that should

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be used. As for the Report’s recommendation that New York State adopt performance based funding of CUNY (and presumably of SUNY), we caution that those states that have adopted such an approach have had mixed results and experiences. Certainly, whatever funding formula or method the State uses, the critically important issue is that it must fund its institutions of public higher education adequately.

What is also ignored in the Report and in the appendices are two critically important funding programs that were defunded by Governor Pataki: the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) for part-time students and the Supplemental Tuition Assistance Program (STAP) for students needing up to a year of remediation. The elimination of TAP for part-time students and of STAP has had very real academic consequences for students and for the institution. We recommend that instead of vouchers for remediation, these two programs be reinstated.

CUNY’s already arcane and unresponsive budget allocation system, so described in the appendices but ignored in the Report, would simply be institutionalized by the formal tiering system proposed by the Task Force. What is needed instead of tiering is a vigorous, creative rethinking of CUNY’s budget allocation system. A group of CUNY presidents, staff, and faculty, perhaps along with higher education experts from outside CUNY, should be charged with developing a proposal for a new and rational funding model. The process should be open to public view and comment, and should take into consideration the models and experiences at higher education institutions throughout the country.

Invaluable data have been provided in the RAND and PricewaterhouseCoopers appendices. However, an honest Report would have concluded that CUNY is achieving remarkable successes, is much larger than the sum of its parts, but is shockingly underfunded, a condition that the New York State and New York City legislators and the Governor and Mayor must immediately address by properly funding CUNY.

STANDARDS AT CUNY

The Mayor has made repeated and unsubstantiated claims about the purportedly low standards and poor graduation rates at CUNY. Following his lead, the Task Force has three recommendations concerning standards: clear and objective admissions standards for all colleges, including the use of an objective test such as the SAT; clear standards of readiness for exit from remediation and entry to college-level work; clear standards of performance as a condition of graduation. These recommendations imply that CUNY has failed to safeguard the quality of its programs and degrees. They confound stringent admissions standards with strong retention and graduation standards. The Task Force also suggests that the imposition of open admissions has lowered student performance in the high schools. But the Task Force ignores all the evidence which contradicts its assertions, evidence which indicates that CUNY has in fact increased its admissions standards and preserved its standards for retention and graduation.

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Standards for Admission

For instance, in order to increase admission standards, the University in 1992 pressured the Board of Education to better prepare its college-bound students by requiring College Preparatory Units (CPI). CUNY faculty assisted their high school colleagues by collaboratively developing competencies, writing curricula and teaching in-service courses to implement the new policy. In 1995, the Board of Trustees denied admission in the senior colleges to students who were unable to demonstrate that they could complete their remedial requirements in one or two semesters. In addition, during the past few years every senior college has raised its requirements for admission.

The Task Force’s proposal to institute the SAT as a CUNY requirement seems to have no purpose other than to allow comparisons between CUNY’s students and students throughout the nation. In a hierarchical system, a single admissions score (even with class ranking included as an admissions criterion) will relegate nontraditional students (the overwhelming majority of CUNY’s students) to lower levels of the tier or exclude them altogether. The shift to outcomes-based assessment, divorced from the social aspirations and cultural needs of low-income people and immigrants, will reduce if not eliminate their opportunity to earn a college degree. Indeed, the RAND report on "CUNY’s Testing Program" by Stephen P. Klein and Maria Orlando admits that "raising standards would result in the most selective schools having disproportionately fewer Black and Hispanic students than Asian and White students" (p. 19).

Standards for Retention

Faculty are invested by Section 8.6 of the Bylaws of the Board of Trustees with broad responsibility over admissions criteria, retention, and curricula. When CUNY embarked upon open admissions in 1970, the faculty did not lower standards but rather established remedial and developmental basic skills and English language programs to enable underprepared students to achieve at CUNY’s expected level. In order to maintain standards for readiness for college-level work, curriculum committees at all levels mandated the successful completion of remedial programs and passage of the Freshman Skills Assessment Tests (FSATs) as prerequisites where appropriate.

Standards for Graduation

Since the inception of open admissions, faculty at the colleges have preserved the requisite C average for graduation; students who fail to meet this standard are placed on probation or suspended. Students who fail to meet attendance and/or academic requirements for courses do not pass those courses. It was the Board of Trustees, not CUNY faculty, that lowered graduation standards by reducing the number of required credits from 128 to 120 for bachelor’s degrees and from 66 to 60 for associate’s degrees. If CUNY faculty had lowered standards, CUNY’s graduation rates would be sufficiently high to escape public censure. These very standards, along with increased tuition, insufficient numbers of counselors and full-time faculty, and a decrease in the number of course offerings--all due to government defunding--certainly put 

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pressure on student performance and graduation rates. Nevertheless, although unacknowledged by the Task Force Report (but stated in Rand’s CUNY Statistical Profile I, p. 2), CUNY’s eight-year graduation rates exceed national nine-year graduation rates.

