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AT THIS VERY MOMENT CUNY STUDENTS AND in aL
FACULTY ARE UNDER THE GUN. PEOPLE Sys -
EVERYWHERE ARE BEING FIRED. FINANCIAL ON
AID IS BEING SLASHED. COURSES ARE BEING

CHOPPED. CLASS SIZES INCREASED. THE

STATE IS MOVING TO IMPOSE TUITION, WHICH

WILL DRIVE HUGE NUMBERS OF STUDENTS

OUT OF SCHOOL.

DO YOU KNOW WHY THIS IS HAPPENING? DO

YOU KNOW WHO REALLY RUNS THIS UNIVERSI-

TY? DO YOU KNOW WHOSE INTERESTS CUNY
~ REALLY SERVES? :

) . . SORARY > New York City Comntisnity
| to Sg JAY Sr STREET,
. BROORWG NEW YORK 12a8

od



© 1974 by the Newt Davidson Collective

All Rights Reserved : .
This copyright is intended to prevent false or distorted reproduc-
tion and/or profiteering. Student, faculty, labor, and movement
groups are free to make use of this material without restriction.



_ Newt-would like to‘thank:

Mike and Junius and Bill and Gerry and Amy and Nanette and Bev and Eric and Moe and
“Stefan and Phillip and Mike and Blanche and Vicki and Bart and Andy and Rusty;

also W.H. and Carol and Bill and Martin and Jim and Steve and Peter and Carl and Ray and ;
G.W.F. and Marc and Gerry’s father and.Eric and, Paula and Richard and Heidi and Peter:

- and Louis and People’s Solidarity;

»also David and ‘Linda and John and Ruth and Edgar and Izzy and Morris and Liz and Richard
“and Nero and Archie and Dennis and Ira and Jim and Mike and Bob and Rene and Ron and
“David; % ;

_also, Robert and Louise and Kathy and Myrna and Toni and Lillie and Batya and Terry and

, Mike and Burt and LNS and the Burlington Mill workers and Doug’and Vanguard;

also Ruth and Duncan and Suzanne and Frank and Mike and Beverly and Devra and John;

“oh, and of course that David, too.

vand finally, our very best to Karl.

Design and layout by Kathy Shagass
Back.Cover: photo by Batya Weinbaum, layout assistance by Robert Israel.

Graphics were borrowed from Liberation News Service, NYU Inc., and The Growth of
Industrial Art.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

- L.daily life at cuny
2.capitalism & education

.

29
3.capitalism&cuny 49
A.what next? TT
5.whatistobe done? _—‘iIOl

“appendices



The City University of New York

1 Graduate School and University Center
2 Mount Sinai School of Medicine
3 Bernard M. Baruch College
4 Brooklyn College
5 City College
6 Hunter College
7 John Jay College of Criminal Justice
8 Herbert H. Lehman College
Ee 9 Medgar Evers College
10 Queens College
11 Richmond College
°12 York College <
13 Borough of Manhattan Community College
‘14 Bronx Community College
15 Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College
16 Kingsborough Community College
: (Manhattan Beach Campus)
17 Kingsborough:Community College
(Mid-Brooklyn Campus)
18 Fiorello-Hs LaGuardia Community College
19 New York City Community College
20 Queensborough Community College
21 Staten Island Community College

Queens

Richmond

Preface

The City University of New York is as immense as one of the —
pyramids. It consists of ten four-year colleges, eight two-year
colleges, a graduate center, and an affiliated medical.school. It
has over a quarter of a million students, over fifteen thousand
faculty, and more than a thousand administrators—roughly one

_ faculty member for every fifteen students, and one administra-

tor for every fifteen faculty members. Though a municipal insti-
tution, supported entirely out of public taxes, it now has an
annual operating budget in the vicinity of six hundred million
dollars—equal to or exceeding the annual budgets of twenty
states. By the end of the decade it will be spending nearly a.

'- billion dollars ‘a year. It also has a mammoth $1.5 billion con-~

struction program underway and spends about $17 million each.
year. simply to. rent space equivalent to fifteen major sky-.
scrapers. For over 125 years it has not charged tuition to City.
residents, and it now guarantees admission to all- graduates of

. the City’s high schools. Not surprisingly, CUNY officials like to.

boast of what they have built. .

But many of us who study and teach here have a different |
perspective. If CUNY resembles one of the pyramids, we who
live and work in the monument are finding it more and more
crowded, hostile, and oppressive inside. ;

Students find themselves dwarfed by the place. They are

seldom treated as individuals. They have numbers, not names



‘or faces. They are treated like products on an assembly line,

hassled by bureaucrats, stuffed into overcrowded classes,
forced—on many campuses—to endure poor facilities of every
kind, never given enough financial aid, and left to fend for

“themselves because of inadequate counseling. More and more

. frequently, they are complaining about dull and pointless

courses, indifferent teaching, and a degree that does not
prepare them for what they really want to do.

Faculty, in turn, have more and more trouble believing in
what they do. Many are growing bitter about mounting work-
loads, administrative meddling in departmental elections and
curricular decisions, stiffening resistance to fair promotion and
tenure, weak collective bargaining, declining real: wages,
authoritarian bureaucrats, shabby offices and classrooms.
They. see their jobs threatened by the widening use of “labor
saving” technology. They complain about unprepared students
and declining “standards.”

-And things are clearly getting worse. Just last year CUNY

was rocked by widespread firings and layoffs, hundreds of |
cancelled courses, and sharply diminished work-study and —

financial aid programs. Now, this fall, ‘we have a nine and one
half million dollar shortfall in funding for the community
colleges, and that has triggered another round of cutbacks in

_ Staff and programs throughout CUNY.

But worst of all, too many of us—students and faculty
alike—seem to have little or no control over the situation. All
the key decisions seem to be made in.places to which we have
no access—the Central Office on East 80th Street, for example.
Or Albany. Or Washington. Besides, how can you. fight the

~ power concentrated in a billion- dollar budget?

Alone, one has no chance of improving matters at all. So. in
the spring of 1973, faculty members and students from various
City University campuses, unhappy about the course of events

. at CUNY and disturbed by their isolation from one another, met
to develop a strategy for action. It quickly became clear that we

knew remarkably little about the institution in which we our-
selves were workers and learners. We decided we had better
begin by informing ourselves. Out of that decision eventually

came the Newt Davidson Collective (named in honor of the
imaginary author of a political satire we published in the fall of
1973).

