Alexi Shalom 6/6/13 MHC 250

A Free, Accessible, and Democratic Education at the City University of New York
With the approval of yet another tuition hike at the City University of New York (CUNY) to the tune of $1,500 over five years (Prez-Pea, 2011), the question of who CUNY is supposed to serve has risen to the forefront, now that increases totaling $900 since the Spring 2011 semester have taken effect. These hikes will culminate in the 2015-2016 school year, leaving undergraduate four-year college tuition at $6,330 (Prez-Pea, 2011), which, while noticeably lower than tuition at many universities both public and private around the country, still remain a large obstacle to working-class students who wish to attend college. The continued increasing shift of the burden of funding CUNY from the budgets of New York State and New York City to pockets of New York City students marks a neoliberal trend beginning in the 1970s with the gradual repeal of social welfare reforms enacted in the period between 1930 and 1970. With this trend of increased tuition we also see, in recent years, more and more youth who are both unemployed and simultaneously not enrolled in school. As of 2012, 20% of New Yorkers between the age of 18-24 were both unemployed and not enrolled in school (Bischof, 2012), a statistic which should be attributed to both a lack of good jobs and lack of access to affordable higher education. For these youths, many from underprivileged backgrounds, a bachelors degree would make employment 20% more probable (Hall, 2013) and a lifetime earnings total of a million dollars more 1

than if they only held a high school diploma (Fitzgerald, 2012). With many youth unemployed and almost half of New Yorkers living in poverty or near-poverty (Roberts, 2013), these potential students are stuck in a feedback loop where they cannot afford to pay for college because they cannot get a (well-paying) job, and they cannot get a (well-paying) job because they cannot afford to pay for college. Of course, financial issues are not the only obstacle preventing working-class students from attending CUNY. There is also the issue of admissions standards and remedial education, which ended at senior colleges in 1999 with the end of open admissions. These admissions standards, which force students who are not deemed college-ready into community colleges, where they cannot receive bachelors degrees and must pay for remedial classes without receiving college credit. This is certainly a barrier to higher education for many youth in New York City. Particularly among Black and Latino communities college readiness is incredibly low, with only 13% of Black students and 15% of Latino students graduating prepared for college (Shapiro, 2012). This signifies that over 85% of Black and Latino students will be unable to attend senior colleges and will pay extra for remedial classes which will not be accredited toward any degree, leading to the massive CUNY drop-out rate of students in remedial programs of 73% (New York Daily News, 2011). The question then should be posed of how to remove these barriers, which disproportionately affect immigrants and communities of color in New York City. One solution that has previously been offered to at least the financial problems of students are student loans, which have subsequently left millions in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, after college, thus almost negating the

financial benefits of a college degree itself. It seems that the only answer for New York City is to provide free, quality, higher education to all high school graduates through the City University New York, facilitated by the repeal of the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate and the restoration of remedial courses to four year institutions. Additionally, it is important that such a victory be upheld and protected, once it is gained, and thus the governance of CUNY must be shifted from a technocratic, business-oriented Board of Trustees appointed by the Mayor and Governor, to a democratically elected board of students, faculty, staff, and community members for whom CUNY is supposed to work. While these suggestions may seem controversial, they will be categorically addressed later in this paper.

A Brief History of Tuition and Admission Standards at the City University of New York The City University of New York was initially founded as the Free Academy in 1847 with the stated purpose of providing free higher education to the children of the whole people (Gunderson, 2003). From its birth, the Free Academy, which would later expand into the larger CUNY system, was driven by the will of the people, having been initiated as a result of a popular referendum (Katz, 1976). CUNY, while free for over 125 years, however, institutionalized restrictions on who could attend, effectively limiting enrollment to White protestants from 1847-1882 by limiting admission to graduates of public school (to the exclusion of Catholic schools), and then doing away with open admissions in 1927 by mandating a minimum 72% high school average as a condition for admission. Admission

