The fatuous featherbedders who run CUNY’s professors’ union are up to their old tricks: trying to derail the school’s hugely successful admissions and curriculum reforms.
The issue: once again, jobs.
More than a decade ago, as CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein and his allies fought furiously to toughen the university’s notoriously lax “open admission” entry standards, the Professional Staff Congress objected on ideological grounds — but mostly because fewer students would mean fewer teaching jobs in the four-year schools.
This time, the union wants a court to block CUNY’s plan to boost standards at its community colleges, while letting students take more courses of their choosing — including many that are more rigorous but that might require fewer teachers.
CUNY officials say they’ll ask the court to toss the case straight to Timbuktu.
Good.
Never mind the faculty members’ oft-radical rhetoric — they simply don’t care about the students or the school.
They’re worried about . . .themselves.
The changes, after all, would mean some of their courses would no longer enjoy guaranteed enrollments. That’s because core requirements would be streamlined, trimmed and upgraded.
They won’t admit this, of course.
Instead, they’ve done a rhetorical 180-degree turn from the late ’90s; then, they couldn’t care less about standards — now, they say, that’s all they care about.
“The faculty [who] . . . now claim to be concerned about the quality of a CUNY degree are the same ones who publicly opposed CUNY reforms in 1999,” notes Senior Vice Chancellor Frederick Schaffer.
Yet those early reforms, he says, “raised CUNY’s standards and resulted in record-breaking student enrollments and unprecedented student honors and awards.”
He’s right. Standards rose, and the school prospered — despite faculty opposition.
PSC President Barbara Bowen, who’s among those leading the drive against CUNY’s current plans, argued then for placing “diversity” over standards. “The intellectual mix in the classroom,” she said, “is . . . what power in this country fears.”
University Faculty Senate Chairwoman Sandi Cooper, meanwhile, had testified that ending remediation programs at CUNY’s senior colleges would “wreck the nation’s largest urban university” and trigger “college closings.”
Ranting that “the USA does not provide basic services to its population,” she actually threatened CUNY’s board with prosecution under federal civil-rights laws.
New York knows, of course, that since those measures were passed, CUNY has enjoyed a remarkable reversal of fortune.
Not only have enrollments gone up, but so has the quality of applicants — along with CUNY’s reputation.
Goldstein, again, is behind the current plan. He was right then; he’s right now.
And never mind the union’s baloney.