For many months now, we of Newt have pored over a wide
variety of sources and documents, including Minutes ‘of the
Board of Higher Education, Chancellors Reports, Master
Plans, foundation books and pamphlets, state and. federal
studies, histories of the individual CUNY campuses, news-
papers, general accounts of the entire development of American
education, and more. What we have found makes it clear that .-
CUNY’s ills are typical of American higher education. It also
became clear that the root of the problem, at CUNY and else-
where, was not to be found on the campuses themselves.

This last point needs to be emphasized. CUNY, like the rest
of American colleges and universities, is intimately connected

' to the society around it, and jit is in trouble precisely because

society is_in trouble. Layoffs, rising costs, overcrowding,
cutbacks? Standard fare these days—off as well as on campus.
Inflation gnaws at our paychecks. Food prices soar, taxes soar,

the crime rate soars, the unemployment rate soars, interest and

mortgage costs are stratospheric as are Con Ed bills and gas
prices. And matters are rapidly getting worse. Most leading
economists and bankers frankly predict continued inflation and
increasing unemployment, at best, and a full-scale depression,
at worst. Under such circumstances, it would be amazing
indeed if the universities were not suffering as most other major
institutions (with-the exception of the leading banks. and
corporations) are suffering.

The campuses’ intimate connection with an ailing society,
however, is the source of difficulties far more troublesome than
simply a shortage of money. It is, after all, the claim of institu-
tions like CUNY that they are oases of sanity, centers of. criti-
cism and reflection, places where people can learn how to
improve the quality of life. But the truth is that CUNY is not
such a place. It does not criticize—it perpetuates and reinforces
the established and unsatisfactory order of things. Though
many of CUNY’s members remain dedicated to the ideal of a
university, the institution has allowed its priorities to be warped


in such a way that it now reflects and reaffirms some of the
worst tendencies of the society it is supposed to be critical of.
In this pamphlet we will discuss the ways in which CUNY has

become part of the problem—rather than part of the solution. .,

“We will discuss the difficulties of studying and teaching here.
And we will try to show that the disagreeable aspects of life at
CUNY are not, in the main, the consequence of thé actions of
the students or the faculty. Nor, for that matter, are they
primarily the responsibility of the central administration at 80th

Street. Rather, we will argue, the nature of our teaching and
learning has been in large part decided for us by foundation
planners, corporate leaders, and state bureaucrats, most of
whom few of us have ever heard of, and most of whom
consistently put the interests of business ahead of the interest
of students and faculty.

We hope to show you, in short, how CUNY ticks; what’s right

with it and what’s wrong with it; where it’s come from, where
it’s at, and where it may be going. Now we have a definite point
of view about all this. We are socialists, and we are opposed to
the system known as capitalism. We think capitalism is the root
of our troubles inside and outside CUNY, and we think. it. has
become such a burden and a distortion, such an unnecessary

drag on the productive and human potential of our culture, that :

it should be retired and replaced. But we hope that even those

of you who question this view will find that our analysis of the.

current state of affairs at CUNY is, overall, compelling and
accurate. We hope, too, that you will come to share our

conviction that whether we be conservatives, liberals, human-’

_ ists, radicals, or just plain CUNY-people, the time has come for
all of us to take united action against the continuing degrada-
tion of an institution central to all our daily lives.

|.Daily Lif
cun

The Students

What is life like for a typical student at CUNY?
Thére is no “typical” CUNY student. Different
people go to different campuses and have differ-
ent educational experiences. Let’s consider some
of the possibilities.

Suppose you’re working class, black, eighteen
years old, and living with your family in a four-
story walk-up on 130th Street between Lenox and

» Seventh. Suppose your family makes under $8000

a year. {One of every four CUNY students comes
from a family that is black and makes less than,
$8000' a year.) | FT why.

Chances are that you didn’t go to Harlem Prep.

‘That’s an academic, college-oriented high school,

and, as of 1970, black and Puerto Rican students
were only 20% of those attending such college-

oriented schools. More likely, you went to Man--

hattan Vocational and Technical High School.
Blacks and Puerto Ricans made up over 60% of
such vocationai schools in 1970. You made it
through, though a lot of your friends didn’t. Now
you’re going to college, you’re going to get some
skills, maybe some new ideas, and make it.
‘But which college? You’ve got no savings, your

parents aren’t rich, and you didn’t do so well in

school that you're going to get a scholarship. So
you’re priced out of private colleges like Golumbia
or Barnard. (Four years at such schools now cost
a preposterous $24,000—minimum.) But CUNY is

11

free. CUNY’s got Open Admissions. Of course ._
you'll have to work to get money to live on and pay
for books and subways, or help out at/home. But
that’s OK. You still won't have to pay tuition. So ¢
you apply to the University Application Process-
ing Center, put down your six choices, and get
assigned to the Borough of Manhattan Commu-
nity College. ;

4 Why BMCC?.Why not one of the other eighteen
CUNY colleges? The answer is that CUNY requires’
an 80 average, or a spot in the top half of your high
school class (you just missed), for admission toa
senior college. Since space is limited, the more '
popular schools can take only the “better” stu-.
dents. The result was described by the staff of the

. Wagner Commission: “Although students are free

to choose. among programs and colleges, student
preference for the senior colleges is such that the
current allocation process creates a stratified: en-
rollment in which the senior colleges tend to
receive those students with above-average aca-

demic skills (as measured by grade-point average) . -

while the community colleges tend to receive the

students with poorer academic records.”

' So it appears that the quality of the school you

get into is simply a measure of your own personal

accomplishments. Except that the distribution of

high grades is not an even one: it’s related to

how much money your family makes. Sixty-one ’
per cent of the high school students whose fami-

lies earned over $15,000 had over an 80 average


but only 12%. of those-with incomes under $3,700
did. Grades are also related:to race. Forty-five per

“cent-of white students graduate with over 80 av-

erages' but just about 15% of black and. Puerto
Rican students do. Perhaps this: relationship is
_ related'to the type of education that the different
groups get. Higher-income ‘students..attend aca-

demic high schools which encourage hopes for’a -

college education anda professional career. They
provide the skills'and the grades necessary to
_ enter college. Fifty-eight per cent of academic
high school graduates get over 80 averages. Less
affluent students—white as well as black—go
to. vocational high schools which not only’ do
not prepare them for academic work, but also
grade them down: only 20% of those who gradu-
ate get 80 averages or above. This shifts the blame
“for heavy concentrations of low-income students
in the community colleges away from the educa-
tional system and the social system that created
it—the real culprits—onto the shoulders of the
‘students themselves.

