CUNY Wants to Be a Model for Community College Education
The City University of New York school system hopes to open a
“college of the future” that would limit enrollment to under 5,000 students, offer degrees or certificates only in fields with promising job
growth, and serve as a model for community colleges nationwide, The New York Times reports (“CUNY Plans New Approach to Community College,” Jan. 26, 2009).
The proposed Manhattan community college is set to open in two years, but planning for the school has only gone as far as a 120-page
blueprint. CUNY is currently tapping a number of private donors to help fund the new school, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has committed hundreds of millions of
dollars to help double the number of postsecondary graduates in the United States by 2025.
Students of the proposed college would be required to attend a four-to-six week summer orientation, take classes full time, and keep in
close and consistent contact with academic advisors. The school’s curriculum would focus heavily on math and literacy.
Pilot Program Shows Initial Successes
For two years CUNY has been successfully incorporating many of the proposed ideas for the new college into a system-wide pilot program
called the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, known as
ASAP.
The 1,132 students enrolled in ASAP receive free tuition, books, and commuter passes for the New York metro system. Students also are given
priority over other CUNY students for class registration, making it easier for them to manage work and school schedules, and the opportunity
to meet with counselors twice a month.
ASAP students have earned higher grade point averages than CUNY students not in the program, a 2.61 GPA compared to a 2.43, and have taken
more credit hours than non-ASAP students, 11 credit hours compared to 9.6. And 80 percent of ASAP students have remained enrolled at CUNY
after two years, compared to 60 percent of CUNY students not involved in the program.
“What we promised was that within three years, we would graduate half the students who came in,” says CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. “We
are on track to do that.”
CUNY School Could Start a Community College Trend
Goldstein says the proposed college, which would be New York’s first new two-year school in 37 years, could help
free up resources at CUNY’s six existing schools, which have experienced a 31-percent increase over the past decade, and could help improve
the community college system’s 30-percent graduation rate.
In the long run, Goldstein believes that CUNY’s proposed higher education curriculum could serve as a model for the nation’s 1,045 two-year
schools, which currently enroll 6.2 million students, about 35 percent of the nation’s college students.
Goldstein says institutions of higher education “need bold and new approaches” to how they engage, support, and educate students.
“Our students will face increasingly competitive pressures in an unforgiving economy, and getting a degree matters,” he told the State
Assembly’s Committee on Higher Education during a budget cut hearing. “It is therefore in their interest to attend community colleges
where the focus is on high standards and degree completion.”