Post-Graduation

Although the Task Force Report calls for outcomes accountability, it fails to mention CUNY’s most significant outcome, the attainments of its graduates. Employers eagerly seek our graduates from both the community colleges and the senior colleges, motivated by those they have previously hired. The Report does mention that two of the thirty-four 1999 Marshall Scholars are from Queens College. But the Report fails to mention that, in addition, Standard and Poor’s in a survey of 70,000 business leaders ranks CUNY first in the nation for producing business leadership; no other university in New York State made the top twelve on the list. It fails to mention that a team of City College chemical engineering students won the 1998 National Design Competition sponsored by The American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

The Report also fails to mention that Carolyn Ferrell, a MAGNET fellow at the Graduate Center in the Ph.D. Program in English who in 1997 received an award for her first published story collection, has now been further honored by the inclusion of one of those stories in the collection Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison. It fails to mention a SEEK graduate, Oscar Hijuelos, who received a Pulitzer Prize. It fails to mention that in 1994-1995 more CUNY students earned electrical engineering and computer science degrees in comparable areas than students from Columbia, Fordham, Pace, and Polytechnic combined. And finally, it fails to mention that between 1983 and 1992, a higher percentage of CUNY baccalaureate graduates earned doctorates than the graduates of Columbia University, NYU, the University of Chicago and SUNY (Albany) combined.

REMEDIATION AT CUNY

The Mayor’s Advisory Task Force alleges the following to be problematic areas concerning remediation at CUNY:

1. extensive remedial needs of CUNY’s incoming students; 2. CUNY’s program of student assessment and testing; 3. the absence of systematic, objective standards for exit from remediation; 4. the failure to ensure that remediation is effective; 5. financial aid and remediation; 6. the costs of remediation. These "findings" are entirely predictable given the presuppositions of the Mayor’s charge and the prejudices of the Task Force members. The Report overemphasizes the importance of remediation at CUNY (nearly a quarter of the Report is concerned with it).  The Report describes remediation and remedial students as if they are monolithic. Here, as everywhere in the Report, the findings and assertions of the Task Force are undergirded by an unwarranted faith that numbers and "objectivity" are all: that cognitive abilities can be diagnosed and worked on in isolation and then measured discretely by machine-scorable tests. These assumptions are not valid.

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The Extent of Remediation

The Mayor’s Task Force Report lauds CUNY for providing remediation for its students. It acknowledges that 60% of CUNY’s students come from the New York City public school system. The Task Force Report describes the extent of remediation at CUNY as "huge" (p. 6) and speculates, "It seems pretty clear that CUNY does much more remediation than any comparable public university system" (p. 34). The Report focuses on CUNY freshmen only and thus makes the remediation program appear larger than it is. Although 72% of freshmen take remedial courses, 36% of CUNY undergraduates take a remedial course and the PwC report, "Financial Analysis of Remediation," concedes that 36% of CUNY undergraduates by headcount in remediation "may not be unusual" (p. 10) in terms of national patterns. Neither the Report nor the appendices acknowledge that 78% of all colleges in the United States provide some remediation, including nearly all public community colleges and 81% of all public senior colleges. The Task Force Report acknowledges but refuses to take into account the large number of adults, immigrants, and nontraditional students who attend CUNY. The Report also treats the word "remedial" as though it has a single definition. In fact, across the nation what is "remedial" has a variety of definitions. Many colleges in the United States allow into full-credit nonremedial courses academically unprepared students who would be classified as remedial at CUNY.

Testing and Standards in Remediation

In 1978, CUNY became one of the first university systems in the nation to require students to achieve college-level competency in reading, writing and mathematics. Each CUNY college was encouraged to adjust upward the basic level of its placement test (FSAT) scores, set originally at minimum competency. As many colleges did so, each college set its specific requirements at levels appropriate to its mission and curricula, as remediation research recommends.

