NY Times Letter: CUNY Chancellor's Tenure

Letter

CUNY Chancellor’s Tenure

Published: April 26, 2013   

To the Editor:

 

From inside the City University of New York, we have a more damning assessment of Chancellor Matthew Goldstein’s tenure than Eleanor Randolph’s recent encomium (“The Man Who Saved CUNY,” Editorial Notebook, April 21).

      

In fact, Mr. Goldstein’s initiatives lowered academic standards and restricted faculty autonomy, while black and Latino enrollment dropped. During his tenure, Mr. Goldstein’s total compensation doubled to well over half a million dollars, and top administrators’ salaries increased. Meanwhile, tuition has almost doubled, and more than half of CUNY classes are taught by adjuncts who make under $20,000 annually. Scandals proliferated, ranging from grade-fixing to presidential incompetence to gutting faculty governance, even as suppressing dissent has become policy, enacted in police assaults on peaceful protests at Baruch and Brooklyn College.

      

We call on the next chancellor to build a CUNY that publicly funds tuition, faculty autonomy, and a work force paid a living wage. We call on the CUNY administration to involve students, faculty and staff in choosing a chancellor who will make our university serve the public good, and put Mr. Goldstein’s abysmal legacy behind us.

      

ELIZABETH ADAMS
ISABELLE NASTASIA

New York, April 22, 2013

      

Ms. Adams, a CUNY Graduate Center student, and Ms. Nastasia, a Brooklyn College student, are writing on behalf of the CUNY Graduate Center General Assembly, Adjunct Project, Free University NYC and New York Students Rising.