Messenger Nov - Dec 2000 Table of Contents | Messenger Home

CCNY Plan Will Hurt Opportunity

By Bill Crain

The CCNY President's Advisory Committee on Strategic Planning has issued its draft report, and the report is bad news for many prospective students.

The report, following the lead of the right-wing Board of Trustees, recommends "a gradual raising of admissions requirements." Thus, if the report isn't changed, many students won't get into City College. And all the evidence indicates that the rejected students will often be those who have historically been shut out-the financially disadvantaged and people of color.

This means that many students, especially those who have had to attend the poorest public schools and have received the weakest preparation for college, will lose their one chance to get a good education. Research by CUNY sociologist David Lavin shows that when New York City's disenfranchised students are given opportunities for a first-rate college education, their success rates are generally impressive. But the CCNY report would take many opportunities away.

The report implicitly recognizes that it is cutting off opportunity, so it adds that the college will "aggressively" pursue ways of preparing prospective students "to meet these higher standards." How? What resources for improving the public schools does our college possess? We don't have enough money to keep our own bathrooms clean.
The report also claims that higher admissions standards will "provide a stimulus for academic achievement." The report's authors apparently believe that once high school students hear about CCNY's new requirements, the students will buckle down to their schoolwork.

This might happen to a small extent, but the basic assumption about intellectual development is wrong. Students' minds don't grow because adults tell them they must work harder to meet future goals. Under such pressures, students sometimes try to memorize more facts and formulas, but they usually work without enthusiasm and then promptly forget most of the material once their tests are over.

Instead, real cognitive growth comes from students' inner, spontaneous desire to learn. When students encounter tasks and problems that they find exciting and meaningful, they think deeply and fully, and their minds expand. If we really want to improve education, we need to think less on our own standards and expectations and think more about how to make learning an exciting adventure.

So even if we gained the financial resources to improve the public schools, we would also need to alter our conception of intellectual development. And neither change is on the immediate horizon.

Perhaps I am underestimating our college's ability to help the public schools. Perhaps CUNY's central administration will fund programs that produce significant improvements. I doubt this will happen, but in any case, the reasonable approach is to try out the new methods first, and to raise the admissions standards only after we see that the new methods really work. But to first start excluding students is unconscionable.

Messenger Nov - Dec 2000 Table of Contents | Messenger Home