standards grew and grew, until in 1963, an 87% high school average was necessary for admission to Brooklyn College. These admission standards in the 20th century were largely to the exclusion of Black and Latino youth, whose total student population was 1,500 in 1968, almost all exclusively enrolled via the SEEK (remedial) program, although they made up 40-45% of the total public high school system (Gunderson, 2003). In 1969, Black and Puerto Rican students rose up against this injustice and initiated a student strike and occupation at City College, demanding proportional racial representation in CUNY. Their actions led to the policy of open admissions, that same year, which allowed any high school graduate to attend CUNY, regardless of their grade point average, free of charge (Meyers, 1997). By 1976, CUNYs population had gone from 5% minority students, to majority-minority, and the number of students enrolled had quadrupled. In that same year, tuition was imposed on students for the first time in the institutions history, when, President Ford refused to bail New York City out of the Fiscal Crisis of 1975, leading to deep cuts to city social services, and, subsequently the charging of tuition. These fees, then led to a decrease, within one year, in enrollment by 70,000 students and the resumption of a majority White student body (Gunderson, 2003). Tuition incrementally increased in the period after 1976, and, in 1999, the Board of Trustees effectively did away with open admissions at CUNY by removing remedial classes from CUNYs Senior Colleges and instituting GPA and SAT score requirements. These policies led to a decrease in Black enrollment by 4% overall from 1999-2005, and at some campuses, upwards of a 9% decrease in African-

American enrollment (JBHE, 2007). And so, here CUNY now stands with tuition fees upwards of $6000 a year and heavy academic requirements for entry.

Implementation of Open Admissions An open admissions policy is crucial to ensuring the true accessibility of the City University of New York to young New Yorkers, as well as ensuring proportional racial representation, without the exclusion of certain groups, particularly Latinos and African-Americans. The debate over open admissions, in general, comes down to the question of the purpose of college: is it a social sorting institution or an institution that serves to provide social mobility to people? If we determine the later, then we must also question what there is truly to be gained from selective admissions. In fact, what a policy of selective admissions doesand with no compelling educational reasonis to educate those students who have already attained relatively high levels of cognitive and noncognitive development while excluding precisely those high school graduates who would benefit most, with respect to value added, from attending college (Karabel, 1972). Therefore, if we determine that CUNY, as was its original mission, must serve as an institution of restitution to right the wrongs of the past and give social mobility and knowledge to disadvantaged people, we must do away with all admissions requirements at the City University for New York City residents, and restore remedial education to the senior colleges. Remedial classes should be divided into several tiers, which would allow for an appropriate amount of credits to be accrued based on the context and level of

each class, thus addressing both the issues of potentially devalued degrees and of those concerned that remediation will lead to a bloated population of students who must remain in these institutions until they are sufficiently remediated (Table 4.). On the first tier are those classes for which students will receive no credit. These include basic reading and writing, basic arithmetic, and other basic skills below a sixth grade level. Students will receive no college credit for these classes because they do not consist of any new information since primary and secondary education. Half credit will be assigned to the majority of remedial classes, which will be jointly taken with standard college classes. For example, MATH 020 (Remedial) should be taken jointly with MATH 100, which normally necessitates proficiency in solving linear equations. Remedial students will take both classes concurrently, filling in the gaps as they go, and receiving the normal 3 credits for their MATH 100 class, while receiving 1.5 credits for their remedial MATH 050 course. These credits are given because they directly contributed, as an auxiliary to the MATH 100 course, and thus should be counted towards the degree. Finally, the last tier of remedial classes will exist for classes with lab or discussion sections. Students who are deemed remedial in these subjects will be mainstreamed into the larger lecture class, but then also focused into a single discussion section, which will facilitate extra academic assistance as needed. Students will receive the full 4 credits for passing the lab course, which will ultimately count towards their degree. The key to open admissions lies in the guarantee of a seat for every high school graduate in New York City. The problem could be fairly posed of why it is the duty of CUNY to rectify the issues of the public primary and secondary school

