A controversial curricular revision at the City University of New York that has been roiling the system for more than two years is approaching its endgame—and tensions show little sign of abating.
The revised curriculum, called Pathways, has sparked dueling advertisements, a nearly 6,000-signature petition calling for a moratorium on efforts to put it in place, accusations that administrators threatened the jobs of uncooperative faculty, and a steady stream of opinion pieces and public pronouncements for and against, both within and beyond CUNY.
The dispute has also resulted in an unusual pair of lawsuits about curricular control that crystallize many conflicts that have beset public higher education nationwide. Running through the debate at CUNY are broader worries about an ascendant managerialism in academe and the marginalization of the faculty; impatience with the inefficiency and slow pace of change in higher education amid shrinking public support; concerns about the costs borne by students; and predictions that the push to graduate students more quickly will result in a lower-quality education.
Academe is experiencing the same tensions that have wrenched other industries, says Peter F. Lake, a professor of law and director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University.
Colleges today, like automotive and financial companies in the 1980s, he said, have large fixed costs and sizable assets but poor cash flow. They are struggling to evolve as resources become increasingly constrained. In such a context, efficiency becomes paramount, and management and labor, especially those with seniority, tussle for control over who sets the standards.
Compounding the problem, he added, is the fact that universities are complex organizations with ambiguous decision-making systems like shared governance. Lawsuits like the ones over Pathways are bound to become more common.
“The corporate wars are on,” Mr. Lake said. “The soul of higher education is at stake because academic freedom is butting heads with efficiency.”
‘Not on Board’
Under Pathways, the number of required general-education credits will be reduced and reorganized around learning outcomes instead of disciplinary categories. Faculty opponents of the curriculum dislike both the changes and the process by which they were made.
CUNY’s students will take their first 30 credits in two categories: a 12-credit “required core” and an 18-credit “flexible” one. Each of the system’s four-year colleges is choosing an additional six to 12 credits to require of students, depending on the degree program and college from which they may be transferring, which brings the total number of core credits to a range of 36 to 42. Existing general-education requirements can range from 39 to 63, depending on the campus.
Administrators say changes are needed to streamline the curriculum and ease students’ ability to transfer credits within the system.
Faculty members agree that problems with transfers need to be fixed but have protested a process that they say has marginalized their traditional role in formulating curriculum.
While CUNY is no stranger to pitched battles between administration and faculty, the dispute over Pathways has grown especially rancorous. Since the board approved the framework for the new curriculum in June 2011, those on each side of the debate have offered opposing versions of the effort’s viability and professed to be the ones truly acting for students’ welfare.
Opponents argue that Pathways and programs like it will further polarize higher education. The well-off students at elite and wealthy institutions will enjoy a rigorous education, critics say, while students from low-income backgrounds, which many of CUNY’s students are, will receive a watered-down version. Under Pathways, foreign-language requirements are reduced, science is taught without labs, and hours of contact between students and faculty in composition courses are diminished.
“If it’s such a great idea to teach introductory science courses without labs, then why aren’t they doing it at Harvard?” says Barbara Bowen, a plaintiff in the suits, an associate professor of English at Queens College, and president of the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents the CUNY faculty. “If spending less time in the classroom with writing professors is a great idea, why aren’t they doing that at Princeton?”
Administrators say they are the ones who are truly keeping in mind the interests of CUNY students. Students who struggle to get credit for their general-education courses after transferring to other campuses in the system spend more time enrolled, and therefore more money for tuition. More time enrolled can also threaten financial aid from the state, which elapses after eight semesters.
Supporters express confidence that the proposal has cleared every major hurdle and is on its way to being adopted in the fall as planned. Nearly 2,000 courses that meet Pathways’ requirements have been approved, and students will start registering in a few weeks, says Alexandra W. Logue, executive vice chancellor and university provost.
“We are right on track,” she said. “It’s that simple.”
Opponents paint a different picture, in which Pathways is faltering in the face of unrelenting faculty resistance. Some of the campuses’ faculty senates have refused to propose new courses. Resolutions from more than three dozen academic or faculty senates and disciplinary councils have called for a repeal.
“CUNY has had to twist arms in every possible way and violate governance procedures to get those courses,” Ms. Bowen says. “The truth is it’s in big trouble.”
Ms. Logue says that many faculty members are supportive of Pathways, with about 50 faculty members serving on committees guiding it and “hundreds” more, she says, helping to revise courses to fit the new curriculum. “The amount of faculty involvement has been quite astounding.”
Elected faculty leaders say such assertions gloss over the depth of animus their colleagues feel. “The faculty is not on board with this,” Ms. Bowen said. “The faculty hates Pathways.”
The context, in which tuition is rising and public support shrinking, has also heightened tensions. Faculty members have built departments amid scarcity, Ms. Bowen said. “They fear losing what they’ve built if they go against Pathways.”
Such opposing views of the faculty touch on one of the key questions raised in the lawsuits, which the faculty union and senate filed against the system and its trustees, seeking to stop Pathways. The suits are working their way through the state’s Supreme Court.
The first suit argues that trustees violated bylaws and exceeded their authority by formulating education policy in place of the faculty senates; a second one alleges violations of open-meeting laws.
Who, the first suit asks, truly speaks for the faculty?
CUNY bylaws specify that the faculty’s responsibility for curriculum is exercised through faculty senates, whose 120 members are elected by their peers.
The committees that proposed Pathways did not go through the faculty senates, the reasons for which each side faults the other. These committees were composed mostly of faculty who were appointed by Matthew Goldstein, CUNY’s chancellor. Their contributions should not be discounted, says Paul Attewell, a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and a member of one of the Pathways committees for the system. “To declare that those people are not representative of the faculty is a stretch,” he said.
While it would have been much better to work through established faculty governance, Mr. Attewell says, it is also true that a one-sided and unfair narrative against Pathways quickly emerged among faculty. “The discourse got very polarized very fast.”
Fuzzy Precedent
CUNY has been down similar roads before. In 1997 the administration and faculty reached a settlement in a dispute over the number of credits required for associate and bachelor’s degrees. The settlement, say observers, did little to resolve larger questions of academic authority that have re-emerged in the Pathways debate.
The settlement affirmed that the trustees set educational policy. But it also says that the faculty, subject to board guidelines, is responsible for the formulation of policies related to admission, retention, attendance, curriculum, and the awarding of college credit, among other areas.
Important details in the settlement remain vague, says Robert M. O’Neil, a senior fellow at the Association of Governing Boards and a former president of the University of Virginia. “There were some fairly important structural issues that weren’t really settled in 1997,” he says, “but were sort of left dangling and hoping they wouldn’t arise again.”
Other aspects of the situation at CUNY are unique, says Mr. O’Neil. The Board of Regents in New York predates the U.S. Constitution and has powers that other state agencies of education do not. While the courts in general are often deferential to academe, state courts in New York have broad latitude to weigh in on the internal workings of educational institutions, even private ones.
The universal themes evoked by the battle over Pathways, combined with the unique context and legal dimensions, make it an unusual case, he said.
“If I served this up to a higher-education doctoral class they’d say this never happens,” says Mr. O’Neil. “They’d say it was dreamed up in the fevered imagination of a professor.”
