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

Open Admissions: Why All the Controversy?
By William Crain

When people talk about CUNY, it’s not long before someone uses the term “open admissions.” I would like to explain what the term means and why we are currently facing an open admissions crisis of historic proportions.

A Brief History

Open admissions began in l969, the result of student protests at City College. Until then, the college’s (and all of CUNY’s) student population was overwhelmingly white. Students of color wanted to give their people a chance for a college education. Coming at a time of national civil rights progress, the protests succeeded.

The open admissions policy guaranteed every high school graduate at least a place in a community college. But the policy was also oriented toward the senior colleges. People of color didn’t want to be stopped short of the bachelor’s degree. So the open admissions policy guaranteed every high school graduate who had an 80 average, or who was in the top half of his or her class, admission to a senior college. The policy also tried to provide for a smooth transition from the community colleges to the senior colleges.

From the beginning, open admissions came under political attack. President Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, said open admissions would mean “200,000 worthless degrees.” New York politicians weakened open admissions opportunities by imposing tuition for the first time in 1976. Since then, tuition has continued to rise. In addition, some senior colleges began raising their admissions requirements.

Open admissions presented new educational challenges. Many students, coming from under-funded, overcrowded public schools, required more remediation than the students had needed in the past. But faculty developed impressive remedial courses, and CUNY soon gained national prominence as the leader in remedial education. A 1998 Board of Trustees report, “The Remediation/ESL Backgrounder,” observed that students who complete remediation graduate at about the same rates as those who didn’t need it.

Other data indicate that CUNY colleges have thrived since open admissions began. For example, the graduates of Hunter, City, and Brooklyn Colleges go on to earn Ph.D. degrees in higher percentages than do the graduates of almost all other colleges in the New York City area. Other colleges have made their own marks. Baruch has achieved national prominence in business education, John Jay in criminal justice, and so on. The data overwhelmingly indicate that since CUNY opened its doors to students of color, the overall impact has been quite positive. The students have worked hard and have succeeded.

Closing the Door

Nevertheless, in 1998, the enemies of open admissions delivered their severest blow. Led by Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki, the CUNY trustees voted to ban remedial coursework in the bachelor’s degree programs. Any student whose placement test scores suggest any need for remediation would have to find a spot in a community college. There were two exceptions—for SEEK students and for students who received part of their high school education abroad. But these exceptions only total about 20% of new freshmen.

People often ask, “What’s wrong with beginning at a community college?” The answer is that students who begin at community colleges have a lower chance of ever attaining the bachelor’s degree. This is true both at CUNY and around the nation, even when we consider students with identical high school records and personal goals.

Civil Rights Catastrophe

The board’s new admissions policy is an enormous civil rights setback. If the new policy had been in place in the fall of 1998, only 18% of white students would have been excluded from the bachelor’s degree programs because of it—compared to 38% of Latino students, 34% of African-American students, and 27% of Asian students.

The new policy is also discriminatory in the larger context. All the SUNY senior colleges, which primarily serve white, middle class students, offer remediation. Nationwide, 81% of all public senior colleges offer remediation, and these colleges also primarily serve white, middle class students. To take remediation away from CUNY’s students, who are predominantly working class, poor, and people of color, is a moral outrage.

Nevertheless, in November l999, the State Board of Regents approved CUNY’s remediation ban. Because of this, some people believe open admissions is dead. It is not. The Regents also decided to review the new policy at the end of 2002, looking to see if it has been discriminatory.

In the meantime, CUNY has begun excluding students. What’s more, it knows it is excluding them on the basis of invalid placement tests. The tests are poor indicators of college success. CUNY’s leaders have hired the ACT testing firm to develop better tests, but shouldn’t CUNY wait and see what the ACT can do? Instead, CUNY has decided that community college students, too, will have to pass the new ACT tests before they can exit from remediation and begin college-level work. Will the new ACT tests simply be artificial barriers preventing thousands of students from developing their minds and pursuing their dreams?

Reversing the New Policy

Last year, several of us filed a complaint with the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, charging that the new senior college policy was likely to discriminate against students of color and do so on the basis of invalid tests. In May 2000, the Office for Civil Rights agreed to extensively monitor the new policy’s racial impact.

But even if, as I predict, the data reveal a discriminatory effect, we must be committed to doing something about it. We must let people know what is happening at CUNY and get the new admissions policies reversed.

William Crain is a professor of psychology at City College.

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