Unless one accepts-racist assertions, like those
of Arthur Jensen, that blacks are of inherently
inferior intelligence (which does not account. for
_ white low-income student performance), or liberal
explanations of cultural deprivation (which omit

_ the crucial connections between class exploita-
tion and culture), then one must face the fact that
the high schools, inssome way, preserve and rein-
forcé the class and racial divisions of New York
City.. CUNY then accepts and perpetuates the
priortracking, though—since Open Admissions—
ameliorating it somewhat. Consider the statistics
-in the boxed chart below:

Community Colleges

College 1969 19701971 «1972. 1973
Queensboro 11.8 12.3 144 14.6 14.7
Kingsboro 17.3 21.7 19.7 26.5 25.4
Staten Island 16.0 16.5 14.8 17.4 21.8
New York City 23.9 46.7 45.9 50.3 51.8
Bronx : : 33.8 49.0 55.0 63.8 67.8
Borough of Man. .47.2 56.6 56.4 62.9 77.4
Hostos 80.0 80.1 87.7 76.2
La Guardia : 22.0 35.9 45.1
Average 30.7 36.4 | 87.8 44.5

Income of Families of
All Students 1971

College $6,000 + $15,000
Queens ° 14.4 21.9
Brooklyn . 19.3 17.6
Hunter 22.1 15.2
Baruch 17.6 15.7
York 18.6 17.8
Lehman 19.9 13.4
Jay “ 13.2 13.5
City 30.3 11.2
Evers “58.3 2.9
Queensboro ‘47.7 15.9
Kingsboro 25.4 14.6
Staten Island 25.5 10.9
New York City 34.0 6.4
Bronx * 38.6 5.5
Borough of Man. 34.9. 5.7
Hostos 57.6 9
La Guardia 23,9 11.8

eee b< Black & Puerto Rican
Entering Freshmen [Percent]
Senior Colleges

College 1969 1970 1971, 1972 1973

Queens 8.0 11.6 16.5 11.2 17.6

Brooklyn 18.2 19.3 20.5 17.7 21.9 5
» Hunter 20.9 26.8 22.6 29.7 41.7

Baruch |. 26.1 22.5 20.8 26.5 28.6

York. "43.3 19.1 21.9 23.1 35.3

Lehman 9.3 20.5 21.4 26.4 30.7

Jay; 18.0. 32.0 27:0 (32.7 28.3

City. 13.4 32.4 34.9 32.2 39.0

Evers . 84.2 90.4 93.5

Average 21.6 24.6 24.8 30.0

So you go to Borough of Manhattan Community
College, and when you arrive on campus (one of
six different. office buildings scattered around
mid-Manhattan) you ‘sense a busy, impersonal,
and authoritarian mood; it’s much more like high
school than you thought it would be. Then you get
“the catalog. In the Student Responsibilities sec-
tion it informs you that you are “required to
recognize and accept [your] obligations as a stu-
dent.” It tells you that you have already, “as some

‘small recognition of the gift of education which,

in the American spirit of freedom and _ self-

government” is now being offered you, made the..

following pledge: .
1. | pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the
“United States and of the State of New York.
| shall conform with the discipline, regula-
_tions and orders of the Borough of Manhat-
tan Community College of the City Univer-

~ sity of New York and with the by-laws and

resolutions of the Board of Higher Education |

of the City of New York.

3. | pledge myself to preserve all public proper-
ty now or hereafter entrusted to my care and
to protect its value.

The catalog goes on to “expect” its students to

behave as “mature” individuals. Particularly in °

matters of “conduct, dress, behavior, and hon-
esty.” Disregard for school property, it empha-
sizes, is a “serious offense.”

On to registration. Here you brave the long lines
and computer cards and register for a vocational
program, rather than the liberal arts program. If
you're female, likely as not you’ll be in what they

13

call Secretarial Science. (Ninety-nine per cent of
those in secretarial studies throughout CUNY are
female, as are 97.2% of those in nursing. and
100% of those in Dental Hygiene.) If you’re male,.
you might take Data Processing. (Across CUNY,
males account for 86.7% of the students enrolled
in data programming; males are also over 80% of
those taking chemical technology,. commercial
arts, market-retailing, hotel administration, and ©»
over. 90% of those in mechanical technology and..
graphic arts, and 100% [up. to 1971] of those in
pre-pharmacy, electrical, construction, and civil
technology programs.) :

If you get through registration, your college
days will look like this:

SECRETARIAL SCIENCE
(Bilingual Secretarial Concentration]

First Semester

Stenography |: Theory or Stenography Il: Pre- Transcription see eee 3
Typewriting | .
Introduction to Business Administration.

English... 2... eee cece eee eee

Music or Art..... 2.20... e eee eee eee eee

Second Semester
Stenography Il: Pre-transcription or
Stenography Ill: Introduction to Transcription
Typewriting Il...
English oe
Language....2........ cee eee eee
Mathematics Through Statistics |.
Liberal Arts Elective

- Third Semester
Bilingdal Stenographyl....
Bilingual Typewriting |...
Office Practice & Machines

ACCOUNTING 1... cee rete teen eee e ee 3

Language.... 3

Physical Education...

Social Science Elective... 2.0.6... cece eee eee eens 3
, 15

Cooperativé Education Internship... 0.2.6... 0c eee eee eee 2

Fourth Semester
Bilingual Stenography II
Office Practice & Machines Il... eel
Business Law.......... +3
3
1

Fundamentals of Speec!
Health Education...

Science
, Cooperative Education Internship... 6... 6.0... ene crete 2.
17 (or 16)
TOTAL CREDITS....... 00-6 cee eee ewe eee 65 (or 64)

» Systems Implementation

DATA PROCESSING

First Semester
Introduction to Business Administration
Introduction to Data Processing
English! :
Mathematics (Fundamentals of Mathematics | or Finite

Mathematics or Analytic Geometry & Calculus)
Physical Education

Second Semester
Basic Cobol Programming...::...
Social Science Elective. ..
Accountingl........

