Opinion

CUNY triumphant

For years, we’ve been chronicling the ongoing campaign to raise admissions and academic standards at the City University of New York and restore the school’s once-top-shelf reputation. Now there’s impressive new evidence of how well that struggle has paid off.

CUNY’s City College of New York was just ranked New York’s top public college in the annual Forbes magazine rankings and No. 137 among all colleges nationwide — a jump of 232 spots from last year’s rankings and 418 since 2011.

That’s a stunning development for an institution that 20 years ago was, to be blunt, little more than a glorified high school that offered a diploma most employers considered worthless. Though CUNY was once regarded as “the poor man’s Harvard” (or “the Jewish man’s Harvard”), it declined dramatically with the introduction of open admissions and the lowering of standards throughout the 1970s and ’80s.

Moreover, unlike other national rankings, the one by Forbes — done in conjunction with the Center for College Affordability and Productivity — focuses not on what it takes to get into a college but on what students get out of the experience.

That means things like affordability, student debt, post-graduate success, nationally competitive awards won at the school and preparing students for the workplace. And in those areas, CCNY has made remarkable progress.

In recent years, CCNY has strongly upgraded its professional schools in fields like engineering, architecture and bio-medical education. And a new advanced scientific research center, staffed with a highly regarded cadre of scientists, is nearing completion.

All this has largely been made possible by generous donations, which also speaks to CCNY’s academic success: The school has regained the confidence of successful alumni, like Intel co-founder Andrew Grove and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and brought them back into the school’s orbit.

CCNY also has seen tremendous success in having its students win National Science Foundation fellowships and now has a thriving honors program. It’s compelling evidence that with higher standards comes a genuinely competitive student body.

And a student body, by the way, that’s better situated to enter the workforce relatively debt free: Only 15% of CUNY’s undergrads rely on federal loans.

It’s a remarkable success story any way you cut it. And it’s a testament to the importance of standards — and the work of people like former Chancellor Matthew Goldstein and former CUNY Chairman Herman Badillo. Their unceasing efforts have resulted in real academic dividends.