Brooklyn College PSC-CUNY

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...

California, CUNY and MOOCs Michael Busch and StudentNation on April 25, 2013   In March, a bill was introduced in the California State Senate that, if passed, could radically redefine the role of online learning in American higher education. The proposed legislation, SB 520, would require state colleges and universities to grant credit to students who, unable to register for core classes at their home universities due to “bottleneck” conditions at the entry level, opt to register for massive open online courses (MOOCs) instead.   The bill is packaged by its champions as a necessary measure designed to defend the best interests of a student body under siege. “We want to be the first state in the nation to make this promise,” said Darrell Steinberg, the State Senate president. “No college student in California will be denied the right to move through their education because they couldn’t get a seat in the course they needed.” Detractors, however, attack it as a t...

April 25, 2013 Dear Colleague, In a few days you will receive in the mail a secret ballot for a referendum on a motion of No Confidence in Pathways. Voting by secret ballot takes place from May 9 to May 31. I urge you to participate in the referendum and to vote in support of the No Confidence motion. Why a No Confidence vote, and why now? Because this is the strategic moment to send a message to the incoming CUNY administration in a form they cannot ignore—and because the opposition to Pathways is so profound that it merits a No Confidence vote. University faculties traditionally take No Confidence votes only when the future of the institution is at stake and when all other methods of registering opposition have been unheard. We are in that position now. More than 100 resolutions have been passed against Pathways, more than 5,000 people at CUNY have signed a petition calling for its repeal, both the University Faculty Senate and the PSC have registered the...

CUNY boss’ $weet goodbye By SUSAN EDELMAN NY Post April 21, 2013     CUNY is planning a golden parachute for Chancellor Matthew Goldstein .   Goldstein, 71, who announced last week he will retire in June, will be offered an undetermined salary for activities such as teaching a graduate math class, fund-raising or helping with special projects, said Benno Schmidt, chairman of the CUNY Board of Trustees.   “We’ll craft a special package for Matt,” Schmidt told The Post. “We definitely want him to stick around and be active. He’s in very good health and in a position to make a good contribution.”   Schmidt said the salary — the first for a retired CUNY chancellor — has not yet been decided.     “I expect to discuss it with Matt probably in the next few weeks and take some set of recommendations to the board, probably in our May or June meeting,” he said.     In a move seemingly tailored to Goldstein, the...

Dear Colleague,    I am pleased to invite you to a mayoral forum focused on higher education—probably the only forum on higher education during this stage of the mayoral race. The event is organized by the PSC, and will take place this Tuesday, April 23, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College: 2180 Third Avenue, at 119 th Street. Reserve your space by replying here . Candidates for mayor Bill de Blasio, Adolfo Carrión, John Liu, Christine Quinn and Bill Thompson will be joined by journalist Tom Robbins as moderator. As an audience member, you will have an opportunity to propose questions for the candidates. Chances are that one of the people who participates in this forum will be the next mayor of New York City. For the first time in many years, CUNY will have a new chancellor; the newly elected mayor will have a significant role in filling the post. What positions do the candidates take on the future direct...

by Anne Friedman   The CUNY Pathways website lists eighty BMCC courses “approved” for inclusion in the Pathways Common Core, including courses in or cross-listed with Computer Science, Developmental Skills, English, Ethnic Studies, Mathematics, Media Arts and Technology, Modern Languages, Music and Art, Science, and Social Sciences. But only about ten percent of these courses have been approved for Pathways curriculum categories by the BMCC Academic Senate. Some of the courses have never been put to a vote by the relevant departments. What’s more, several of the listed courses are phantoms: the Academic Senate has never approved their creation, let alone their inclusion in Pathways.   If the BMCC faculty’s elected senators have not approved most of these new Pathways-ready courses, then who has? The answer seems to be that the BMCC administration has made curriculum decisions unilaterally, sending new courses or course revisions directly to CUNY Centr...

By Costas Panayotakis On April 13, Ariel Kaminer’s “Longtime CUNY Chancellor to Step Down After Pushing Higher Standards” reported on Matthew Goldstein’s decision to step down as chancellor of the City University of New York, one of the largest public higher education systems in the country and one of the most important educational institutions in New York City. (i) I do not claim in what follows to present a comprehensive or ‘objective’ assessment of Goldstein’s long tenure at CUNY. Instead, drawing on my more than 10 years of experience as a CUNY faculty member, I am offering what I feel is a needed corrective to Kaminer’s largely hagiographic account. As the title of Kaminer’s article suggests, the reporter has bought into Goldstein’s and CUNY administration’s claim to have raised standards. In backing up this claim, the article quotes the statistics, provided by CUNY, about the SAT scores of students entering “CUNY’s top five four-year colleges – Baruch, Brooklyn, City, Hu...