It is true, as the Task Force Report asserts, that the FSATs are not diagnostic: they were never intended to be diagnostic. They are intended as placement instruments. We agree with the professional literature that diagnostic assessment should remain where it currently is, in the classroom where students can engage in reading, writing and quantitative studies that provide more accurate assessment of their abilities than can ever be provided by standardized, multiple-choice, machine-scorable exams that focus on irrelevant topics such as grammatical nomenclature. Effective assessment of writing can never occur except by using instruments which require genuine essay writing, not multiple-choice editing tests or 25-minute "essays" such as those found in the Accuplacer or the Compass, tests which the Report recommends without supporting evidence. Indeed, even Anthony Carnavale from the Educational Testing Service said recently at a CUNY seminar that tests are being asked to "do more than they are capable of doing. This," he said, "is being driven by the accountability era."

Contrary to the assertions in the Report, but easily verifiable had the Task Force investigators chosen to try, basic skills policies, curricula and standards are not left to the whims of individual instructors but are developed systematically and carefully through department and

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college curriculum committees, as are all curricula and degree requirements. All courses, including remedial courses, are developed and reviewed by departmental and collegewide committees, and approved by faculty or college senates and by the CUNY Board of Trustees. Curricula and standards are developed only after analysis of a college’s core courses, general education requirements, and major requirements. Once established, these curricula and standards are enforced by ongoing and continual departmental training of faculty and norming sessions. Finally, remediation curricula and standards are analyzed and evaluated as part of the Middle States accreditation process and CUNY’s required academic program review process. These have been CUNY’s programmatic practices since at least 1978.

Ensuring the Effectiveness of Remediation Programs

Faculty at CUNY have developed many venues and opportunities for professional development in basic skills, and for exchanging information and developing appropriate policies. Policy is not created in a vacuum. Discipline councils and Chancellor’s task forces in reading, writing and mathematics have held extensive discussions in regular meetings, sharing information, goals, testing procedures, materials, methodologies, and strategies. Out of these discussions have come recommendations for change. The CUNY Association of Writing Supervisors (CAWS), the CUNY Association of Reading Education (CARE), and the ESL Council sponsor annual conferences and seminars. These activities are barely acknowledged in the Report.

Contrary to the Report’s assertion, it is not inappropriate for professors with Ph.D.'s to be teaching remedial and developmental studies. Indeed, graduate degree programs at NYU, Columbia University’s Teachers College and elsewhere prepare students to become academic professionals in English composition, reading, psychology, linguistics, mathematics, adult learning theory and education. Professors teaching both remedial and credit-bearing courses in their departments can demonstrate the articulation between the two.

Most important, to arbitrarily deny students who need remediation in one or some areas access to all college-level study contradicts proven successes at CUNY and elsewhere. Research and experience have shown the success of strategies of blocked or paired courses (remedial courses taken with nonremedial courses), which allow students who need math remediation to take college-level reading or writing courses, and allowing students who have demonstrated reading competency to take courses with support in writing. Students progress through their requirements and are able to understand their remedial courses in college-level contexts.

In the staff report "Open Admissions and Remedial Education at CUNY" (one of the most tendentious of the documents), the authors admit that they did not examine the qualifications of CUNY’s remediation instructors, the content of the curricula, or the techniques of instruction, asserting that those data were not present at central administration. They assert, "We were also overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite variety of approaches in use" (p. 12). However, their confusion did not prevent them from claiming later in the report that "the bulk of remediation at CUNY is conducted within a relatively narrow range" (p. 91).

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Moreover, while admitting that data do exist on students’ FSAT results, their progress through remediation, and their subsequent progress as indicated by grades received in credit-bearing courses, the authors reject all of this information as "unreliable" and therefore do not include it either in the report on open admissions or in their report entitled "Beyond Graduation Rates." As a result, the following suggestive statistics gathered by a researcher hired in 1998 by the Board of Trustees, are not included in the Report or appendices: The researcher found that most remedial students at CUNY, whether baccalaureate or associate, were able to complete their remedial requirements in about a year and a half and that graduation rates for remedial and nonremedial students were very similar (over 30% for associate degree students, over 40% for bachelor’s degree students, after eight years).

Financial Aid and Costs of Remediation

The reports make only a single mention of the Supplemental Tuition Assistance Program (STAP). STAP financed a year’s remediation for students before their TAP allocation clock began ticking. However, STAP was abolished by Governor Pataki in 1995. Without STAP, students have difficulty finishing their studies within the period of time now permitted to them. Furthermore, TAP eligibility standards require that all students, whether taking remedial courses or not, carry a certain number of college-level credits. This requirement bears no relation to students’ academic needs and also fails to recognize their work-related responsibilities. We believe that rather than implementing a voucher system or taking funds from the already-underfunded Board of Education, STAP should be reinstated.

Vouchers?