English Il.
Fundamenta s of Speech.
Health Education. -

Third Semester
Advanced Cobol Programming... i... cece eee renee 3
Programming Systems or Management Systems...
Science... eee eee

Accounting II or Managerial Accounting
Liberal Arts Elective...... ee Se er

Cooperative Education (Career Planning or Internship
or Business Management Elective

Fourth Semester
One of the following: : 0... eee eee eee eet eee
a) Assembler Language Programming.
b) Programming Language!.....:....

c) Two of the following: 200... 6..¢ wet!
Basic IBM 360 Computer Operations. an

Basic RPG Programming............-.00 cess eters 2

Disc Operating Systems Concepts

Time Sharing Operations

Business Elective....
Music or Art...
Electives

3 (or 4) (or 5) (oF 6)
‘ : 15 (or 16) (or 17) |.
Cooperative Education Internship or Business

Management Elective. 1 (or 2)
17 (or 18)

. 68 ||

TOTAL CREDITS



“414

- Where's -your BMCC- college education. going
to get you? Well, in the Cooperative Education
Internship, you can work part time with any of a
umber, of “cooperating firms.” The firms are
We ‘chosen by.an Advisory Council’ on Cooperative
_ «Education which is composed of personnel man-
agers and ‘other officials of various city banks,
advertising agencies, department stores, airlines,
_ and libraries. This gives you a leg up on getting a
_.job-when you graduate.

The internship experience, | feel,
. gives a student a minimum of a year
to 18-month head start on other
graduates and makes them more
- flexible and less ritualistic.”
Be :o —Charles W. Scannel, Assistant
Vice President of Chemical

Bank, in “CUNY Courier,”
September 12, 1974

Indeed, many community colleges have this

i working relationship with corporations, banks, or

-., government offices. Often the colleges go right to

the businesses to train their workers for them.

There. are’ engineering technology courses at

seven Con Ed locations, and QBCC gives trans-

portation. management courses at Kennedy Air-
port. -

- Local employers are-enthusiastic about cooper-

_ erative education. “The internship experience,”

» declared a high official of the Chemical Bank

recently, makes CUNY graduates “more flexible

and less ritualistic’ as workers. As the CUNY

. Courier observed in the autumn of 1974: “Employ-

-ers... . may test interns and experiment with new

positions without making costly long-range com-

_mitments. These advantages can reduce a com-

pany’s recruiting and training costs, provide job

; flexibility. and lower abrasive severances. [!]”

Employers, the paper went on, prefer interns to

-“four-year graduates who often come with inflated _

job expectations and soon. leave, causing an
expensive turnover problem.” The federal govern-
ment is also enthusiastic about co-op ed. “HEW
administrators view ‘co-op ed’ as a ‘very cost-
.effective’ idea,” the Courier reports. “HEW recent-

. ly awarded $11 million for cooperative programs —

for fiscal 1975. LaGuardia, Bronx Community and
Manhattan Community were awarded more than

$100, 000 of these funds, with LaGuardia receiving
a $60,000.grant.”

But what do the students think about coopera-
tive education? What has it done for them? More
and more. of them are discovering that co-op
programs are a waste of their time and get them
nowhere. As one student just noted, local em-
ployers often give their interns the most boring,
routine, and. mindless. tasks they can find. “A lot
of employers,” she added, “don’t think we are

capable enough and give [us] lowly tasks, such as :

opening mail.”

And what. kind of job are you likely to get when
you graduate from BMCC? Well, the degree. will
give you achance to avoid the lowest rungs of the
working class (carwashing or. janitorial work),
and a chance to avoid entering the ranks of the
unemployed. It is certainly a worthwhile invest-
ment of your time and money. But'the jobs you
are likely to get are still working-class positions,
some at lower rungs—keypunch operating, sales-
clerking—some at slightly higher rungs—typing,
lab technicians. You will not have been trained for
jobs that are interesting or let you do something
creative. Most of your work will be rigidly defined,
a small part of a larger process, and firmly under
some higher-up’s control.
given a very narrow range of skills and thus little
chance to switch jobs, or rise within the bureau-
cracy. And often the community colleges don’t
even train you very well in the narrow field they
focus on. At Manhattan Community, nearly 70 per
cent of the nursing graduates recently failed their
state accreditation exams. -

Nor do community college graduates get paid
very well. Students graduating from La Guardia
Community College in 1973 had an average start-
ing salary of just $7,300 with secretaries leading
the way at $7,500. And though. some “‘postsecon-
dary education” is indeed a hedge against unem-
ployment, the fact remains that employment de-
pends less on educational credentials than on the

State of the economy, and the economy is. wor-

sening rapidly: there are a lot of Ph.D.’s walking
the streets looking for work.

There is another dimension to the problem. If
you take Secretarial Science or Data Processing,
you will be deprived of anything other than.a few
smatterings of a general. education. You'll have

two years of technical training, and a handful of _ 7 :
liberal arts courses. But you'll have little chance

to discover new things that interest you, to devel-

You will have been ~

op your potential, to learn how the economy, the
society, or the corporation that might hire-you

‘really ticks, much less learn how you might

change things for the better.

Most students going to community colleges

know this, and so most of them apply for liberal
arts and think they will go on to a senior college.
Less than half of them actually do. (In Secretarial
Science, only 18.8% eventually get a B.A. though
60% had once planned to do graduate work).
‘ This-may have something to do with the limita-
tions of the offerings in Liberal Arts. At Manhat-
tan, many “Liberal Arts” courses are really trojan
horses smuggled in from the vocational camp:
They include Educational Assistant Programs,
Health and Recreation Worker Programs, and the
like. Even the ‘“‘social science” courses are often
nothing of the sort. Government is composed of
six courses, all on the order of Gov220—‘Federal
Procurement, Procedures, and Practices.” Eco-
nomics consists of two courses, the basic one
which looks at “the banking system, organized
labor, social security, and federal budget”; and an
advanced one, restricted to students in their final
two terms, on “Labor Relations.” There are, to be
sure, very fine instructors at BMCC, and they
often go beyond what it says in the catalog, but
they are not in control of the process; real teach-
ing often requires something of an underground
struggle. Administrators are in control, and they
have low expectations of student capacities. As
one wrote recently in response to the discovery of
very poor reading skills among graduates: “It
should be pointed out that most laymen have a
somewhat confused idea of the relationships
which exist between reading level and functional
abilities.” This administrator went on to say that
“many jobs in our society (shop attendant, ser-
vice-station attendant, warehousemen’s assis-
tant, etc.) call for a fourth grade ‘reading level.”
Chancellor Kibbee, just this past April, expressed
the hope that the community colleges would
“expand their two year career programs in keeping
with the original mission set for these colleges.”