systems, diverting resources in order to tackle an issue which does not truly belong to CUNY. It should remain clear, with regard to this issue, that remediation is a transitional period which may be used until such time that the public school system corrects the racial inequalities inherent in that institution. There exists precedence for the CUNY system to attempt to rectify these racial inequalities in the period between 1969 and 1999, while no such precedence exists in the public school system. Therefore, remediation should exist only until such a point that the secondary school system has shifted into such a place that people of color, immigrants, and working-class people are not receiving lower quality educations than their white or upper-class counterparts. Once this educational issue has been solved remediation can be phased out, but until that point, CUNY must offer remediation as a crucial part of open admissions in order to ensure access to marginalized communities. Additionally, given the new population that will inevitably enter CUNY as a result of open admissions, it is important that the college focus resources towards the expansion of language, ethnic studies, gender studies, and labor studies departments at each campus. This curriculum is necessary for the college to remain relevant to a newly formed base which will consist largely of English Language Learners, immigrants, and people of color. In order to create a community of understanding within CUNY, these classes must not only be offered, but part of the General Education Requirements of CUNY, that all students learn about the marginalized histories of people of color, women, and workers in the United States so as to create a campus community which is built upon diversity within solidarity

rather than racial strife. This would ultimately mean the repeal of the new so-called Pathways Initiative which abolishes pluralism and diversity requirements in favor of a more STEM-oriented curriculum. However, a core curriculum would still be a necessary requirement under open admissions, as it would be a barrier to the micro-recreation of the restrictive admissions standards within the different colleges (with some being of higher quality than others). To that end, a core curriculum, which takes into account historically marginalized voices, must eventually be decided upon jointly by students and faculty

Implementation of Free Tuition Free Tuition at the City University of New York could become a very feasible reality through a number of tax allocation plans. Of these, the most direct method to raise money would be through the partial repeal of the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate by the New York State Legislature and the Governor of New York. The Stock Transfer Tax currently charges between $.01 and $.05 (depending on the price per share) of all stocks that are sold within New York State. However, currently, there also exists in place a 100% rebate of these funds after a claim is filed, leaving the State with no tax revenue from the millions of stock transfers that occur each day in the New York Stock Exchange (New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, 2010). The general repeal of the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate would generate over $16 billion dollars in tax revenue, and, if the rebate were lowered by just 20%, New York State could generate $3.2 billion dollars. Comparatively, if the rebate were lowered by 33%, New York State could generate $5.3 billion dollars while charging a negligible

amount on stock transfers (Deutsch, 2009). The current total CUNY budget amounts to about $2.8 billion including almost half of funding coming from the tuition of students (City University of New York, 2012). If we assume, for the moment that the CUNY population does not increase as a result of the elimination of tuition, and we ignore the question of open admissions for a moment then the entirety of the CUNY budget could be paid for by a reduction of the tax rebate by merely 20% over four years (Table 1.), amounting to an average of $.006 per transaction, less than a penny. If, however, we assume that the population doubles within four years, again discounting open admissions (Table 2.), we can still see that the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate would only need to be reduced by 45% in order to account for this double in population and budget, which equates to an average of a $.0135 tax per transaction, again just about a penny. Finally, addressing the issue of open admissions and assuming similar increases in the rate of enrollment as those in 1969-1975, with the enrolled population quadrupling (Table 3.), the Rebate would have to be lowered to 30% (a 70% cut) over four years, weighing in at an average of a $.02 per transaction fee. Alternatively, other funding sources could be used by New York City to supplement the Stock Transfer Tax, lowering the effective tax rate and the States overall contribution to CUNY. These include $1.2 billion in savings (7.5% in potential earnings of the Stock Transfer Tax), which could be obtained through New York Citys demand for the end of subsidies for banks, the restoration of the Millionaires Tax, and taxing hedge fund profits, among other current tax loopholes (Kink, 2011). The question of whether businesses and brokerages, of course, would flee New York City given such a tax is legitimate. However, it should be understood

that $.02 could hardly cause such a flight, and that, given the location of the New York Stock Exchange, the biggest Stock Exchange in the world, in New York City, it seems doubtful that brokerages will leave New York City any time soon. Additionally, once enrollment bottlenecks after an initial surge of students who graduated high school long ago and are only now able to access a college education now that it is free, the costs will be much less, and the CUNY system will only be primarily responsible for guaranteeing a seat for each of the some 52,000 students who graduate every year from public high school, rather than the multitudes that will enroll in the first five to ten years of free tuition. This will lead to lower costs and a potential restoration of the formerly collected portion of the Tax Rebate after the first few years of free tuition, along with funds becoming available for capital investments within the university to increase quality of life and the quality of education. However, it is incredibly important that the initial influx of funds be sufficient enough to tackle this primary surge of formerly excluded students, which was the problem of the 1969-1975 period, leading to the insolvency of the institution due to lack of funds. Additionally, the implementation of free tuition via the partial repeal of the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate will allow for approximately $1.4 billion dollars in State funds and $292 million dollars in city to be distributed to other social projects in New York State and City, filling budget gaps left by previous administrations. Finally, the end of tuition fees could act as an indirect stimulus for students, leaving them with an average of $4200 dollars extra in their pockets at the end of the four-year phase-out of tuition which could then serve to stimulate the economy, given their high marginal propensity to spend, and create more jobs for

