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The CUNY Tuition Myth


CUNY commencement York College

(photo via CUNY on flickr)


Gotham Gazette recently reported that Brooklyn City Council Member Inez Barron, chair of the Council’s higher education committee, introduced a bill aimed at studying the possibility of eliminating tuition in the CUNY system. Barron said, “College should be a right that is part and parcel of a commitment we make to provide free public education in grades K to 12.” Gotham Gazette writes that this was “a ‘commitment’ that was, in fact, extended to college for the majority of CUNY’s history - more than 150 years where the city university system has been an engine of opportunity for city residents, especially those from modest socioeconomic backgrounds.”

While Gotham Gazette does mention that tuition was free for “qualifying students,” many appear to have read the article and missed that point. Unfortunately, there are quite a few people who have accepted the myth that CUNY was free until the 1970s. This was only true for those students who were accepted into the day school. By contrast, during the 1960s, the majority of CUNY students were enrolled in the evening college (SGS) that had a substantial tuition charge.

Indeed, today a larger share of CUNY students have no tuition obligation than did in the so-called free era; the difference being that then it was based on merit while today it is overwhelmingly based on family income.

Today, because of weak skill levels, many entering CUNY students require extensive remediation to reach a minimum level of proficiency. Graduation rates at many of the community colleges are below 20 percent. The overwhelming majority of weakly-prepared students already have no tuition obligation. Barron and other City Council members, and many others, it seems, want to extend this benefit to all CUNY students.

Yet, any free tuition proposal is likely to worsen the situation for those least-prepared for college as the resulting enrollment growth would stretch support resources even more thinly and create more havoc to students’ ability to schedule their classes consistent with their other responsibilities. This is exactly what happened when CUNY began Open Admissions in the 1970s.

As I wrote for Gotham Gazette last year, I believe that all students should have a small tuition obligation. While this would mean the poorest students would have to take out a small debt, they would make much more efficient decisions about their educational choices. It would also close the tuition gap between lower middle-class students and poor students without the costly tuition-free proposal.

However, my two main complaints with the free-tuition proposal are: one, it does not address the issue of making colleges more efficient; and two, it ignores the need to shift to occupational education, focusing on certificate programs, and other short-term occupational programs.

Whether the discussion is around national free tuition or a CUNY proposal that may come from the committee the City Council is considering, even critics neglect to look at ways to improve the four-year college delivery system. Forty years ago, CUNY and most college systems were dominated by a teaching faculty of professors who taught four courses each semester. Now, however, virtually every state four-year college system privileges faculty research so virtually all faculty have teaching loads of no more than three courses per semester. Indeed, based on this research model, new CUNY faculty hires teach only two courses each semester during their six-year probation period. Once CUNY faculty gain tenure they are no longer required to do research but their three-course teaching load continues. Certainly there should be serious discussion of reducing the privileging of research endeavours, and the ability of tenured faculty to maintain low teaching requirements despite no longer doing research.

Faculty are able to reduce their three-course teaching loads by teaching large classes. At Brooklyn College faculty received double credit for teaching 110 students; and the benchmark is lower at other schools. The vast majority of these large sections use multiple-choice exams that are scanned and use textbooks which have quizzes that are submitted and graded electronically. Thus, faculty efforts are virtually the same as for smaller sections and yet they are richly rewarded.

This desire to reduce teaching requirements has also driven some departments to increasingly offer online and so-called hybrid courses where in-class teaching is reduced. At Brooklyn, each semester there are a few faculty members who teach their entire program online so that they are totally absent from campus. Many other courses, including some large sections, are taught as hybrid courses – where students meet once rather than twice each week – so that faculty are on campus only one day each week. When I proposed a resolution that the faculty norm should be a minimum of two days of teaching responsibility each week, not one faculty chair supported it. Thus, colleges increasingly have phantom faculty and administrators have been powerless to stem the tide.

Another way to increase efficiency is to have teaching lines be more consistent with student demand. For years, there has been a decline for many liberal arts majors as student interests have shifted to business and other applied areas. However, tenure and continued elitist notions of college education has limited the reduction of faculty in liberal arts areas. This is most glaring at the CUNY Graduate Center where teaching requirements are half what they are at the four-year colleges.

A whole range of expensive Ph.D. programs reside there in areas where the small number of graduate students has very low prospects of gaining faculty positions. But once more every effort is made to protect these costly programs. Closing down Ph.D. programs at the CUNY Graduate Center, limiting the number of CUNY colleges offering low-demand majors, and consolidating these small departments should be a priority if free tuition is pursued.

A second area of concern is the continued overemphasis on four-year degrees. As mentioned, too many of the weakly-prepared students have an unsuccessful experience in the community colleges that are overwhelmingly geared to the transfer function. And many of those who successfully transfer to four-year colleges flounder and limp to graduation with degrees that do not lead to employment in their fields of study.

