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PSCcuny
Labor and Professional
Affiliates Critique the Master Plan
A
Resolution On Open College Access
Approved
by the 29th Constitutional Convention of the
New
York State AFL-CIO
From
the Professional Staff Congress, AFT Local 2334: “To Educate the
Children of the Whole People—Restoring Open Access to Higher
Education.”
WHEREAS,
the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (entered into force 1/3/76 in accordance with article
27) mandates that “Higher education shall be made equally
accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means,
and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education”;
and
WHEREAS,
open access to college is an issue that unites the interests of K-12 and
college teachers in promoting “the education of the children of the
whole people,” the mission statement of the City College at its
founding in New York City in 1847; and
WHEREAS,
open access policies at the City University of New York (beginning with
the Open Admissions program won in 1969 by militant, faculty-supported,
student direct action at City College), and more generally nationwide,
have given hundreds of thousands of working-class students, students of
color, and recent immigrants their only chance to obtain a first-rate
college education; and
WHEREAS,
the education and life chances of a significant segment of “the
children of the whole people,” especially people of color and new
immigrants, and the economic health and vitality of all working people
are at risk as social inequality continues to widen in the United
States; and
WHEREAS,
open access policies at the City University of New York (CUNY) and
across the country have suffered vicious political attacks from their
inception, including vilification by politicians and the media,
constantly rising tuition and spurious high-stakes testing barriers for
students, precipitous cuts in public funding under both Democratic and
Republican governors, and the shrinking by half of full-time CUNY
college faculty and staff through attrition, and increasing recourse by
management to disgracefully exploited part-time faculty; and
WHEREAS,
the attack on open access has been sharply escalated by the Trustees’
1999 abolition of developmental courses (remediation) at the CUNY senior
colleges; and
WHEREAS,
implementing high standards, which CUNY faculty strongly advocate,
emphatically does NOT mean preventing high school graduates from
entering the senior colleges because they are in need of certain
developmental or remedial courses:
RESOLVED, that the New York State AFL-CIO strongly supports the right of all high school graduates to have an equal opportunity to obtain a college education at affordable tuition (with the progressive introduction of free college education), and therefore strongly supports the restoration of open access, developmental courses, and reduced tuition at the City University of New York.
TESTIMONY ON THE CUNY MASTER PLAN, 2000-2004
Presented
at the New York State Board of Regents Hearing
September
6, 2000
General
Secretary, American Association of University Professors
As
General Secretary of the AAUP, I begin by stating my pleasure at being able to
present my comments on the CUNY Master Plan before a body that has shown itself
so hospitable to the faculty point of view in its past actions.
I am thinking, of course, of this Board’s actions on behalf of Adelphi
University at a time when that institution was undergoing severe internal crises
that came to be exacerbated by accelerating divisions among its board,
administration, and faculty.
Let
me recall the context of the Board of Regents deliberations about Adelphi four
years ago. I do not want to dwell
upon the relatively ephemeral matters of executive salary and misuse of funds,
because the Board’s more significant findings had to do with the role of the
faculty in helping to determine the future of the university to which they had
committed their careers.
The
Board made such a principled and eloquent defense of the faculty’s role in
governance back then, that part of its report was published in our journal Academe
as a signal contribution to the matter of how governance works in a community of
searchers for and promulgators of learning.
I quote: “The academy is a unique institution whose philosophical
goals, modes of operation, and governance structure distinguish it from other
not-for-profit organizations and business corporations.
In fulfilling its academic mission, the modern university is guided by
the principle of shared responsibility” (70).
Further, the Regents approved of the principle that “members of the
Faculty are uniquely qualified to participate in the governance of the
University, particularly with respect to academic matters and related
educational policies and procedures.”
Aside
from, and more important than, the disputes with the manner of administration at
Adelphi, the Regents’ report deplored the lack of faculty consultation on a
number of critical issues—appointments to major academic positions,
elimination of certain programs, the institution of an Honors College, and the
institution of a core curriculum. Indeed,
the Regents concluded that Adelphi’s board, by failing to implement shared
governance in these decisions, had aided “the generation of conflict and
obstruction of the consensus needed to make shared responsibility work.”
In concluding, the Board noted that although Adelphi had a collective bargaining agreement with its AAUP chapter, its responsibilities for shared governance were also deeply embedded in the nature of the University’s own Articles of Governance. You will doubtless recall that your Board removed all but one of the members of the Adelphi Board. And that Board removed the president and then proceeded to return the school to its founding principles. You may also be aware that Adelphi made two major administrative appointments to begin its recovery: it named as its new president Dr. Matthew Goldstein, head of CUNY’s Baruch College, and it named the AAUP chapter president, Gail Insler, Dean of the College! What an instance of consensus those two appointments signified.