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them to fill once these students have graduated from CUNY (City University of New York, 2012).

Restructuring of CUNY Governance The CUNY Board of Trustees, currently CUNYs highest body of governance, is made up of sixteen voting members, of which one is a student, elected by the University Student Senate, ten are appointed by the Governor of New York, and the rest are appointed by the Mayor of New York City. There is also one professor, elected by the University Faculty Senate, who sits on the Board but does not hold voting rights (City University of New York, 2008). These trustees are largely business people with little to no immediate connection to the City University of New York, and, as such, cannot be trusted to uphold free tuition and open admissions should these gains be won. Therefore, the CUNY Board of Trustees must be abolished by the New York State Legislature and the CUNY governance structure should be reconvened as a democratic Board of Higher Education, comprised by a third of students, elected by their peers, a third of faculty and staff, elected by their co-workers, and a third of community members elected directly by residents of New York City. A potential governance structure can be seen in Figure 1. These constituencies, which consist of those directly affected by the CUNY system, can be trusted to hold to interests of the most affected communities in making decisions about the CUNY system, rather than making smart business decisions which represent the will of a technocratic elite rather than the democratic will of the people. Individual campuses must also eliminate the technocratic academic

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governance system in order to protect the discretionary funding of third world, labor, and gender studies from the mayor-appointed presidents of the CUNY college, many of whom, including the President of Hunter College, Jennifer Raab, have no prior educational experience whatsoever (Franck, 2001). Again, here, campus bureaucracies should be slimmed down, redistributing funds to student services and faculty/staff salaries, and top administrators should be replaced by councils of faculty, staff, students, and community who may elect an executive from among them to carry out the day-to-day executive functions of the college. This will allow campuses to maintain autonomy from the potential political leanings and nepotism of the mayor and the governor, and ensure and campus which works for those it is meant to serve. In all cases of governance of the City University system, the yardstick of decision-making to the extent affected must be used, rather than the current system of making technocratic, business-smart decisions in an nontransparent manner. An economistic perspective towards the governance of CUNY i.e. governing CUNY as if it were a business leads to policies that are bad in the long run for the people CUNY is supposed to protect, because this thinking rationalizes policies such as tuition fees, general academic exclusion, highly-exclusive honors programs, where honors is not a challenge but instead a prize that comes with immediately tangible awards, and the exclusion (whether direct or indirect) of under-performing racial and socioeconomic groups.

Addressing Potential Criticisms

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Several potential criticism of this proposed plan can be anticipated, and so they will be addressed categorically in this section. Primarily the argument about free tuition and open admission at institutions of public higher education is one between those who hold a fundamental belief in the role of the state in social programs and those who hold that the state should have no involvement in the average daily life of citizens, instead allowing the market to regulate the prices of everything, including education. We will not attempt to enter this debate which is more abstract and philosophical than it is material, but rather confront some major concrete points of criticism of a free, democratic, and accessible CUNY. First among arguments is to compare CUNYs tuition to the rest of the countrys universities, both public and private and conclude that CUNY students should not be advocating for free tuition on the basis that CUNY provides one of the cheapest educations in world. To counter this argument we must first understand that access to education must be considered a right and not a privilege, much like air, water, free speech, or the right to a trial. Education is the one force besides nepotism which can propel people from lower socioeconomic statuses into higher ones, and as such, must be considered the right to life, as an education can truly mean the difference between employment and unemployment, which, in many cases can mean the right to life. Now that we have established this equivalency, we should take a look at the commodification of other so-called rightswater, for example, in some packaging can cost upwards of ten dollars a bottle, while it is fairly undisputable that access to clean water is a universal right without having to pay a fee. If all water were commoditized, and the city provided it for a fee of one dollar a