No wonder you'll find so many technical courses
(even though they pretend to be something else

“by taking on jive names like “Secretarial Sci-

ence”) and so few courses that encourage you to
develop more than fourth-grade, machine-tender
skills. That’s the way the system wants it. Puerto
Ricans, blacks, and lower-income whites are
destined for the lower rungs of the economy, and

25

they are to be given only an “appropriateta amount
of education.

~ than those at most community colleges.

Now let us suppose that you are of a’ somewhat ~
more comfortable background (though not’:that
much more comfortable: 75% of all: CUNY ‘stu-
dents are from families making’ under $42;000'a
year). You’ve done well at school, you. like ‘tearn-
ing, but you’re not quite sure what you want to do
with yourself, though you know you'd likea‘j
that is interesting, allows for independent initia-
tive, and is socially useful. You will~given* your

' background and your grades—likely as ‘not’ get

into a senior college. But which one? That again
has something to do with your income: and your
race; and. again, which college you attend’ -will
have a significant impact-on the kind of job: you
are likely to get when you graduate. 4
The senior colleges are not at all thé same. At
one end there is Medgar Evers. As of 1971, 58.3%
of the students came from families making* less
than $6,000 a year, and in 1973 93.5% of the
student body was black and Puerto Rican The-
curriculum was top heavy with Secretarial Sci-
ence, Health Science, and Accounting programs, =
along with more extensive Liberal Arts offerings

In the middle are those colleges whos
dents come from families with somewhat


John Jay, Liberal Arts are ‘accompanied by. offer-
-ings in police science, probation, parole, correc-
tions, and forensic science. (At Jay there is
something of a tradition of glorifying vocational-
ism—the Administration considers training its
police and “civilian” students in criminal justice
careers to be “The Mission of the College,”
whereas many of the students and faculty see the
distinctive Mission as providing workers in crimi-
nal justice with a broad liberal arts education as

well as the more narrow technical skills. This.

leads: in practice to struggles over hiring: the
History Department recently requested.a line for
someone to teach Chinese history; the Adminis-
tration refused, saying Chinese history was “inap-
propriate” for the Jay student body, but they
“would fund a line for another specialist in the
history of criminal justice, in addition to those the
a Department already had.) Other senior colleges,
- though less blatantly, are also. heavily into voca-
-- tionalism: Hunter specializes in teacher training,
Lehman in social work.

At the opposite end of the senior college spec-
trum from Medgar Evers are schools like Brooklyn
< and Queens. The income and racial patterns are
strikingly different. At Queens in 1971, only
-14.4% of the’ students’ families made under
$6,000, while 21.9% (as opposed to Evers’ 2.9%)
came from families: earning over $15,000. Also at
Queens in 1973, blacks and Puerto Ricans com-
posed only 17.6% of the entering freshman class.

_At both schools the stress is less on vocational
training: and more on pre-professional training.
Brooklyn's School of Humanities stresses that the
school is “suited” for “those in search of a broad
cultural foundation before embarking on special-
ized study in fields such as law, education, or
“medicine.” The Economics Department at Queens
~. has’ almost*nothing in common with that of Bor-
ough of Manhattan.
“ Thus—should you go to Queens and graduate
with high grades—it is far more likely that: you
might become.a lawyer, than if you attended one
of the community colleges. But Queens itself, in

»..the larger, nation-wide ranking system, is by no

means at or near the top of the heap. So you might
not get into law school at all, as the competition
these days is fierce. If you do make it, chances. are
you won’t make the best law school (though

Queens is now building one of its own). And that ;

"means that when.you get your law degree you will
probably land a not very exciting job in.a large,

bureaucratic :law firm where you'll. spend most, of
your time drafting briefs for the Harvard-trained
barristers to try in court. And if you don’t get into

“law or medical: school, there’s always social work,

teaching, or some other civil service job. Unless
the depression commences before you do. And
Queens won’t prepare you to deal with that.

So different kinds of students go to different
parts of the system. They go with different expec-
tations. They find campuses that differ widely in

‘curricula and atmosphere. They graduate prepared
for vastly different kinds of work. We intend to
show you later in this pamphlet. that it is sup-

posed to be this way. Real equality of opportu-
nity does not exist. The whole point of the system
is to produce workers who are trained just enough
to do their jobs, and not enough so that they
might question the class structure of capitalist
society.

Some things, however, do cut. across all the
campuses and are common to almost all: stu-
dents. For starters, it’s too crowded just about
everywhere. There are endless lines. At registra-
tion. In the cafeteria. To get into the elevators.
Courses are closed out. Books are gone from the
library. The bookstore (such as it is) is sold out.

You sit in packed classes. You begin to feel like a >

punch card, like a walking social security number.
It hardly surprises you when you become a com-
modity: at Bronx Community last year students
discovered the administration was selling their
names and addresses to. various insurance com-
panies. At John Jay students are required to dig
out I|.D. Cards to enter the building, guarded by a
para-military Security Force. At BMCC, in a clas-
sic Catch-22, only one window serviced the hun-
dreds of students trying to get work-study and
scholarship checks; those who spent their class
hours stuck on the enormous line were then
penalized for cutting, until a mini-demonstration
forced the opening of other windows.

Learning itself is seldom exciting. It’s very .

difficult to make real contact with the faculty.
Over one-third the teachers on all campuses are
adjuncts, part-timers who can. afford to spend
little or no time with students. Many full-time
faculty, of course, are themselves irritated and
harassed by the unfriendly conditions, and they
at times come to blame the students. Class-
es are large, and administrators keep making
them larger—regretfully, perhaps, but inexorably.
At Richmond the deans raised the upper limit

17

. Oprortunmes
For
Women

Luar erfpreement


18...

from 35 to 50. At John Jay, without even con-
sulting the faculty, the administration withdrew
forty, courses in the middle of registration. on
the: grounds of “insufficient” enrollment. Courses
with twenty students were struck out; courses of
ten were treated as obscene affronts to budgetary
propriety. :
in the lecture classes, some students tend to
nod off, having put in a full day’s work already.
Many CUNY students work, and it takes a tre-
mendous toll on their time and energy. There is no
leisure time to sit around the non-existent dormi-
tories and talk, not much, time to check out
on-campus cultural events, not much time for
homework. Some get financial assistance (though
no Scholar Incentive from Albany; Rockefeller,
angered at not getting tuition imposed, forbade
_ it), but even that is going to be harder to get.
Brooklyn,. for example, just had their maximum
stipend cut to one-third of what it had been a few
years ago. Many dropped out, no longer able to
afford the free university—but many others, as we
shall see, have begun to organize a resistance to
the cutbacks. At Queens, the number of partici-
“ pating students in the work-study program was
lowered from 934 to 681 this year.

