At the Intersection of “Excellence” and “Equity”: A recent history of Admissions at City College
By Eric Bilach and Matthew Romano
The following article was featured in the December 2019 edition of The Campus.
Preface:
At the 1849inauguration of the Free Academy (now known as the City College of New York),the institution’s first President, Dr. Horace Webster, famously described thefirst free institution of public higher education as an experiment created toserve the “children of the whole people.” Now, with over 150 years of history,it is not surprising that this term has experienced several periods ofdefinition, redefinition, manipulation, vociferous liberal interpretation, anda more conservative brand of constraining perspective. By mapping these twointerconnected and opposite eras in CUNY and CCNY’s recent history (the openadmissions era of the 1970s and the remediation debate of the late 20th toearly 21st century), we hope to expound the complex, ever-changing, yet deeplyentrenched relationship that our historical institution shares with thisfoundational tenet of our educational philosophy. Finally, as we embark on anew decade, we look to the past, present, and future role of CUNY as,“committed to academic excellence and the provision of equal accessand opportunity…” (emphasis added).
Early1960s :
Mounting politicaland racial tensions during this period led to a rapid paradigm shift in theconcept of “the university” within American academia. Universities across thenation began to subscribe to the notion that the classroom could be used toachieve more than just education. As a result, higher education quickly morphedinto a vehicle for combatting social turbulence within urban cities byimproving minority enrollment. Admission requirements in America would beshaped by this new model over the following three decades, particularly withinthe CUNY system.
1966:
The surge in studentactivism throughout the latter half of the decade coincided with the CivilRights Movement, as well as the widespread opposition to the United States’participation in the Vietnam War. On City College’s campus, African-Americanand Puerto Rican student protestors, along with their Caucasian cohorts,clamored for the institution to introduce affirmative action programs thatwould effectively raise minority enrollment totals.
In compliance withstudent demands, CUNY’s first affirmative action initiative was established in1966 in the form of the SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge)Program. Still running strong today, the program provides, “economicallydisadvantaged,” and “academically unprepared,” students with the supportservices needed to succeed in college.
1970:
Following the 1969 student occupation of City College’s south campus, the University’s immediate response was to implement an “open admissions” policy, which granted every New York City high school graduate, who had either maintained an 80% grade point average or finished within their class’ 50th percentile, entrance into CUNY’s senior colleges. Though then-City College President Robert E. Marshak claimed that the open admissions policy was the, “most complicated, controversial, and long-term issue,” confronting the institution during his tenure, CUNY hypothesized that the policy would afford academic opportunities to large quantities of students from low-income households. This prediction was ultimately correct, which was reflected in the statistics regarding the ethnic breakdown of freshmen classes at City College between 1969 and 1971. In two years, African-American enrollment escalated from 149 to 804 students (a 16.5% increase), while Puerto Rican enrollment also grew from 86 to 318 students (a 9.9% increase).
1976:
As the decadeprogressed, City College drew heavy denunciations throughout academia for itsopen admissions policy. The institution’s reputation as the “Harvard of theproletariat,” began to diminish under the premise that it had, “dropped allentrance standards in 1969.” As it follows, freshmen enrollment figuresproliferated by 83% between 1969 and 1971 as a direct result of open admissions.With this steady expansion of City College’s student population, it isestimated that nine out of every ten newly admitted students from 1970 onwardrequired remedial instruction due to the “inadequacy” of their high schooleducations. This burgeoning student body necessitated CUNY’s hiring of over1,200 remedial course instructors. The strain that open admissions had placedon the University’s financial resources (approximately $35.5 million in 1970alone), coupled with a myriad of other budgetary issues, culminated in theclosure of the entire CUNY system for two weeks in May of 1976. To supplementits losses, CUNY began to impose tuition charges soon thereafter for the firsttime in its existence.
