Home About Us Media Kit Subscriptions Links Forum
APPEARED IN


View All Articles

Download PDF

FAMOUS INTERVIEWS

Directories:

SCHOLARSHIPS & GRANTS

HELP WANTED

Tutors

Workshops

Events

Sections:

Books

Camps & Sports

Careers

Children’s Corner

Collected Features

Colleges

Cover Stories

Distance Learning

Editorials

Famous Interviews

Homeschooling

Medical Update

Metro Beat

Movies & Theater

Museums

Music, Art & Dance

Special Education

Spotlight On Schools

Teachers of the Month

Technology

Archives:

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

1995-2000


DECEMBER 2005

CUNY Chancellor Announces
New Compact for Public Higher Education

By Joan Baum, Ph.D.

Parents, take note: Introduced by the president of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Education Association (CEI-PEA) Semour Fliegel, who hailed him as the first CUNY graduate to be the leader of a great public university, and someone Fliegel’s own father would have called a “prince of a man,” Matthew Goldstein, the chancellor of The City University of New York, gave an impassioned address on the need to rethink the funding of public higher education, citing along the way The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, new data on costs and student performance, and his mother. Quoting from Friedman’s best-seller The World Is Flat, the chancellor quoted Friedman’s observation that when he a child he was told “to finish his dinner because people in China and India were starving.” Today, Friedman tells his own children “to finish their homework because people in China and India are starving for their jobs.”

With compelling anecdotes and hard data, the chancellor effectively drove home his theme that there are moral, social and academic reasons why funding must be increased for public higher education in general and for CUNY in particular, and now. Although the chancellor had addressed CEI-PEA in February, the November 17 speech expanded on earlier discussion about private funding sources. This time time around, however, the emphasis was on the “public side” of higher education funding. Specifically, the chancellor proposed implementing recommendations recently made by a university task force.  Called Investing in Futures: A New Compact for Public Higher Education, the initiative would bring together various funding constituencies: the state, the city, the university, friends and alumni and the students through a 3-31/2  percent tuition hike. Alone, the students can’t do it and the city and state won’t do it, but a “shared partnership” could efficiently and effectively meet global competition for skilled workers and serve the mission of the university.  To do less than  provide access and ensure equity, the chancellor said pointedly, looking out at the assembled guests, would be a “moral outrage.”
Though reading from prepared remarks, the chancellor paused at numerous times to emphasize what clearly is for him a personal, heartfelt mission. The facts are that public support for public higher education has plunged dramatically in the last decade, continuing a trend, thereby aggravating the disproportionate number of blacks who do not enroll in college or complete a degree, compared with whites. This “divide” in higher education and the work place, he pointed out, citing Bill Gates, has serious economic and social consequences for the country in keeping competitive, especially in the sciences. The numbers are frightening:  only 7 percent passing the physics regents, 18 percent chemistry. CUNY would address the challenge by way of more pipeline programs in the schools, full tuition scholarship for those who commit to teach math and science in middle and high schools, strengthened financial support for graduate school programs, guaranteed financial aid for poor but promising college-bound youngsters, refurbished science facilities at the colleges, and new collaborations with the Department of Education. But it all costs money. So what else is new?  A new way to get it.

The chancellor believes that a “self-leveraging” multi-year, multi-pronged investment initiative to effect CUNY’s Master Plan can provide a responsible means of funding public higher education: “If each [partner of the Contract] agrees to put in a share, each gets the benefits of the whole.” The chancellor noted the irony that CUNY is asking for more public support at a time when reports indicate that the university is at the top of its form in enrollment and academic performance. Indeed, four outstanding students sitting in the audience, heard their praises sung as winners of prestigious awards, an honors circle that includes, of course, the nation’s number-one Intel Science Talent Search Contest winner this year. The implications were clear: the public can be assured that their investments would bear fruit.

CEI-PEA, a  not-for-profit organization made up of private citizens dedicated to investing in public education, seeks to support school leaders, encourage parental involvement and infuse curricula with imaginative and efficient programs that will strengthen both the image and the functioning of urban public school systems.#

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE

Name:

Email:
Show email
City:
State:

 


 

 

 

Education Update, Inc.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2009.