The notion of vouchers for remediation is mystifying to us. No student is required to attend CUNY; TAP can be used for any public or private (non-profit) institution desired. The staff report by Miriam Cilo, "Analysis of Remedial Education Outsourcing Alternatives," admits that there is no evidence that third parties can provide remediation more effectively than, or even as effectively as, CUNY. Cilo further expresses concern that the information presented in her proposal was self-reported by the institutions under her review. Nevertheless, Cilo’s report and Arthur Hauptman’s RAND Report, "Financing Remediation at CUNY on a Performance Basis: A Proposal," both replete with internal contradictions, recommend that students not be charged tuition for remediation. This is to make it easier to implement third-party vouchers.

In the absence of any valid supporting evidence, there is no logical or programmatic justification for the Task Force Report’s dogged insistence on plowing ahead with a voucher pilot study for which the sole qualified institutions, by the Report’s own rigid and outdated criteria (mastery learning, worksheets), would not be other universities but three for-profit companies: Sylvan Learning Systems, Kaplan Educational Centers, and Kumon Math & Reading Centers. Such an experiment should be controlled, Cilo says, by the Mayor’s Office. But perhaps the true intent of the sponsors of this Task Force is revealed in Cilo’s last sentence: "CUNY may wish to pull out of the remediation business entirely" (23).

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GOVERNANCE AND "SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE" AT CUNY

In his RAND Report for the Task Force, "The Governance of the City University of New York: A System at Odds with Itself," Brian Gill points out the "dysfunctionality of University decisionmaking in recent years" (p. 31). He suggests that the Governor and the Mayor establish a "blue-ribbon process" whereby independent nominating committees could propose trustee appointments (excluding employees of the City or State). The Task Force correctly supports the restoration of nationally-accepted governance practices of American universities, giving trustees responsibility for broad policy directions but reserving specific powers of implementation to administrators.

The CUNY Board of Trustees

But the Task Force Report fails to disclose the reason for the recent dysfunctionality of University decisionmaking: the politicization of the Board of Trustees. Many current trustees have defined themselves not as independent voices but as representatives of their political patrons. For example, contradicting the data produced by their own researcher, Judith Watson, the Board took decisions during the protracted debate on remediation that were not the product of a thoughtful weighing of alternatives, varying views, and information on past successful practices. Instead, decisions were made at the behest of the Governor and the Mayor.

This politicization of the Board of Trustees has resulted in the departure of many experienced vice-chancellors and other University officials. For two years it has prevented, until just a few days ago, the naming of a permanent chancellor for the system. Few qualified potential applicants for administrative positions welcomed the prospect of being directed by political leaders for political ends. CUNY administration has been adrift. The Executive Committee of the University Faculty Senate agrees with the RAND Report that the politicization of the Board of Trustees should end immediately. We support the RAND suggestion that an independent and representative blue-ribbon panel be established to propose and screen independent candidates for the Board of Trustees.

Central Leadership, Local Autonomy and Faculty Rights

The Task Force Report and the RAND Report on governance propose to cure the ills of the system by constructing an entirely new centralized edifice which has no roots in the University’s past. The Task Force proposes to centralize authority in the Chancellory, use performance-based accountability measures to recognize some colleges as "more equal" than others, and ignore a century and a half of evolution of CUNY’s unique college cultures and structures. Finally, astonishingly, the Task Force proposes to fire all those who do not comply with directives from above. (This threat is echoed in the staff appendix on Open Admissions: "‘Faculty autonomy’ and the ‘academic freedom’ of remediation instructors must take a back seat to accountability" [p. 109].)

Insofar as any "flagship" institution is at all appropriate to this urban University, we already have one. It is a unique consortial graduate school which draws for its doctoral faculty

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on the strengths of the undergraduate faculties at every college. The CUNY BA/BS program, similarly serving all colleges and similarly housed at the Graduate Center, is the parallel undergraduate flagship institution.

The Task Force also seems unaware of or uninterested in the fact that the individual institutions which comprise CUNY are already differentiated in their missions. For example, CUNY includes six community colleges which provide a comprehensive program of liberal arts and sciences education and professional or career education. Three senior colleges provide specialized programs: Baruch College (business studies), New York City Technical College, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Four comprehensive colleges--College of Staten Island, Medgar Evers, John Jay and New York City Technical--provide both four-year and two-year programs of liberal arts and sciences and professional studies. Hunter, Brooklyn and Queens Colleges provide a full range of liberal arts and sciences and masters level education. York College provides liberal arts and sciences education as well as programs in the health professions. Lehman College and the College of Staten Island are the only senior institutions in their boroughs; both provide liberal arts and sciences and graduate education. Finally, City College is in itself a kind of mini-university, with the only engineering and architecture schools in the system as well as its own programs in liberal arts and sciences, the professions and graduate education as well as a Medical School.