Many. students, compelled by the logic of their
situation, come to consider college a “business”
proposition. You go to pick up the certification
required by the job market, because, in fact, the
economy is so structured that you have few
options. So you play the game, say the right
thing,. get your credentials, and get out. This is

- not necessarily easy. You are locked into competi-
tion with your brother and sister students for the
top spots, since only the “winners” will grab the
brass ring of the best graduate and professional
schools, or the choicest! job openings. So term
papers are purchased, and cheating flourishes,
and many excuse it all as a necessary part of the
raee for grades. Like wage earners on an assembly

ap see ie

ee ed

line, students fight for fewer, reading assign-
ments, close notebooks in anticipation of the bell,
and in general struggle against an ‘unhappy
situation.

A Word About Open Admissions

Open Admissions is in some ways a triumph.
Low-income whites, blacks, and Puerto Ricans:
have, to some extent, broadened their opportuni-
ties. A larger number of them can choose the kind
of program and school they wish to attend even
though the majority still cannot. Applications
from vocational and “low” academic high schools
are up 100%. With all its limitations, this is the
most open system presently in existence, and all
its best features are the result of struggle. It was
very beautiful, and very fitting, that 33-year-old
Dawn Harris in her 1973 valedictory speech at
BMCC thanked “the brothers and sisters at CCNY
for deciding that five more years was just too long
to wait for open enrollment.” Her personal sense

. of triumph, too, was strong and deep. “! would

like to thank the faculty,” she said, “for its
fortitude and wisdom, some for just being good
friends. I’d like to thank our parents and friends
who believed in us when, sometimes, we didn’t
believe in ourselves.” She particularly thanked
“those who tried to stop me, who thwarted
me and tried to discourage me because they
have made this day even sweeter.” “I wanted,” she
concluded, “to make sure that they didn’t count
over-thirty, under-prepared women with children
out. | think | did it. | know we did—1,595 votes for
Open Enrollment!Thank you.” Right on!

But. The infuriating truth is that those who run

this system have stolen some of the sweetness ©

from the collective triumph. As we will see later in
the pamphlet, the powers that be have, despite
promises of equal access, seen to it that the
tracking system that routes the poor and the
minorities into the lowest rungs of the economy
and society remains essentially intact and in good
working condition.

There are other problems. One has to do with

the promise of proper remediation services. The 7

beneficiaries of Open Admissions, as all know,
have been among the most victimized by their
previous “education.” They have not been taught
the basic mathematical, reading, and writing
skills they need. All the colleges. have instituted

some sort of remediation programs, but all of

them suffer from a variety of ills. The BHE and the
State Legislature have never been willing to.

commit sufficient funding to allow a serious effort
to be made. Many of the courses themselves are
deficient: they divorce acquisition of skills from

the acquisition of knowledge. Students are asked ©

to develop tools in a vacuum. It is the worst sort
of behaviorism, and appropriately, the task is
increasingly being turned over to machines. And,
as if to underline their lack of content, most re-
medial courses are not given credit, because they
are not up to standards (true enough, but hardly
inevitable). “No credit” courses that frequently
relate to nothing are not an appealing proposition,
and faculty hired to perform: in such a context
often face stubborn resistance.

And many students are not faring well. The BHE
used to boast about a 70% retention rate, but the
fact was that after three semesters only 13% of
the Open Admissions students had completed 36
credits and maintained a 2.0 average. Now the
BHE admits that across the board nearly one of
every two CUNY students is failing to complete
college. For Open Admissions students the rec-
ord is even worse. Of the 5,940 who entered CUNY
in 1970 only 36.3% were still enrolled four years
later.

The prevailing official assumption is that these
students are. being given the opportunity to

Who are you, kid?

Sex? Race? Name? Age?
Student I.D. number? Parking
permit? 1.Q.?.S.A.T. scores?
G.P.A.? Social security?
Draft status? Lottery number?

19

acquire needed tools, and if they don’t it’s their
fault. In 1969, then-Chancellor Bowker, made this _
clear. Though acknowledging that a student’s.
progress would be affected in part by the nature of
the remediation services which were. available, i
Bowker insisted that “the overriding factor, how-
ever, will continue to be the individual, student’s
motivation as measured by work, effort and per-
formance.” The unstated corollary is that if a stu-.
dent fails, it is an individual failure for which the
Board accepts no responsibility. It's rather like.
forcing a runner to wear a lead-weighted belt, and_
expressing contempt when he or she loses the.
footrace. ; ;
Open Admissions right now represents a giant™

_ foot in the door. It is up to us to keep the door

from slamming again, and then to force it open all
the way. ,

The Faculty

What is life like for the Faculty? Well, the fact-is .
that there is no “Faculty” at CUNY: there are
instead many Faculties. The teaching staff is seg-,
regated by rank, campus, ,sex and race. Life, ~
accordingly, is very different for faculty workers
depending on who they are, what their rank is, and,
where they teach. :

Consider the matter of rank. It’s a long, long
way from the full professors at the Graduate.

oS

one

We know your type, kid.


20.

» Center down to the part-time adjuncts at the very
bottom ofthe hierarchy. The disparities in condi-
tion between them are enormous.

, Adjuncts, for example, are the coolie laborers
of the system. They are not paid to be. full
members of an academic community, but rather—
Jike:migrant farm workers—to do seasonal labor,
e.g.,- filling up survey sections at the last-minute.
They are paid by the course—intellectual piece-
work—or by the hour—intellectual clock-punch-
ing..Quite like their sisters and brothers who float
about the corporate office buildings, they form a
-pool of “flexible” labor: Collectively they might be
called Professors Temporary, or perhaps Rent-a-
Prof. Like Kelly Girls, they are often hired on the
spot, a matter of days before registration, and
often fired the day after registration, if they seem
superfluous or cost-inefficient.

Adjuncts get cut-rate wages. They do the same
classroom work done by “regular” faculty (though
adjuncts often, given the lateness of their hiring,
are made to teach out of standard texts and to give

~ standard exams). Yet they are typically paid one-
third the wage of the lowest paid full-time faculty,

» one-seventh the full professor rate. They get none
of the extra benefits, either. No vacation pay, no
nealth insurance.

