Open Admission and the Imposition of Tuition at the City University of New York, 1969–1976: A Political Economic Case Study for Understanding the Current Crisis in Higher Education

Abstract

Between 1969 and 1976 the City University of New York (CUNY) experienced two monumental policy transformations. These transformations were a result of changes in the political economy of New York City and State leading class struggles to erupt between and among groups. This article highlights two of these struggles: first, what came to be known as the “open admissions” policy, one of five demands made by students and their supporters in 1969–1970 at City College, and second, the imposition of tuition for undergraduate students in 1975–1976, a neoliberal condition set by business and political elites designed to privatize and commodify CUNY. In contrast to existing policy studies and sociology of education approaches to the study of CUNY, which are approaches limited by their ideologically liberal focus on outcomes that lead to “racial disparity” and inequality of individual achievement, an alternative class analysis is proposed that entails the concrete historical, political, economic, and ideological context of these struggles and their causes. The examination of both policies reveals an ideological struggle between meritocracy, as grounded in the individualist ideal of the American Dream and equality and democracy, as grounded in calls for inclusion, access, solidarity, and empowerment. The resulting class analysis offers a critical context for understanding the current transformation of higher education beyond CUNY.

Notes

The author would like to thank Nirit Ben-Ari, Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer, Jolie M.B. Terrazas, the two anonymous reviewers, the editors, and particularly Sanford Schram for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Any errors remain the sole responsibility of the author.

¹ In his examination of the relationship between educational policy and inequality, Michael B. Katz, “Education and Inequality: A Historical Perspective,” in David J. Rothman and Stanton Wheeler (eds), Social History and Social Policy (New York: Academic Press, 1981), pp. 57–101, has argued that “policy is basically dialectical and that the failure to recognize the inevitable impermanence of institutional solutions continually undercuts their effectiveness by leaving debilitating contradictions unresolved,” p. 59.

² Martin Carnoy and Henry M. Levin, Schooling and Work in the Democratic State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), p. 5.

³ Robert C. Lowry and Alisa Hicklin Fryar, “The Politics of Higher Education,” in Virginia Gray, Russell L. Hanson, and Thad Kousser (eds), Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2013), pp. 405–435.

⁴ Suzanne Mettler, Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream (New York: Basic Books, 2014).

⁵ David E. Lavin, Richard D. Alba, and Richard Silberstein, Right Versus Privilege: The Open-Admissions Experiment at the City University of New York (New York: Free Press; Collier Macmillan, 1981), pp. 1–2.

⁶ Sandra Shoiock Roff, Anthony M. Cucchiara, and Barbara J. Dunlap, From the Free Academy to CUNY: Illustrating Public Higher Education in New York City, 1847–1997 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), pp. 111–112.

⁷ Sheila C. Gordon, “The Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970,” PhD, Columbia University, 1975, p. 106.

⁸ Ruth Landa, “The Birth of a Modern University,” CUNY, < http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2011/09/16/the-birth-of-a-modern-university/>.

⁹ Donald P. Cottrell et al., Public Higher Education in the City of New York: Report of the Master Plan Study (New York: Board of Higher Education of the City of New York, 1950), p. 3.

¹⁰ Ibid., 8.

¹¹ Ibid., 12.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Newt Davidson Collective, Crisis at CUNY (New York: Newt Davidson Collective, 1974), p. 56.

¹⁴ Peter D. McClelland and Alan L. Magdovitz, Crisis in the Making, the Political Economy of New York State since 1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 458, note 85.

¹⁵ Newt Davidson Collective, Crisis at CUNY, p. 57; Gordon, “The Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970,” pp. 109 and 112.

¹⁶ Gordon, “The Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970,” p. 109.

¹⁷ New York State Committee on Higher Education, Meeting the Increasing Demand for Higher Education in New York State: A Report to the Governor and the Board of Regents (Albany, NY: Board of Regents, State Education Dept., 1960), p. 17.

¹⁸ Ibid., 17–18.

¹⁹ Newt Davidson Collective, Crisis at CUNY, p. 57.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ New York State Committee on Higher Education, Meeting the Increasing Demand for Higher Education in New York State, p. 39.

²² Newt Davidson Collective, Crisis at CUNY, p. 57.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Gordon, “The Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970,” pp. 117–119.

²⁵ Ibid., 126; Ruth Landa, “‘The Birth of a Modern University,’” CUNY, < http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2011/09/16/the-birth-of-a-modern-university/>.

²⁶ Landa, “‘The Birth of a Modern University.’”

²⁷ Gordon, “The Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970,” p. 129.

²⁸ Gordon, “The Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970,” pp. 1–2.

