FRIENDS OF CUNY

A POSITION PAPER ON CITY UNIVERSITY prepared by THE FRIENDS OF CUNY (formerly the Committee for Public Higher Education)

PREAMBLE

The purpose of our public university system is to provide access to excellent higher education, to create opportunities for students to study, to learn and to secure the credentials that are essential to their futures and to the future of the city.

New Yorkers committed to that mission for CUNY are proud of its successes and contributions to the city and state of New York. The Committee for Public Higher Education, a policy research and advocacy group composed of educators, university administrators, business leaders, alumni(ae), and public interest groups, is committed to remedying the assault that has been launched recently against the University. This assault is having -- and will continue to have -- extreme and destructive consequences.

Critics have made assertions that are not supported by the facts. They have distorted the data in forcing the adoption of a resolution that will deny access to higher education and curtail opportunity for the next generation. They have charged: that CUNY students lack basic skills in reading, writing and mathematics; that CUNY standards are too low and its diplomas worthless; that CUNY students enter a remedial track that they never leave. The students and the university have been defamed by these lies.

These critics have forced the adoption of a Board resolution that will deny access to a four-year college education to between 34 and 64% of students currently admitted, with the projected number differing on each campus. In the course of this action, higher education has been grossly politicized in the State and City of New York.

That does not mean the Friends of CUNY simply support the status quo. We are convinced that there are substantial improvements to be made at each of CUNY’s campuses, as well as in the elementary schools and high schools that prepare the students. Some of these improvements have already been made; others have been proposed and need to be advanced. We know it is important to raise standards in these public schools and better prepare students for college level work. Along with 80 percent of public colleges in the United States, we are committed to assuring that students whose performance on skill assessment tests is below par receive the necessary high quality remedial services CUNY has and can provide. We support the efforts that are already being made in this area and believe there is a way for the trustees to hold individual campuses accountable for improvements in remediation and still maintain access to the university to tens of thousands of students from all parts of the city.

We also know that it costs money to offer educational opportunities to the hundreds of thousands of students in our public colleges and universities. Colleges cannot continue to improve without adequate funding, full-time faculty and modern facilities and equipment. High school students cannot be better prepared for college unless they have smaller classes, science labs and modern textbooks.

Most important, in order to give New York a public University for the 21st c entury, people need to know the facts, get beyond the lies, and support proposals directed at maintaining access, creating opportunity, and improving the University rather than destroying it. Let’s look at some of the issues:

IS THE CITY UNIVERSITY TOO FOCUSED ON REMEDIATION?

The tests given to students entering baccalaureate programs at City University [students with an 80% average who are in the top third of their high school graduating classes] indicate that many of these students need help in one or more areas of college-level work. It is often the case that many students transferring into CUNY from private colleges require remedial preparation, a circumstance which speaks well of CUNY’s academic standards. Under the current remedial program, which certainly can be strengthened, a majority of students take at least one remedial course. This is true for about one half of baccalaureate freshmen. Most instruction at CUNY is not remedial, and students do not linger endlessly in remediation. Basic skills courses at the four year colleges represent only 6% of the instructional courses at those campuses. Almost 9 of 10 baccalaureate students complete their remedial skills work in one year, and, indeed, a majority complete it in just one semester.

Nationally, over 80% of public colleges and universities offer remedial courses to their students to ensure that they will develop the skills they need for success in college and afterwards. Some private and public colleges, including SUNY, actually offer academic credits for their remedial courses. Currently, all public, private and religious institutions of higher learning in the metropolitan area offer some remedial services. This should not be surprising since they recruit their students from the same pool of high school graduates as CUNY.

To single out CUNY, to demand that its colleges drop remediation, is to ignore the growing crisis in post-secondary education. This is particularly relevant to CUNY which has a far higher number of foreign born students and many students returning to school as mature adults whose skills may have lain fallow for years. By adopting the Board resolution CUNY will actually violate national trends in higher education in ways harmful to its students and its schools.

It should be realized, also, that the tests given to students as they enter college are not admission tests. They are skills assessment tests, intended to determine what supplementary work would be most beneficial to the student and determining the most appropriate course levels at which students should begin. They were not designed -- and should not be used -- to predict whether or not a student is likely to succeed in college.

DOES THE CUNY REMEDIATION PROGRAM WORK?

Absolutely. Most students who require some remedial work are able to take and pass other courses, while simultaneously improving their basic skills. In CUNY’s four-year colleges, about 40% of the students require no remedial work. Eighty-seven percent of those students who do take such classes in their first two semesters complete their remedial work before they advance and, what is more, significant numbers of them graduate. For example, among 1988 baccalaureate entrants 50% of those who took no remedial work had graduated 8 years later. Among those who took one remedial course in their initial semester, more than 40% graduated; and among those who took three such courses, more than 25% eventually received their degree. Graduation rates for those who pass all remedial courses approximate those for students who take no remediation, whatever.

Moreover, the same evidence exists for the community colleges; students who begin requiring remedial assistance go on to graduate. This is critical. It means that the "test" being imposed to deny thousands of students access to the senior colleges would screen out many who would eventually graduate and, even more seriously, would screen out most of the eventual graduates in the minority communities.

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