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CCNY'S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER   OCTOBER 2000 VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1

CUNY’s Master Plan Fails Minimum Standards
By Hank Williams

CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein visited City College on September 19 to explain CUNY’s Master Plan. The New York State Board of Regents has approved the plan, clearing the way for full implementation of the 100-plus page proposal by the CUNY Board of Trustees.

The Master Plan, required by state law, is a four-year blueprint for the direction of the CUNY system and highlights a variety of areas. The focus is on the creation of what CUNY executives call a “flagship environment.” This would involve the creation of a university-wide honors college, hiring faculty in specific areas, and increasing reliance on standardized testing to evaluate student progress. Testing would be mostly contracted to outside corporations.

The plan also calls for improved teacher education programs, increased ties with high schools, improved technology in classrooms, and closer ties to the business community. This last point is what many critics of the plan say is the real motivation behind the plan’s adoption.

CUNY, Incorporated?

Indeed, the plan calls for “a strong Chancellor,” and claims that the reorganization of CUNY executive officers “is derived from a corporate model where the Chancellor is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the Vice Chancellors are corporate officers.”

So when did we become CUNY, Inc.? Lorraine Cohen of LaGuardia Community College pointed out in her testimony before the Regents that the Master Plan “reflects the priorities of a corporate educational agenda. It prioritizes program development in fields that will expand links to new areas of corporate investment; it centralizes power in the hands of the CEO, the Chancellor [who is] answerable to a highly politicized Board of Trustees.”

As more evidence of the new corporate model, the plan calls for a “performance-driven executive compensation plan.” That part of the Master Plan will probably succeed: last year the Trustees approved a new, tiered pay scale for college presidents and a raise for Goldstein to $250,000 per year.

An August Crain’s New York Business article offers a more accurate assessment of the plan. Goldstein told Crain’s: “We are breaking the boundaries between what separates people on a campus from the business community.”

The Plan, however, makes no budgetary provision for collective bargaining: a curious omission considering that the contract with the Professional Staff Congress (PSC: professors and staff union) is up for renewal this year. Talks between union representatives and CUNY began this summer.

The answer may lie in the document itself, as it cites a need to “achieve productivity and program savings.” PSC president Barbara Bowen’s testimony before the Regents offers a translation: “This bland language conceals the intention to raise [faculty] workloads that are already double those of comparable institutions and to cut academic programs and jobs from our already bare-bones curriculum.” That means larger class sizes and fewer courses.

Anne Friedman, PSC Community College VP, asked a good question in her testimony before the Regents: “why does this document glorify the need to ‘achieve productivity and program savings’ and ‘to identify external funding sources’ rather than asserting the responsibility of the public to fund public higher education and the obligation of CUNY’s trustees to ensure that we have adequate funds in a state and city economy that is flush with dollars?”

Smoke and Mirrors

The Master Plan evades the issue of CUNY’s economic starvation over the last 20 years by the state and city. PSC VP Steve London testified before the Regents that state and city cuts to CUNY’s budget totaled nearly $375 million over the last decade.

The Master Plan only calls for an additional $141.7 million over the next four years. London points out that “to rehire the roughly 1,500 lost faculty and restore CUNY’s ability to serve the population of New York City will require an investment of $112 million.”

That doesn’t leave much left over for the extra support staff necessary and the cost for the other initiatives in the Master Plan. A position paper from the advocacy group Friends of CUNY concludes that “The modest price tag attached to the Master Plan is largely illusory.”

The lack of detail in the plan troubles many critics. “‘Creating a Flagship Environment’ raises many more questions than it answers,” says CCNY engineering Professor and PSC chapter chair Gary Benenson. “To begin with, what exactly is a ‘flagship environment’? How is it different from a ‘nationally recognized research program’? If there is no difference, we already have many ‘flagship environments’ in CUNY.”

One example of lack of detail is the plan for “cluster hiring” of faculty in “programmatic areas of importance.” While the areas of importance are not specified, one might assume that this will be in the sciences, as the plan calls for concentration on the areas of photonics, teacher education, new media and computer science, and foreign languages over the next four years.