For many of these at-risk students, I believe that employment prospects would be greatly improved if they had enrolled in one of the certificate programs CUNY offers. One of the reasons that these students are not encouraged to consider this alternative is that certificate programs are offered through “Continuing Education” and, therefore, participants do not qualify for student aid. Since advocates are unwilling to have these students take out even the small loans necessary to pay for certificate programs, they choose to allow them to fail in the community college system. If the City Council really wants to help poor at-risk students it would expand any tuition proposal to make CUNY certificate programs free. This would not only enable more at-risk students to make effective choices but would undoubtedly shift many similar students away from the for-profit schools which offer much more expensive certificate programs.

During the so-called free era, CUNY students came from a small population cohort that was born during the Great Depression and graduated in the baby-boom era when expanding government services and educational institutions created a large demand for such programs. Today we no longer have expanding government, expanding social services, or expanding teaching positions. Students need more technical and applied skills desired by private industry and public colleges must be transformed to meet these needs.

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Robert Cherry is Stern Professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center.

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Power Purchase Agreements Key to Success of Governor’s Clean Energy Goal


solar panels ny gov

Solar panels (photo via ny.gov)


On Thursday, June 12, California set a record for the use of solar power generated by large-scale sources. Over 8,000 megawatts, enough to power six million homes, was flowing through the state’s grid a little after 1 p.m. that day. Yes, it was a very hot day. And they do say that the sun always shines in California. But those aren’t the only reasons for this landmark achievement. The state has made a firm commitment to reducing the use of fossil fuels, both to fight climate change and to control energy costs, and this is a result.

New York is also increasing the presence of solar on our grid, thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s NY-Sun initiative. Just a few years ago, there was less than 50 megawatts (MW) of solar power in the mix. Today, that number is up significantly, and is expected to grow to over 3,000MW. But it’s going to require the use of long-term contracts, called power purchase agreements (PPAs), if New York’s emerging solar industry is ever going to reach its potential.

And the sun isn’t the only source of clean, renewable power making its way into the homes and lives of New Yorkers. Our use of wind is also growing. In 2004, when the state Public Service Commission (PSC) launched the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to meet the goal of generating 25% of our power with renewables by 2013, there was 48MW of wind on the grid. Today, we are at 1,754MW, with more than 3,500MW queued up in the regulatory process. So we are heading in the right direction. But the RPS did not meet its target and we are concerned that the state will also miss its next ambitious goal of generating 50% of our electricity with renewable resources by 2030 (50 by 30).

The 50 by 30 goal is a leadership position among states. Cuomo has asked the PSC to develop a plan that gets us there. It is called the Clean Energy Standard (CES), and will be a key part of the Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) currently underway. REV has attracted national and global attention as a new approach to incentivizing renewables and managing the grid. The CES will be officially established by the Commission in early August, the most important energy policy decision in the state this summer.

The benefits of renewable energy are well-known: reducing carbon emissions that cause global climate change; promoting local economic development; diversifying the electricity supply; avoiding the air pollution that contributes to smog and acid rain; providing long-term energy price stability because fuel costs are zero; and keeping energy dollars in-state. The more renewable energy we use, the better off New York is.

As the industry trade group representing large-scale renewable generators, as well as energy efficiency and conservation groups and companies, the Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACE NY) is seeking a PSC decision requiring utilities to enter into some long-term power purchase agreements in order to make the Clean Energy Standard actually work.

If the goal is to invest in and encourage the growth of non-fossil fuel generators, which are emerging as the future of energy in New York, requiring utilities to sign power purchase agreements with renewable energy generators provides the surest and most reliable path forward. With signed PPAs, wind, solar and other renewable companies can get the financing they need to build the state’s energy future. It also means that for the next several decades, wind and solar generators will be a consistent and steady source of price-stable, cost-effective power.

The state’s own analysis shows that this approach is considerably cheaper than the one used for the last 10 years, which featured a state agency subsidizing renewable energy through the purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) -- but not buying the energy itself -- known as a REC-only contract. This analysis (Clean Energy Standard White Paper - Cost Study) showed that the 50 by 30 standard can be achieved through mandated PPAs with a negligible 0.03% overall impact to ratepayer bills through 2030. The same analysis projected that an approach using REC-only contracts would have a much greater 1.84% impact on bills over that same period. Power purchase agreements send a much needed long-term market signal to retain and attract renewable energy developers, companies, and investors at the lowest possible cost to New York State taxpayers and ratepayers.

