Dear Commons Community,
Inside Higher Education has an extensive article on CUNY and the current debate on Gen Ed requirements. This has received a lot of attention locally within CUNY but this brings the issue to our colleagues around the country. CUNY’s central administration proposed in January the creation of a common general education framework across all of our two- and four-year colleges, which would cause many institutions to significantly trim their current requirements, some of which require as many as 60 credits. CUNY has also proposed a brand-new, overarching transfer agreement that would guarantee that liberal arts and sciences courses taken for credit at any CUNY institutions be accepted for credit by any other CUNY institutions, even if an equivalent course exists at the transfer institution. The article comments that:
“The comprehensive reform efforts, including the trimming and standardization of general education requirements, that CUNY is pursuing are similar to efforts made within the State University of New York system two years ago and those currently being pursued between the California Community Colleges and the California State University System. Many higher education experts have commented in recent years that two- and four-year institutions should strive to make the transfer process easier and more seamless.”
At stake are important faculty governance and curriculum prerogatives. In addition there is a “push-me/pull-me” issue between community college faculty and four-year college faculty as to the quality of the two-year transfer courses vis-à-vis four-year degree programs. Our colleague, Sandi Cooper, chair of our CUNY-wide University Faculty Senate, is quoted as saying “the broad changes being proposed by CUNY’s central administration are a “transparent attempt to ensure faster graduation” and that while “citing student complaints about the problems of transfer,” it is “proposing a cure that threatens the entire validity of the four-year degree.”
Tony
I agree with Sandi Cooper on the import of the current proposals. Faculty and Instructional Staff need to look past the dire need for improvement in the credit transfer situation and look at the larger scheme of things. We know the pain that many-even most- students have with transfer. The issue is: what is the best way to remedy that? The current approach is being promoted and there has not been a consideration of alternatives. Why are we throughout CUNY being required to reformulate our core programs? The answer given is that this is what will ensure the transfer of credits for community college students and all students who move from one college to another and to another (“swirling”) in the CUNY system. There is no other alternative method considered or even mentioned. There is no argument advanced as to why this approach is the best approach to secure transfer of credits versus all others. No argument to establish that it is in the top three methods or even that it is the most practical of those considered All the data on the CUNY website for the Pathways Proposal is related to the problem with transfer of credits. There is no data to support the claim that this proposed method is going to work at CUNY.
Are there other methods to insure credit transfer? Sure? Here are some that come readily to mind, just to illustrate:
1. Make TIPPS work, really work
2. Better advisement- a lot more investment in advisement
3. a BOT Policy that prohibits the senior colleges from accepting transfer students from CUNY Community colleges until they have completed their associate degree and then all credits transfer.
4. Supporting CUNY wide and balanced (2yr /4yr) discipline councils that will set out what transfers and how it transfers for each course in each discipline and have those faculty decisions imposed by BOT Policy.
None of these were considered and rejected. The Pathways approach was set out and now it is being revised weekly if not daily as more and more difficulties with it are being realized. What it is that is being proposed as of today (4-21-11 )is not clear. What is clear is that the original draft proposal of January, 2011 is no longer the proposal. What has been steadfastly held is the approach through an imposed General Education reform framework and a limit on the total credits in General Education programs.
What is really going on here? Why the obstinacy and disrespect for faculty academic judgments? Is it suspicion of a continuation of the decades old stall of faculty at the senior colleges for respecting BOT Policy on transfer or something else?
Consider that the texts issued by the Chancellery over the last 24 months support the narrative in the work below.
CUNY: From University Adrift to University Submerging
In a period of decreasing financial support for public higher education, the City University of New York must contend with the dual challenges of educating high school graduates inadequately prepared for college level work, while at the same time satisfying the call to be publicly accountable for graduation rates. Presenting a public narrative that includes success through raising the graduation rate appears to be understood as necessary to securing adequate funding for post secondary education. As with many other institutions, CUNY has adopted a variety of measures to meet those challenges. But now, CUNY is about to distinguish itself in a most ignominious manner: it is seeking to remove its own faculty from their traditional role and professional responsibility to make academic judgments concerning the content and quality of programs and courses.