Actually, the only plans sketched out in any detail are for the photonics and structural biology flagship programs, despite the assertion that “The largest proportion of new programs under development within the university is in the liberal arts and sciences.”

Friends of CUNY’s reply asserts that “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.”

What the Photonics Center would do is provide valuable research and development for private corporations, such as Lucent Technologies, NEC, Corning, and Lockheed Martin; who have already been invited by CUNY to develop plans for the center.

The Bright Side

To be fair, the Master Plan includes many worthy goals, including recognition of the need to upgrade facilities and replace full-time faculty lost by budget cuts. The plan to more closely integrate CUNY with high schools is a good one and long overdue.

Also proposed is seamless transfer between community and senior colleges, more aggressive recruiting of students, renovation of campus facilities, and enhancement of student life.

Funding for renovation would probably depend heavily on the State Dormitory Authority, which provides funds for most major college construction projects.

The student life provision is what CUNY has in mind when plans to make the university more “student-centered” are discussed. Specifically stated in the plan are increased library hours, better registration, and cleaner campus facilities.

Some of these improvements have already occurred: telephone registration was introduced at City this summer (although years behind Baruch and Hunter) and worked well for many. Library hours at Cohen were expanded last year from a woefully inadequate previous schedule.

This is Only a Test…

A key part of the plan is reliance on standardized testing, both as an entrance requirement and to track student progress within the university. Aside from the Skills Assessment Tests (soon to become entrance exams), there will be exit exams for community college students and a new test for senior college students that will have to be passed at the 60-credit mark (regardless of grade point average), and new tests for English as a Second Language students.

American College Testing has been chosen to provide exams to CUNY. The concern many have with standardized tests is the traditional bias they have against minority and poor students. The Master Plan embraces the protocol recommended by the Schmidt Commission Report. This should not be surprising, as commission head (and CUNY Board vice-chair) Benno Schmidt is on the board of directors of the Edison Project, a for-profit corporation specializing in operating public schools. Although Edison currently only operates elementary schools, the conflict of interest is staggering. Not surprisingly, last spring the CUNY Board decided to allow outside contractors to bid for the opportunity to supply remedial education to CUNY students.

What We Say Goes

Despite claims that the Master Plan is a work in progress and the claims that the CUNY board is seeking input, it reflects an authoritarian management philosophy. At the September 19 presentation, Chancellor Goldstein sidestepped questions from both The Messenger and faculty about the lack of real input or democracy in implementation of the plan.

In fact, in a memo (posted on CUNY’s website) sent by Goldstein to board Chairman Herman Badillo, he states that “It is clearly the prerogative of the Board to establish policies relating to the University’s educational offerings.” Stated simply, what the Board says goes.

CCNY Black Studies student Kenneth Williams questioned Goldstein about the future of the Black Studies program and liberal arts, but was less than pleased with the answers. “I thought [Goldstein] was very much dodging the questions being asked,” Williams told The Messenger.

Williams is organizing resistance to the Master Plan. He feels that CCNY has been hit harder by budget cuts partly because of its activist history, pointing to the 1969 student takeover of South Campus that won open admissions and opened the doors of CUNY to a generation of students of color. “CCNY students have always been at the forefront of social change,” he added.

In the City College town hall meeting, Chancellor Goldstein also stated that it was the job of liberal arts faculty to “sell” their programs to lower level students in their classes. If they can boost enrollment in their majors, they might qualify to receive more financial support. CCNY English Professor (and Messenger advisor) Larry Hanley was unimpressed: “The idea that professors are to intentionally ‘sell’ their subjects/disciplines to students was pretty silly. . . and crystallizes the ‘market’-speak that dominates policy these days.”

The circular logic here is ridiculous. The real problem is that too many programs receive too little support already. The lack of a real commitment to giving students the resources needed to learn and that faculty needs to teach them is a glaring omission. The big failure of the Master Plan and society in general now is the failure to realize that education is a right, not a privilege. Educating people is not a profit-making proposition, but it is necessary in a democracy.

The solutions to CUNY’s problems defy quick-fix (and get-rich-quick) schemes and rhetoric, which is what the Master Plan appears to be. The Master Plan itself, Professor Benenson points out, does not meet minimum standards.

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