To help transfer students earn a bachelor’s degree, City University of New York plans to set a core curriculum for all two-year and four-year CUNY schools and reduce the number of general-education credits required for graduation. But many professors are protesting the Pathways Project, reports the New York Times. They say the plan will undercut the quality of the bachelor’s degree at CUNY’s 11 four-year colleges.
Professors at those campuses, from the College of Staten Island to Lehman College in the Bronx, say the reduction in required core credits will erode the liberal arts foundation of the degrees the colleges award, and threaten the increased respect and enhanced student performance the university has worked so hard to win.
Some professors also argue that community college courses aren’t as rigorous as comparable classes at senior colleges.
Pathways would require students to earn 42 general-education credits; some senior colleges require 60, far above the national average.
A number of state university systems, including the State University of New York, are working with community colleges to ease transfers and ensure that credits are recognized. Eager to raise college graduation rates, the U.S. Education Department sent a “College Completion Tool Kit” to state leaders in March. It includes a recommendation to develop general education curricula accepted by all two- and four-year institutions.
At the University System of Georgia, a committee devised a common core curriculum for the university’s three dozen colleges in the 1990s, also settling on 42 credits to fulfill the requirement. George W. Rainbolt, a professor of philosophy who headed the curriculum committee, said that transfers were now mostly seamless and that graduation rates had improved.
Most striking, Dr. Rainbolt said, is the fact that the changes have helped close a wide gap in the graduation rates of black and white students. A convoluted system, he said, is trickier for low-income students, who may not have friends and relatives to advise them on the best sequence of courses.
If CUNY trustees approve Pathways in June, a committee of faculty members, administrators and students will decide on the core curriculum with 30 credits allotted for general education at the community colleges and 12 more at the senior colleges.
Any general education course at a two-year college would automatically be accepted by other CUNY colleges.