Now, of course, Matthew Goldstein is Chancellor of CUNY. And he confronts, with you, a similar set of circumstances: many of the faculty at CUNY have grave doubts that faculty expertise in education, commitments to its university, and capacity for consensus have been honored. Further, it should be understood that these doubts are founded less on the ebb and flow of individual temperaments than upon a larger and systemic mistakenness about the nature of the university. The language of the Master Plan is a corporate language---one that sees the university as an enterprise that must follow managerial mandates rather than seek collegially derived solutions. Notwithstanding the high sounding rhetoric, faculty worry that in seeking global solutions to local problems, the Plan is seriously in error.
Let us take, for example, the establishment of a core curriculum and Honors College, with the attendant diminution of remedial programs. Each of these can be worthy features of university planning, but each can also take a variety of forms. Choosing the right ones depends upon knowledge of a particular locale’s students, their traditions and expectations, and the ways in which these require modifications.
Everybody aims, of course, to permit each student to gain that foundation of information, mastery of skill, and critical acuity that constitute higher education. But the elected faculty leadership of CUNY, in their long tradition of responsible participation in university governance, knows that if politics is always local, so is learning in some sense. At least it is best begun within communities that give students a local habitation and a name. To be sure, members of the CUNY Board have some familiarity with those habitations, but the faculty live in them day by day. To introduce wide-ranging changes without taking into account the experience of such faculty is a major obstacle in building consensus.
You have seen the results of such a mistaken project in a sister institution on Long Island. You have also seen the results—applauded nationally—of your effort to bring faculty and administrators and alumni and students together to try again. Now is another such time when such a return to governance would reverberate across the country once more. And the faculty of CUNY is ready.
At Adelphi in greeting the new regime enabled by the New York State Regents, the union president welcomed its “new leadership roles with confidence, approbation, and pride” pledging to work together. Speaking for our colleagues at CUNY, I want to assure you that they are also ready to bring all the structures of their self governance—their union, their senate, their departmental bodies—together now properly to review and renew a workable plan to meet the needs of the students of New York City. They need you to give them the chance to do this by delaying approval of the Master Plan.
Presented
at the New York State Board of Regents Hearing
September
6, 2000
Both
the University Faculty Senate and the union agree that the Master Plan has been
submitted to you without the kind of widespread and genuine consultation that
makes for good programming in higher education, or, for that matter, anywhere
else. It does not make sense for
administrators to bypass the views and recommendations of people who work with
students on a daily basis. Skipping
consultation may make decisions faster, but not better—important issues are
usually missed, impractical ideas are enshrined on paper (but rarely can be
implemented) and staff “buy in” is nonexistent.
In
the collegiate context, difficult and nuanced decisions have to be made about
complex issues of curriculum, standards and teaching, free of ideology or
politics. Faculty may not always
make perfect decisions, but in the final analysis, academics are the ones most
likely to keep educational concerns front and center. That is why shared governance, with faculty primacy on
academic issues, has made America’s colleges and universities the greatest in
the world.
The
Professional Staff Congress raises a serious substantive concern.
Rather than developing a master plan to meet the university’s pressing
needs for more full-time faculty, smaller class sizes and an expansion of
access, the union contends that the Administration wants to create an illusion
of institutional improvement. They maintain that the plan essentially re-shuffles funds to
high-profile programs by draining support from the basic access programs that
make City University the engine of educational opportunity for all New Yorkers,
especially those who are minorities, immigrants and financially hard-pressed.
This concern is worthy of serious evaluation and faculty participation will enhance that evaluation. This is a case where a short “step back” may be needed to prevent a long-term step backwards for the University and the City it serves.
Presented
at the New York State Board of Regents Hearing
September
6, 2000
Good morning. I am Antonia Cortese, First Vice President of New York State United Teachers. I am here to testify on behalf of NYSUT and our 17,000 members comprising the City University Professional Staff Congress.
Attached
to my testimony you will also find a statement by the president of our national
affiliate—Sandra Feldman of the American Federation of Teachers.
I respectfully request that this statement also be incorporated into the
official record of this hearing.
We
urge the Regents to defer action on the proposed 2000-2004 City University
Master Plan and direct the CUNY Trustees and Chancellor to engage in serious
consultation with the University community.
The
fundamental defect of the proposed plan arises in the very first sentence of its
preamble:
The
Master Plan 2000-04 of the City University of New York reflects, for the first
time, long-range goals of CUNY’s new leadership: CUNY Board Chairman Herman
Badillo, Vice Chairman Benno Schmidt, and Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.
We
acknowledge their appointed roles in helping to shape policy for the City
University. But in formulating this
plan, they failed to respect the lawful and practical roles that PSC members
must exercise in that enterprise.
Put
simply, the vision of three men cannot move a University if it is not shared and
supported by the 17,000 men and women who supply the energy and dedication
needed to carry out the day-to-day work of the institution in teaching, research
and service.