The Task Force Report praises the crudely-designed [Leon] Goldstein Report (1993) and criticizes faculty for refusing to admire it. Intended to centralize planning and consolidate departments, the Goldstein proposals relied for their academic evaluations on erroneous or outdated figures, numerical assessments of programs, and anti-intellectual analyses. In place of the Goldstein Report, the Task Force proposes a hierarchical, centralized authority which would reorganize the University into tiers, each unit subject to the numerical tyranny of outcomes accountability. To those who have, more shall be given.

The Task Force consistently ignores the cross-campus collaborations that have been established in recent years, many of them at the initiative or with the encouragement of the University Faculty Senate. For example, the Report ignores the work already done by discipline councils meeting in the areas of English, mathematics, foreign languages, psychology, sociology, history and political science to work out the enforcement of the 1985 policy on course transfer and articulation. The Report fails to mention that the concept for a forthcoming website containing a technologically unified curriculum guide designed to facilitate transfer was initiated by the University Faculty Senate. The Task Force Report suggests that departmental chairs be appointed rather than elected, even while admitting the absence of complaints by college presidents about elected chairs. (The RAND Report concedes that the election of chairs is a common practice throughout the United States. By contrast, the Task Force Report says that the vast majority of universities appoint their departmental heads.)

The Task Force Report expresses unhappiness with faculty tenure, with provisions which protect faculty during times of retrenchment, with other faculty protections in the University Bylaws and the collective bargaining agreement that are alleged to "thwart the pursuit of excellence." The Task Force looks forward to a modification of these protections. Once they are

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modified, the Task Force urges that "Presidents and faculty who fail to enforce university policies . . . should be subject to discipline, up to and including dismissal." These ideas are not worthy of a great university.

CONCLUSION

In his RAND Report, Brian Gill says, "Perhaps the leading characteristic of CUNY’s institutional culture is a strong commitment to equality" (24). The union (PSC-CUNY) is also characterized as an embodiment of this "culture of egalitarianism." The Task Force describes this as "a strong leveling tendency." One might imagine these statements to be high praise. One would be wrong. Our commitment to equity is seen as a problem, an obstacle to the imposition of a system of rewards for so-called productivity and efficiency, an obstacle to outcome-based accountability.

Has our commitment to equity prevented us from excelling? It would seem not. The Task Force does manage to recognize one measure of our faculty’s excellence: the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History won by two historians, Mike Wallace (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) and Edwin G. Burrows (Brooklyn College), for their book, Gotham. Unmentioned examples of faculty excellence include Dr. Judith Summerfield (Queens College), NY State Teacher of the Year in 1998, and Dennis Sullivan, Distinguished Professor (Graduate School & University Center), who was presented with the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology.

Just this spring, Alisa Solomon (Baruch and the Graduate Center) was awarded the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Marion A. Kaplan (Queens and the Graduate Center) was named one of the three Director’s Fellows at the new Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. In the past 20 years, CUNY faculty have won hundreds of fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the MacArthur, and Guggenheim Foundations and the Fulbright program. Faculty have been granted Presidential Young Researcher Awards and elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Nine of our doctoral programs have been ranked nationally in the top 20 list; a John Jay College of Criminal Justice graduate program was ranked number one in the nation; the CUNY Law School was ranked second (after Yale) for its clinical training program; Baruch’s School of Business and Hunter’s School of Social Work have been similarly honored. CUNY’s 83 research centers and institutes advance learning in every aspect of human life.

To read the Report of the Mayor’s Advisory Task Force, one would think that our open admissions program had been a colossal failure, a swamp of nonachievement. Yet according to Changing the Odds (1996) by David Lavin and David Hyllegard, who studied outcomes of a group of open admissions graduates in one year in the 1980's, those students earned an estimated $67 million more than they would have without open admissions; over the course of their entire

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careers, it was estimated, they would accumulate $2 billion, while paying to the government $100 million in taxes.

CUNY is a model of successful open access with appropriate academic support. Now, when New York City’s economic development lags behind the country’s, when unemployment among those with only a high school diploma is twice that of the college-educated and the jobs which are available to those without degrees provide little upward mobility, politicians and their Board of Trustees surrogates must strengthen, not dismantle, open admissions.

The moral fabric of democracy requires an educated citizenry, an education not just for the privileged few but for the hardworking and dedicated many. Democracy requires that a great public university empower the citizenry to think and speak for themselves so that they may live as free, creative, and productive human beings.

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