The City University of New York has had a historical mission to
provide higher education to immigrants, the poor, and minority
Students. Its alumni include a distinguished roster of intellectuals
like polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk, who might not have had an
accessible and affordable college education were it not for CUNY.
Currently, the eleven colleges of the city university system enroll
more than 200,000 students, about two-thirds minority. Many of the
students are older; many have English-language challenges. Most of them
see higher education as a step out of poverty and toward opportunity.
Thanks to a new policy that was clearly endorsed by Republican
Governor George Pataki, thousands of students may not have the same
opportunity that has been offered since the college instituted its
“open enrollment” policies in 1970. Eventually, all students entering
the senior, four-year colleges — except recent immigrants who need
only language remediation — will have to pass three admissions tests
before matriculating. Those who do not pass will have only one
opportunity to master the material — during the summer. Otherwise,
they will be diverted to one of CUNY’s six community colleges — which
are already bursting at the seams.
Who will be excluded because of the Policy? Would you be surprised
to learn that two-thirds would be Asian American, African American, or
Latino? This represents nearly 8,000 Students a year who would be
diverted to “remedial programs” for deficiencies in even one of the
areas, of math, reading, and writing.
Meanwhile, 80 percent Of Our nation’s universities offer’ remedial
courses because students who have strengths in some areas may have
weaknesses in another — and 29 pet-cent of all college freshmen
nationwide are enrolled in at least one remedial course.
There is nothing wrong with remediation being offered in the
context of higher education, especially when students do not get
college credit for their remedial classes and when they can take some
college-level classes while they are simultaneously taking remedial
classes,
Because remediation has been part of higher education for quite
some time, those trustees of CUNY who say they are simply trying to
impose “educational standards at the university sound disingenuous. It
is clear that both Governor George Pataki (who seems to have lobbied
hard for the decision) and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (whose implicit
hostility to people of color was revealed in his comments about CUNY
students) had political axes to grind in their advocacy of the new
policy.