²⁹ Carnoy and Levin, Schooling and Work in the Democratic State.

³⁰ Henry Arce, interview with author, February 26, 2014.

³¹ Jennie Trotter, interview with author, March 8, 2014.

³² It should be noted that both in the mainstream media at the time and some scholarly works, The Committee of Ten and the BPRSC are used interchangeably. In this article, for the sake of consistency, I will refer to the BPRSC. See Lavin et al., Right Versus Privilege, p. 11; Conrad M. Dyer, “Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions: The Impact of the Black and Puerto Rican Students’ Community (of City College),” PhD dissertation, City University of New York, 1990, pp. 78–80.

³³ Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012), p. 116.

³⁴ Interviews with all these former students took place between February and May of 2014.

³⁵ Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus, p. 117.

³⁶The Battle of Algiers [La battaglia di Algeri], directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1966 [1967 US]; Italy [US]: Igor Film/Casbah Film).

³⁷ Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove, [1952] 1967).

³⁸ James Small, interview with author, March 25, 2014.

³⁹ Dyer, “Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions.”

⁴⁰ Newt Davidson Collective, Crisis at CUNY, 64.

⁴¹ David Rosen et al., Open Admissions: The Promise and the Lie of Open Access to American Higher Education (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska Curriculum Development Center, University of Nebraska, 1973), p. 63.

⁴² Joe Burns, Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America (Brooklyn, NY: Ig Pub., 2011).

⁴³ Joshua Benjamin Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II (New York: New Press, Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2000), p. 143.

⁴⁴ Newt Davidson Collective, Crisis at CUNY.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 10.

⁴⁶ Lavin et al., Right Versus Privilege, p. 15.

⁴⁷ In addition to the activism at City College and Brooklyn College, Lehman College, Queens College, Bronx and Queensborough Community Colleges also experienced a wave of student activism. By far, the most thoroughly covered of these is City College. For a detailed narrative of the student strike and building occupation see Dyer, “Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions.” For a broader historical context of student activism, including City and Brooklyn Colleges, see Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012). Covering both City and Lehman Colleges is Frederick Douglass Opie, “Developing Their Minds without Losing Their Soul: Black and Latino Student Coalition-Building in New York, 1965–1969,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 33:2 (2009), pp. 79–108; and Newt Davidson Collective, Crisis at CUNY, p. 66.

⁴⁸ Lavin et al., Right Versus Privilege, p. 290.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 19.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 28.

⁵¹ Ibid., 28–29.

⁵² Ibid., 37.

⁵³ Ibid., 38.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 38–39.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 283–284.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 308.

⁵⁷ Jerome Karabel, “Open Admissions: Toward Meritocracy or Democracy?,” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning Change 4:4 (1972), p. 41.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Ivar E. Berg and Sherry Gorelick, Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery (New York: Published for the Center for Urban Education by Praeger Publishers, 1970); John Marsh, Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way out of Inequality (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011); Jeannette Wicks-Lim, “The Working Poor: A Booming Demographic,” New Labor Forum 21:3 (2012), pp. 16–25.

⁶³ Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, “Social Policy and the Formation of Political Consciousness,” in Maurice Zeitlin (ed.), Political Power and Social Theory: A Research Annual (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1980), p. 141.

⁶⁴ Suri Duitch, “Open Admissions and Remediation: A Case Study of Policymaking by the City University of New York Board,” PhD dissertation, City University of New York, 2010, p. 153.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 153–154.

⁶⁶ Zeitlin, Political Power and Social Theory, pp. 18–119.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 129.

⁶⁸ Carnoy and Levin, Schooling and Work in the Democratic State, p. 80.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ Judith S. Glazer, “A Case Study of the Decision in 1976 to Initiate Tuition for Matriculated Undergraduate Students of the City University of New York,” PhD dissertation, New York University,1981.

⁷¹ Lavin et al., Right Versus Privilege.

⁷² Freeman, Working-Class New York, p. 256.

⁷³ Eric Lichten, Class, Power, & Austerity: The New York City Fiscal Crisis (South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1986), pp. 129–130.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 138.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 130.

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 12.

⁷⁸ Also see Clyde W. Barrow, “The Rationality Crisis in US Higher Education,” New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture 32:3 (2010), pp. 317–344.

⁷⁹ Lavin et al., Right Versus Privilege, 295.

⁸⁰ Gordon, “The Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970,” p. 264.

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Notes on contributors

Douglas A. Medina

Douglas A. Medina is a PhD candidate in the Political Science Program at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). His research interests include the political economy of higher education, with a focus on public institutions. He is also the Associate Director of the Baruch College Undergraduate Honors Program and has taught at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.