University administrators have identified what they believe are the programs, courses and transfer practices that present the greatest difficulties, hindrances and challenges to students. Instead of helping students meet those challenges by providing more support in the form of advisement, remediation, mentoring and tutorial aid — which would cost more — the University wants to remove its own faculty from any effective position in maintaining curricular requirements. Rather than support student mastery of real academic work, administrators are labeling many standard college classes as being “killer courses” which students do not really need to take. And how to relieve students of the requirement to take these classes? Take the faculty out of the equation. Faculty who insist on having college students demonstrate Mathematics proficiency beyond basic Arithmetic, or want students to show an understanding of Science through the use of Mathematics, are seen as preventing student progress to graduation. Faculty who call for students to demonstrate reading and writing skills beyond an 8th grade level are thought of as preventing those students from graduating, and so should no longer be able to determine what the graduation requirements are to be.
To accomplish its goal of raising graduation rates, the CUNY Chancellery has scheduled a package of items, called the “Pathways Project,” to be brought before the Board of Trustees. First and foremost, that package would diminish the number of credits required in the General Education area of the Liberal Arts and Sciences. It would substitute vague statements about “intellectual skills” as the objectives or outcomes for General Education, rather than mastery of specific content in areas such as Mathematics, Science, History, English, Foreign Languages, and Social Sciences. Never mind that the scope of the Liberal Arts and Sciences, which have prepared so many for their roles within an educated society, will be severely diminished. Never mind that this will mean less support for developing the ability of CUNY graduates to be well informed and to effectively participate in the democratic process.
Under the guise of better ensuring the transfer of credits for courses taken by students who move from one CUNY campus to another (and possibly to yet another), the Chancellery would require a central reformulation of more than 700 undergraduate degree programs. It would reduce requirements and let students fill in the gaps with electives of any sort from any units in the CUNY system. The highly regarded and successful programs that attract students to Baruch College, Brooklyn College and Hunter College, to name a few of the more than 20 campuses, would be gutted by a centrally imposed reorganization of their Liberal Arts and Sciences components.
The Chancellery knew full well that faculty would object to the abrupt ending of academic traditions that go back to very founding of the University in 1847, and that faculty would not take lightly to a record of academic excellence being threatened with destruction. So to remove faculty from obstructing its reduction in academic rigor and standards in its submissions to the Board of Trustees, the Chancellery has proposed removing faculty from making the decisions about what is to be taught, how it is to be taught, to whom it is to be taught, and even by whom it is to be taught! Now administrators will make those academic decisions and not the academicians! Faculty may be invited to make “recommendations,” but these need not be heeded — particularly if they are not cost effective or would in any manner hinder an “improved rate of student progress toward graduation.” Gone will be the “killer courses” and other such “obstacles” to student progress. If students want to avoid taking Mathematics above 8th grade level, CUNY will provide pathways to accomplish this. If students want to take a course in the history of New York City and have that count as a Sociology or Psychology course at another CUNY campus, CUNY will provide a pathway for that too. If faculty recommend otherwise, well, it will be duly noted, but the University will move on with its program to increase graduation rates and its self-promotion before the public view.
CUNY will make sure that its testing instruments cannot help but demonstrate the “effectiveness” of its reformulated academic programs. How will these instruments be guaranteed to present a favorable view and appear to be accountable to the public? The tests will not look at or measure mastery of the content of academic programs! Instead, they will measure the change in the level of the intellectual skills of reading and writing across a period of four to six years. These are instruments that show intellectual growth in all young persons over the six years from age 18 to age 24, regardless of whether they are in a college or not! They do not indicate what the causes might be for any measured changes; let alone what curricula may have contributed. As assessments of the outcomes of study, they are public relations devices and not academic measurements.
The Chancellery has repeatedly stated its desire that the faculty buy into the Pathways Project to insure “rigor” in the programs after the General Education changes — decimation really. In this the Chancellery may be “protesting too much” that the changes must be “faculty driven.” The only rigor that faculty may detect, if this package of proposals is put into effect, is the rigor mortis in the exercise of faculty prerogatives and responsibilities as professional educators. As there is no freedom of anything for the dead to exercise, there will be no academic freedom for CUNY faculty whose responsibilities will have been eviscerated from the corpus collegium.
With the freedom of faculty to insure academic integrity and excellence passing into history, so will go the quality of CUNY programs. If higher education is to serve this nation in recovering its place in the world economy and in maintaining its position in the Arts and Sciences, CUNY is decidedly moving away from participating in that effort. CUNY’s removal of faculty from the role of making academic policy decisions may well turn out to be its failure to contribute to the long-term national recovery effort in which improved education is a foundation stone.