According to the state public service law, and as noted in a recent filing in the CES proceeding by the Natural Resources Defense Council (a member of ACE NY), the PSC “must abide by several statutory requirements in carrying out its regulation of the State’s utilities, including the requirement that it must render decisions that are consistent with the most recent State Energy Plan, and the requirement that it must encourage the State’s utilities to carry out long-range programs to preserve environmental values.” So there should be no legal barriers to including PPAs in the Clean Energy Standard.

The diverse renewable energy industry – including wind and solar power, hydropower, fuel cells, and bioenergy companies – stands ready to invest to help meet our renewable energy and climate change goals. Doing so will position New York as a center of clean energy development. In order to do this effectively, PPAs must be part of the Clean Energy Standard. We don’t know how the state will meet the Governor’s 50 by 30 goal without them.

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Anne Reynolds is executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. On Twitter @ACE_newyork.

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Right to Know Act is Progress We Need Now


Jason Salmon

The author, center


I’m lying awake at 4 a.m. wondering if our calls for justice will ever be answered. The evening before I was marching in midtown, protesting the tragic killing of Alton Sterling. It’s been 17 months since the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and two years since Eric Garner’s death by suffocation at the hands of police. Even with cell phone cameras making this deadly reality no longer something we can ignore, justice remains elusive.

Lying awake, scrolling through Instagram, I noticed a lot of people liking and re- posting a graphic that’s the focal piece of Beyonce’s redesigned website. The redesign is dedicated to the killing of black people by law enforcement in this country over the past two years. It provides a stark picture of our condition. It’s simple enough: a black background with all the names of the murdered typed in white. I looked for my childhood friend’s name. He was killed by Florida law enforcement around the same time as Eric Garner. Not a highly publicized case, so I thought it might have been overlooked. But no, there it was.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how parents feel when their sons and daughters are killed. The horrible grief family members endure. I felt sick. And why shouldn’t I? What if my own father stepped outside his home and didn’t return? Seeing all of this death, having our voices ignored and justice denied time after time, I felt truly demoralized in a way I had never before in my life.

Two years ago, protesting the Garner tragedy, I took part in my first civil disobedience action on the Upper West Side. Soon thereafter, I found myself engaged in community organizing with an organization called Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), searching for peaceful ways to effect positive transformation. I then became JFREJ’s representative to Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition made up of dozens of organizations working toward ending discriminatory policing practices in New York City and beyond.

My main focus and energy has been working to support the passage of The Right to Know Act. This is important legislation that reinforces Fourth Amendment rights on the ground and has the potential to improve relations between the police and communities of color. It’s composed of two bills: the “ID bill” requires an officer to identify him- or her-self when having an interaction with a civilian, and the “consent to search bill” requires officers to inform citizens of their right to withhold consent to be searched where probable cause is absent.

Passing and implementing this legislation would go a long way toward normalizing police-community relations in this city and will allow us to take a step toward the justice that communities of color so richly deserve.

Sadly, the City Council Speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, is currently unwilling to bring this groundbreaking legislation to the Council floor for a vote, even though a majority of the Council has signed on to both bills. Instead, she made a backroom deal with Police Commissioner Bill Bratton - the architect of discriminatory Broken Windows policing - and scrapped this bill in exchange for adding a watered-down version to the NYPD patrol guide.

The compromise eliminates any guarantee that individuals will be notified of their right to refuse a search when there is no legal basis for one and discards the requirement for officers to identify themselves in most instances, including when individuals are questioned without reasonable suspicion. This strips the teeth from what is outlined in The Right To Know Act and delivers none of the reforms that President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended.

The bottom line: we need The Right To Know Act to become law. We know from a long and painful past that administrative prohibitions or protocols do not serve as true agents of change. For more than twenty years chokeholds have been prohibited by the patrol guide, yet this did not stop officers from using that technique resulting in the killing of Anthony Baez in 1994 and, more recently, the killing of Eric Garner in 2014. Effective? I think not. There also happens to be legislation making police chokeholds illegal (except, of course, in life-threatening situations) that is opposed by Commissioner Bratton and has not moved through the City Council.

Would passage of the Right to Know Act be the cure to police brutality? No. More is needed. Education, training, strict enforcement of NYPD rules, and real accountability instead of mere lip service, would also go a long way to eliminating police violence against citizens.

It’s also true we may never be able to eradicate all racial bias, and that some people can’t be educated or trained to be different. However, enacting laws that genuinely require the police to respect black people through proper communication will, in the process, respect everyone’s life, including the lives of police officers. The Right to Know Act would be a positive step on that road to de-escalation and reconciliation.

Let’s demand the Right to Know Act be brought to the City Council floor for a vote. True democracy requires nothing less.

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Jason Salmon is a community organizer for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and owns Treehouse Recording Studios in Brooklyn. On Twitter @JasonASalmon.

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