Why do they put up with it? The job market

_ gives them little choice because Ph.D.s have been
overproduced. Unemployed professors wait on
- line for whatever jobs they can get, and peddle
themselves at degrading “professional confer-
ences” in the search for positions. They are in the
same position, in other words, as millions of
other’American wage-earners.
~~ Adjuncts have little to say about departmental
‘policy. They are given either half or no part of a
. vote. in “Faculty” deliberations. Not surprisingly
“they seldom come to faculty meetings. Not sur-
-“prisingly the full-timers don’t get to know them.
Adjuncts are just not around that much. They
meet their classes and run. They are not paid to
stay around and mix with students or colleagues;
the system is structured in such a way that they
are economically penalized for doing so.

The “regular” Faculty, then, overlook or ignore
or openly. scorn the adjuncts. The full-timers act
this way partly because of the (understandable)
conviction that adjuncts have no long range stake
in the department, for though they are here today,
they may very likely be gone tomorrow. Perhaps,
also, they feel somewhat guilty around adjuncts,

for they are told that their own higher salaries. are
dependent on the existence of a mass of exploited
workers below them. .

This divisiveness is suicidal. Adjuncts now
comprise over 35 per cent of the Faculty as a
whole (at.some places they are 50-70 per cent of
the. total). May, 1974, statistics indicate that
there are 11,370 full-timers (including Jibrarians),
and 7,031. adjuncts (some of whom are really
full-timers carrying extra loads). Thus roughly one
of every three Faculty members are now intellec-
tual proletarians, denied what independence re-
mains to the rest of the faculty. Yet one part
dismisses the other part as not “really” faculty.

“It is no longer the manual workers
alone who have their reserve army
of the unemployed and are afflicted
with lack of work; the educated
workers also have their reserve
army of idle, and among them also
lack of work has taken up its perma-
nent quarters. . . . The time is near
when the bulk of these proletarians
will be distinguished from:the
others only by their pretensions.
Most of them still imagine that they
are something better than prole-
tarians. .. .”

—Kautsky, “Class Struggle,” 1892

Administrators are delighted with all of this and
continually encourage ill feelings between adjunct
and regular faculty. Thus, when the BHE tried to
impose a 50% “tenure quota” on the Faculty in
1974, it craftily decreed that the cut-off point
would be determined on the basis of each
department's full-time teachers. In a department
of, say, 40 teachers, 20 full-time and 20 part-time,
the maximum number entitled to tenure would be
10, a true quota of 25%! The other 10 full-timers
could be let go sooner or later and replaced, either
by newer and cheaper full-timers or, indeed, more

. adjuncts. Not surprisingly, this encouraged ad-

juncts and full-timers to view one another as
threats to their own job security.
The “faculty” union (the Professional Staff

. Congress, or PSC) often follows the BHE line.

The “faculty” union often follows the BHE line.
It ignores adjuncts, sets impossible dues sched-
ules for them, and throws them to the wolves at
contract negotiation time to get more of a dwind-
ling pie for senior staff, then wonders why ad-
juncts stay away in droves. Soon, perhaps, the
union will speak for only a handful of privileged
elite workers—the “Faculty”—of whom there will
be very few. The great bulk of the teaching staff

“will be adjuncts, in fact if not in name.

The CUNY Faculty is also divided by campus.
Aristocrats at the Grad Center loftily peer down at
their lesser colleagues at the “senior” colleges,
who in-turn have almost nothing to do with the

“community” (formerly and more frankly “junior”)

colleges. And each class is itself divided, given
the number and dispersion of CUNY campuses.
, Until 1969 the status division between “senior”
and “community” colleges was sharply under-
scored by the lesser salaries paid to commun-
ity college professors carrying a greater teach-
ing load. Now—in theory—all are paid equal-
ly. In fact, however, CUNY faculty are still paid
according to how well their students are meant to
perform.

Senior college faculty are paid more at every
rank than are community college faculty, and
even within the ranks of the senior colleges there

_ are divisions. In 1971, Queens, a school with 86%

white student body, received more money than
any other campus to hire new faculty, twice as
much as the campus with the next-highest bud-
get. John Jay and Medger Evers were on the
bottom. Each “rank” has a pay scale range, and at
the “better” schools, new faculty come in at top
pay. So in 1971, Queens’ new professors each
earned thousands of dollars more per annum than
their counterparts at John Jay or Richmond. New
associates at City averaged more than new associ-
ates at Lehman, far more than new associates at
Richmond, and more than new ful/ professors. at
John Jay.

In addition to the divisions imposed by the Uni-
versity’s structure and management, there are
those divisions that flow from the more massive
discriminations in the society at large. Though
one might expect the University to be in the van-
guard of struggles to overcome the historic in-
equities of racism and sexism, it is not. Partly this
is due to the difficulties that any single part of a
system has in overcoming the limitations im-
posed on it by the whole; partly, however, it is the

24

University’s own responsibility.

The CUNY Faculty is thus divided along sexual
lines. As Lilia Melani, spokeswoman for CUNY
Women’s Coalition (CWC) has said, “wherever we
look in the university, we see men to the right,
men to the left, men to the front—and women to.
the back.” In the twelve senior colleges, 84% ‘of
the chairpeople are men; in the community col-
leges, 81% are men. Six of every ten women fac-
ulty are in the non-tenure bearing ranks; the City
College English department, for example, has.54

_ tenured men and only 5 tenured women. Women

are often kept at the rank of lecturer for a decade,
while a dozen or more men are advanced ahead
of them. Even the pension plans require women to
pay more than men to get equal benefits.

A look at some statistics provides a clear pic-
ture of the sexual discrimination that sorts women
into the lower faculty ranks. As of 1970, through-
out the University, the situation was this:

Percent Female Percent Male

Professors 14.4 85.6
Associates 25.3 74.7
Assistants 31.8 68.2
Instructors 44.8 . 55.2

Lecturers 47.0 53.0.