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bottle, would residents not be correct in advocating for free water, despite the fact that they are getting a comparatively better deal than those who are willing to pay ten dollars a bottle? Of course not, and so the same goes with educationjust because some people are paying exorbitant fees, does not mean others should be satisfied with significantly lower, but still out of reach for some, fees for education. The question of diminishing quality also comes into play with an increased population with a lower set of skills coming into CUNY. However, this is simply a falsehood, spread by those who wish, once again, for the purpose of higher education to be social sorting rather than reparations, social mobility, and truly educative purposes. In fact, previous issues with Open Admissions have almost entirely come from poor implementation on the part of administrators and an unwillingness to fund such projects from legislators. Additionally, such failures of open admissions have been categorically overstated, where CUNYs dropout rate under open admissions stayed at 50%, similar to the national average. Furthermore, in many institutions which have previously held a policy of open admissions, it can be seen that there was no academic between upperclassmen students enrolled as a result of open admission policies and their counterparts who would have been accepted whether or not open admissions was in place (Harrison, 1979). The issue of financial feasibility have also already been addressed, but it is important to simply reiterate the number of possible tax plans that could fund free tuition with open admission while not only having a neutral effect on the economy, but also with the possibility that these policies could actually stimulate the economy

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of New York State. Furthermore, it could fairly be said that as a result of such a funding scheme, CUNY funding would be subject to the whim of the market. However, when realizing that CUNY was free through both World Wars, the Great Depression, and the Vietnam War, it seems unlikely that either high federal spending or market downturns could affect aid to tuitiononly manufactured crises like the one in 1975 could complete that task.

Conclusion In summary, in order to rectify the racial and socioeconomic problems of the public secondary school system and society as a whole it is crucial that the New York State Legislature repeal all tuition fees from the City University of New York which can be implemented via the partial repeal of 20%-70% of the Stock Transfert Tax Rebate. Additionally, an education at CUNY should be guaranteed to all residents of New York City with a high school degree, and, in order to ensure these students succeed, to implement a program of remediation, with tiers of remedial classes which may lead to a credited degree. Finally, in order to protect these gains, the appointed Board of Trustees must be replaced by a democratically elected Board of Higher Education, which consists of students, faculty/staff, and community members.

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Bibliography Ballard, Allen B. The Education of Black Folk: The Afro-American Struggle for Knowledge in White America. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1973. Bischof, Jackie. Youth Unemployment by the Numbers, From NYC to the U.S. The Wall Street Journal 12 July. 2012. Web. 3 June 2013. City University of New York. Office of Budget, Finance and Fiscal Policy. CUNY 20082012 Master Plan City University of New York. Office of Budget, Finance and Fiscal Policy, CUNY 2013 2014 Budget Request Crocco, Francesco. Public Higher Education at CUNY Qui Parle 20.1: 219-232. CUNYs Black Students Are Once Again Under the Budget-Cutting Knife. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 12 (1996): 24-25. CUNY dropout rates show public schools arent preparing kids.New York Daily News. 26 November 2011. Web. 3 June 2013. Deutsch, Ron. Better Choice Budget Campaign Fact Sheet. New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness. 2009. Web. 3 June 2013. Farago, John M. and Weinman, Janice. The Decline in CUNY Applications: Who and How Come. Research in Higher Education 8.3 (1978): 193-203. Fitzgerald, Jay College degree is costly but it pays off over time. The Boston Globe. 7 October 2012. Web. 3 June 2013. Franck, Elizabeth. Night of the Hunter: College in Chaos After Raabs Hire. New York Observer. 26 February 2001. Web. 3 June 2013 Gunderson, Christopher. "The Struggle for CUNY: A History of the CUNY Student Movement, 1969-1999." Diss. City University of New York, 2003. Hall, Sarah Hofius. College educated more likely to have job The Scranton Times Tribune. 17 March 2013. Web. 3 June 2013. Harrison, Benjamin T. and Rayburn, Wendell G. Open Admissions Does Not Kill Colleges. Peabody Journal of Education 56.2 (1979): 144-153 Healy, Timothy S. The Case for Open Admissions: New Problems: New Hopes. Change 5.6 (1973): 24-29.