1997- 1998 :
By the 1997-1998academic year, twenty-seven years after the advent of open admissions in 1970,City College and the CUNY system as a whole, had succeeded in fulfilling itsprevious mission of diversifying the campus: 90% of City College students wereeither Black, Hispanic, or Asian. Despite their success, CUNY was shaken bydipping enrollment totals (CCNY endured a decline of 62,000 students since1970); scrutinization of perceived non-existent or low-bar admissions standards(mostly unchanged since their near-eradication in 1970); rising concerns over amanifested culture of remediation (over 70% of City College entrants requiredremediation); derisory 4-year graduation rates (just over 4% at the Seniorcolleges) and, resulting in part from these mounting criticisms, cripplingbudget cuts implemented just two years prior by the Governor of NY GeorgePataki (suffering a $102 million dollar operating budget cut)
After these budgetcuts and the mounting pressures and plummeting reputation of CUNY, Mayor RudyGiuliani, in his State of the City Address, disparaged CUNY as a “disaster”lobbying for control of the desired redirection. January of 1998 marked theconception of Giuliani’s vociferous pursuit of a total reversal of the formerera’s open admissions policy, an imposition of standards and CUNY assessmenttests, a return to a focus on ‘excellence’ over the ‘equity’ ideal that hadpredominated during the previous three decades, and the privatization oreradication of all remedial courses at CUNY institutions. Giuliani’s cause wasespoused and executed by CUNY’s Board of Trustees, most notably HermanBadillo.
1998- 1999 :
Following from whatwas roughly a year and a half of staunch and heated remediation debate,Giuliani’s tactics, ultimatum politics, power, and influence over the Board ofTrustees proved insurmountable for insurgency efforts led by the thenchairwoman of CUNY, Anne A. Paolucci and a cadre of “equal opportunity” mindedfaculty, staff, and students. In a vote of ten to five, the Board of Trusteesphased out remedial classes from all CUNY Senior Colleges in a three-yearprocess, with City College doing away with remedial courses in September of2001. (It should be noted that, at the time, 81% of public 4-year institutionsoffered at least one remedial course).
Despite the result,some key moments from the months leading up to and proceeding theindoctrination of the policy had shed light on the contention surrounding theissue of remediation reform that found itself at the intersection of race,merit, equal opportunity, and socioeconomic status. In May of 1998, respondingto a decision to bar entry of students who fail CUNY’s relatively new placementexams, CUNY reported that a disproportionate 55% of those affected would beHispanic, 51% Asian, 46% black, and only 38% white. In December of the sameyear, six civil liberties groups counter-litigated against the CUNY Board ofTrustees’ incubatory policies. In September 1999, following the finalratification of these revisionary admissions policies, students, faculty, andparents alike jointly filed grievances to the Department of Education’s Officeof Civil Rights over what they saw as exclusionary actions taken by the Boardof Trustees. Finally, Sandi Cooper, Chair of the University Faculty Senate,encapsulated the indignation and abhorrence of many of Giuliani’s most ferventopponents in regarding the end of open admissions and imposition of entranceexaminations as, “cruel and unnecessary punishment on students.”
ConcludingStatement:
On the surface,since our most recent uprooting of admissions policy, CUNY and CCNY seem tohave carved out a comfortable and prominent niche that bisects the binaryframework that it was built on, “academic excellence,” and “equal access andopportunity,” straddling, promulgating, and sustaining both. For example, per2018 “fast facts” on enrollment as published by City College, Hispanics make upapproximately 36.9% of all matriculated students, followed by Asians at 22.7 %,whites at 16.5%, and blacks at 15.2%, with another 6.7% being non-residentaliens. Academically, per CCNY’s most recent City Facts records, the four-yeargraduation rate of the 2008 freshman class was 10.4%, reaching 44.2% by the endof year six. However, as the historical accounts above prove, these facts are onlythe beginning of the story. For a deeper understanding of the current state ofCCNY’s student population, one must only look around at the students walkingthe same grounds once serving as our new home in 1907 Hamilton Heights andproudly representing the same institution that was founded 60 years beforethat. For foresight on the future of CCNY’s admissions, the trends of thediversity and graduation-rate statistics demonstrate a gradual uptick since2001, as CUNY has seemingly returned to its prominence as a source ofaffordable and high-quality education, bolstered by the fact that theoverwhelming majority of its students graduate debt-free (CCNY eclipsing a 78%debt-free graduation rate).
Sources below :
Academic Renewal in the 1970s: Memoirs of a City College President (c. 1980), Robert E. Marshak, Cohen Archives
“Downward Mobility” (1994),Heather MacDonald, City Journal
“These colleges turn low-incomestudents into middle-class earners—but how?” (2018), Jill Barshay, TheHechinger Report
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3484&context=gc_etds
http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/rwg/cuny/pdf/history.pdf
