Charting a new course for Cuny

I want to thank the National Association of Scholars for the suppor t it has given me over the past few years and for the kind invitation to address its membersh ip . These have been exciting times for the City University of NewYork (CUNY). In the s u m m e r of 1999, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appo in ted a task force chaired by fo rmer pres ident o f Yale, Benno Schmidt. H e charged that task f o r c e o n which I had the h o n o r to serve-wi th identifying the drawbacks and oppor tunities for CUNY. We came up with an extensive list, and, t hough there is still a long way to go, we addressed a significant n u m b e r of i tems on that agenda. We worked vigorously to establish h igher s tandards and to restore value to a CUNY degree. Despite what remains to be done , there is already striking evidence of progress on several fronts that repudia tes the critics o f educat ional re form and the skeptics who cou ldn ' t grasp that raising standards reaps benefits bo th for individual s tudents and for the institutions they attend. Cons ider my resolut ion to el iminate remedia l courses at CUNY senior coll e g e s a n d only at the senior colleges. It was, in my opinion, a l imited and reasonable resolution, bu t realizing it r equ i red a Hercu lean effort, drawing on suppor t f rom Governor George Pataki and Mayor Giuliani. It involved no fewer than four reviews and formal approvals: twice by the boa rd of trustees, once by the New York State Board of Regents, and again in the CUNY master plan for the years 2000 and 2004. Critics p red ic ted several years o f en ro l lmen t decline. They suggested that our insistence on genuine college-level coursework would drive hoards of s tudents even fur ther f rom our campuses. There was picketing. There was turmoil. Benno and I were even accused of e thnic cleansing by a commit tee of the City Council . That gives an idea of the kind of opposi t ion that g ree ted our l imited and reasonable proposal . Police in riot gear were n e e d e d to keep o rde r at meetings of the trustees, and that a tmosphere prevailed until the desires and ex

Higher education · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Philosophy of education · Political science · Sociology · Academic Freedom and Politics · Engineering · Law · Psychology