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Hing, Julianne. The Student Aid Reform Victory is a Win for Students of Color. Colorlines.com 26 March 2010. Web. 3 June 2013. Karabel, Jerome. Open Admissions: Towards Meritocracy or Democracy. Change 4.4 (1972): 38-43. Katz, Jeffrey M. Letter from the Barricades: What Price CUNY? Change 8.5 (1976): 45-47 Kink, Michael. Pay Back Time: $1.5 Billion Ways To Save Our City's Budget And Make the Big Banks Pay. Rep. On May 12 Coalition 2011. Meyers, Bart. In Defense of CUNY. The Radical Teacher 53 (1998): 33-37 Meyers, Bart. The CUNY Wars. Social Text 51 (1997): 119-130. Muoz, Carolina B. A Dream Deferred: Undocumented Students at CUNY The Radical Teacher 84 (2009): 8-17. New Admissions Rules at the City University of New York Will Further Curtail Black Student Enrollment at CUNYs Four Year Colleges. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 57 (2007): 36-37. Prez-Pea, Richard. "Amid Protests by Students and Others, CUNY Trustees Vote to Raise Tuition." The New York Times., 28 Nov. 2011. Web. 3 June 2013. Roberts, Sam. City Report Shows More Were Near Poverty in 2011. The New York Times. 21 April 2013. Web. 3 June 2013. Shapiro, Julie. Most Black and Latino Students Unprepared for College, Study Says. DNAinfo New York. 24 October 2012. Web. 3 June 2012. Stock Transfer Tax. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. 29 November 2010. Web. 5 June 2013.

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Tables and Figures Table 1. If CUNY Population Remained the Same (No Open Admission) Year 0 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 STT Rebate 100% 95% 90% 85% 80% Tuition $1,210.5 $943.8 $556.4 $156.35 $0 (millions) City Support $291.7 $25 $0 $0 $0 (millions) Non-STT $1,381.9 $1115.2 $727.8 $327.75 State Aid (millions) STT $0 $800 $1600 $2400 Revenue (millions) Total Aid $2.821.1 $2.821.1 $2.821.1 $2.821.1 (millions) (Figures from City University of New York, 2012 and Deutsch, 2009) $0 $3200 $2.821.1

Table 2. If CUNY Population Doubled Within 4 Years (No Open Admissions) Year 0 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 STT Rebate 100% 88.75% 77.5% 66.25% 55% Tuition $1,210.5 $943.8 $556.4 $156.35 $0 (millions) City Support $291.7 $25 $0 $0 $0 (millions) Non-STT State Aid (millions) STT Revenue (millions) Projected Necessary Total Aid (millions) $1,381.9 $0 $2821.1 $1115.2 $1800 $3500 $727.8 $3600 $4500 $327.75 $5400 $5500 $0 $7200 $6000

(Figures from City University of New York, 2012 and Deutsch, 2009) Table 3. If CUNY Population Quadrupled Within 4 Years (Open Admissions) Year 0 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 STT Rebate 100% 80% 60% 40% 30%

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Tuition (millions) City Support (millions) Non-STT State Aid (millions) STT Revenue (millions) Projected Necessary Total Aid

$1,210.5 $291.7 $1,381.9 $0 $2.821.1

$943.8 $25 $1115.2 $3200 $5000

$556.4 $0 $727.8 $6400 $7000

$0 $0 $0 $9600 $9000

$0 $0 $0 $11200 $11000

(Figures from City University of New York, 2012 and Deutsch, 2009) Table 4 No Credit Classes taken in: -Basic arithmetic -Basic reading -Basic writing Half Credit Classes taken: -Jointly with a corresponding non-remedial class Full Credit Classes taken: -With remedial discussion section

Figure 1

Students

Faculty

Commu nity

Students

Faculty

Commu nity

Students Students

Faculty

Commu nity

Faculty

Commu nity

Hunter Governance Council

BMCC Governance Council

Brooklyn College Governance Council

Other Campuses Governance Councils

Board of Higher Education

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