Both
the PSC and the University Faculty Senate insist that the Trustees and
Chancellor Goldstein failed to solicit or obtain input from the University
faculty in any meaningful way. Consultation
with faculty in academic policy-making is required by the Trustees’ own
by-laws and by simple common sense. Further, whatever consultation may have taken place at the
campus level, it appears that the system’s leadership failed, in any event, to
incorporate most of the priorities that were identified and advanced by the
campuses. As such, this plan cannot
be said to reflect the hopes and aspirations of people at the campus level.
There
are aspects of the plan that NYSUT does find praiseworthy.
We especially applaud the five-year initiative to recruit highly
qualified full-time faculty and its goal of a 70/30 ratio of full-time to
part-time faculty. NYSUT’s
Representative Assembly has endorsed this ratio as a goal to be pursued on
behalf of all the state’s public colleges and universities.
Yet
even here we find cause for concern. The
proposed plan puts heavy emphasis on enriched staffing that would be targeted to
specific academic programs that are thought to reflect emerging economic needs.
But we must ask: To what
extent will additional faculty lines also be available to strengthen the broad
foundation of the University—the liberal arts and sciences?
And, if additional funding is not forthcoming, will resources be pulled
from that foundation to support these new and perhaps fleeting priorities?
The
plan states that “only by setting a course and holding steady to that course
can the University achieve its objectives . . .” Al Shanker expressed the same thought more plainly.
He said: “If you don’t
know where you are going, you’ll never get there.”
The
proposed plan lists page upon page of discrete initiatives.
Yet still it fails to convey a coherent vision of how the University will
carry out its assigned mission under state law—“. . . to maintain and expand
its commitment to academic excellence and to the provision of equal access and
opportunity . . .”
The
plan emphasizes raising standards and attracting better-prepared, more talented
students. NYSUT has always
supported high standards in the public schools; we cannot oppose appropriate
standards for institutions of higher learning.
We
support standards, however, as just one element in fulfilling the promise of
education to move all people toward better lives. We know that other steps are needed. At the elementary/secondary level, the Regents have been
forthright in advocating the resources necessary to put success within reach for
the public schools, their students and their teachers.
To fulfill its promise, CUNY must now have a similar dramatic infusion of
resources.
Since
1985, CUNY has lost more that 1,500 full-time faculty—a number equivalent to all
the tenured and tenure-track faculty at three of the University’s senior
colleges combined. No great
university can be built or sustained without repairing that damage.
The plan needs to present more compelling advocacy for the need to
rebuild the University’s permanent faculty across the broad spectrum of
disciplines, not merely in a handful of high-profile programs.
In
outlining the mission for CUNY’s predecessor—the Free Academy—founder
Horace Webster declared:
“The
experiment is to be tried . . . whether an institution of learning of the
highest grade may be successfully controlled by the popular will; not by the
privileged few, but by the privileged many.”
More
than 150 years later that question must still be continually asked and answered.
We hope that the Regents will insist on an answer in the affirmative.
We
ask that you send the plan back to the CUNY Trustees, and direct them to take
seriously their duty to obtain and consider input from the many who serve the
University as members of the Professional Staff Congress.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
Presented
at the New York State Board of Regents Hearing
September
6, 2000
Chancellor Hayden,
distinguished members of the Board of Regents, thank you for giving United
University Professions the opportunity to comment on the City University of New
York Master Plan. I am William E.
Scheuerman, president of UUP, the nation’s largest higher education union
representing 23,000 academic and professional faculty at the State University of
New York.
UUP
supports the position taken by our sisters and brothers of the Professional
Staff Congress recommending that the Regents delay approval of the CUNY Master
Plan. Rather than strengthening the
University in its quest to fulfill its mission of providing accessible and
affordable higher education to all the people of New York City, the Master Plan
will further stratify the University and compromise CUNY’s historic and
essential mission. Most
importantly, the Master Plan fails to address the loss of 5,000 full-time
faculty lines at CUNY over the last 25 years, and it is curiously silent on the
extensive funding cuts CUNY has been subjected to over the last decade.
From
the UUP perspective, the CUNY Master Plan also raises serious procedural
concerns regarding public higher education decision-making in New York State.
Similar to many recent actions by the SUNY Board of Trustees, the CUNY
Master Plan was approved by the CUNY Trustees in a rushed manner, without
consultation from the appropriate representative faculty and staff bodies.
This consultation, I should add, is explicitly required in the CUNY
By-laws.
The
CUNY Trustees’ adoption of a new core curriculum in the Master Plan brings
back memories of the SUNY Trustees’ similar violations of accepted ways of
doing business with regard to open meetings and shared governance.
Like the process at SUNY, the CUNY Trustees imposed a curriculum on the
University from the top down. Curiously,
they solicited no input from the very men and women whose professional training
and dedication make them best qualified to make decisions regarding the
curriculum.
UUP
urges the Regents to delay approval of the Master Plan until questions
concerning shared governance—a consultative process that has made America’s
colleges and universities the envy of the world—and other important issues
raised by the PSC, have been fully addressed.
Thank
you for giving UUP the opportunity to comment on these issues.
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