Up-to-date, CUNY-wide statistics are unavaila- :
ble for comparison, but 1973 figures arranged. by
campus suggest that the rate of progress in
combatting sexual discrimination is uneven. -It
seems most rapid in community colleges. (though
whether because of feminist pressure, or the fact
that female faculty are paid less and thus are
financially advantageous to administrators with
money, is not clear). Progress seems slowest. at
the larger, four-year schools—if there is progress
at all. Consider the following figures:

BMCC Bcc QUEENS JAY
— %F %M %F eM %F %M %F %M
Professors 31.0 69.0] 17.4 82.6 |12.4 87.6| 10:3 89.7
Associates 31.1 68.9 | 33.3 66.7 | 18.7 81.3 | 20.5: 79.5
Assistants 45.1. 54.9 | 37.4 62.6 | 33.7 66.3] 31.4 68:6
Instructors 60.0 40.0 | 58.0 42.0 | 43.5 56.5 | 46.1. 53.9
Lecturers 54.3 45.7 | 52.9 47.1 | 50.4 ~ 49.6] 23.5 76.5



A similar situation prevails with respect to the
racial and ethnic composition of the faculty. As of
1970, the University-wide distribution of black and
~ Puerto Rican faculty in the full-time ranks looked
like this: .-

Percent Black Percent Puerto Rican —

Professors 2.6 0.4

Associates 5.0 0.4
Assistants 6.0 1.0
Instructors 9.3 2.5

Lecturers 19.1 4.4

Here again we may compare rates of change by
looking at 1973 figures for four campuses:

BMCC QBcc’ QUEENS JAY
%B %PR %B %PR %B %PR %B %PR
Professors 19.0 4.8] 0.0 0.0} 1.4 00| 3.4 0.0
Associates 26.7 0.0 | 23 2.3] 1.9 0.0) 91 0.0
Assistants. 17.1 3.2 | 4.6 05/ 3.7 00 | 66 1.5
Instructors 31.0 1.0 | 2.3 0.0 7.3 1.4 |19.6 2.0
Lecturers’ 20.0 14.3100 0.01260 60 | 5.9 17.6

But. though the Faculty is divided, in truth all
but..the most privileged have a great deal in
common. The “regular”? members of the Faculty
are not so well off as is commonly assumed, and
what. benefits they now enjoy are fast. being
eroded. When we look into such matters as job
~ security, wages, working conditions, and the
teaching situation itself, the common plight of al/
faculty is evident.

, Consider job security. Adjuncts, of course,
have none. Assistant professors are in little better
shape. They creep, often in fear and trembling,
annual contract by’ annual contract, toward the

-, magic up-or-out cut-off-point of five years. At any

time in. that period they may be expeditiously
axed. This past year many heads have rolled.

Pleading the “tenure quota” or, more cleverly, de-.

clining enrollment (which is always hailed as an
excuse to fire, rather than an opportunity to
reduce class size, improve teaching, and decrease
“the drop-out rate), a massive pruning in the lower
ranks has been going on. City College fired forty-
five, Lehman laid off forty, Brooklyn ‘booted
seventeen. To some it came as a Kafkaesque, be-
wildering shock: Charles Evans, 40, had been
teaching for nine years at City College, the last
five as an Assistant Professor. His department un-

2

animously recommended him for tenure. The Col-
lege P&B approved that decision. A special review
board of deans fired him nonetheless. And they
refused to tell him why: “I had to defend myself
against charges about which I’m not told,” Evans
told a New York Post reporter. According to the
PSC, there were, as of February 1974, over two
hundred cases similar to his.

Those who already have tenure are wrapping

themselves in a moth-eaten and fast disinte- -

grating security blanket. Tenure is under. major
nationwide attack. One educational bureaucrat at
a State Board of Regents: luncheon-discussion
last year (guest speaker: Nelson Rockefeller)
observed with a shudder that “tenure had deteri-
orated into job security.” : ,

The CUNY Administration dutifully instituted a
tenure quota, which was beaten back only by a
determined struggle of union, faculty, labor, and
community groups. But it was only a temporary
victory. The BHE promptly invited Quigg Newton,
former director of the American Council of Educa-
tion and, since 1963, President of the Common,
wealth Fund of New York City, to head a commit-
tee to study the entire matter. Board Chairman
Alfred Giardino says that the Newton panel’s task
will be to develop “objective procedures relating

-to faculty personnel practices so that ‘superior
standards may be applied in all areas.” He
promises to retain “highly meritorious scholars
and teachers.” He and his cohorts, of course, will
define what “superior standards” are. Good luck
to usall.

Another thrust at tenure on the local scene last
year came from the CUNY Council of Presidents,
which proposed reviewing the performance of the
tenured faculty, and firing them if they are
“deficient.”

Such legal, frontal assaults, on tenure are by no
means the only danger to watch for. The legal
facade of tenure may well be left intact, for in the

present system there is a handy escape clause ©

that provides a cleverer way to dump faculty:
“financial exigency.” College trustees across the
land are citing “declining enrollments” to fire
tenured faculty. in droves. One branch of the
University of Wisconsin sent layoff notices last
May to 88 tenured faculty; Southern Illinois dis-
missed 104 faculty, 28 of whom were tenured.
~The number of complaints from dismissed facul-
ty members received by the American Association
of University Professors exceeded 7,700 each

year for the past two years, and the rate is rising.
Again, management controls the books, sets the
budget, and decides what is “exigency.”

Consider faculty wages at CUNY. Despite an
attractive sounding contract (remember all those
lovely columns of ascending salary scales?), rea/
wages are declining. Inflation has outdistanced
and wiped out all increases. (And unless the
faculty demands a cost-of-living escalator—a real
one, not a phony one—they’ll get hoodwinked
again on the next contract.) Distinguished profes-
sors are doing OK, though taxes do eat into those
impressive salaries, and the cost of living in New
York is heading for the moon. The rest of the
full-time faculty are getting by, but it’s getting
closer and closer to the bone. Adjuncts are
already in the coming depression.

Consider working conditions and the basic is-
sue of control over the workplace. It is clear that
the traditional prerogatives of the professoriate

“No institution of higher learning
in the United States of any claim to
respectability whatsoever would
hold that tenure for an individual
faculty member is a right and nota
privilege. Like all other legislated
rights, it becomes one when it is
conferred and not before.”

—Report of the CUNY President’s
Committee on Tenure, 1972

23,

are being eaten away. So-called professionals—
who are in fact salaried employees—suffer ablisés
and leaks of power to well-organized, centralized~'
bureaucrats at the central office. Like other’ pro-
fessionals—engineers,
movie directors— professors are being increasing-
ly subordinated to the control of administrators:
They work in an increasingly less dignified, more
dehumanized environment. Individually, CUNY’s
16,000 faculty have less and less to say, and -
collectively they have not gotten themselves to-
gether. As Jack Golodner, executive secretary of
the Council of Unions for Professional Employees
reminds us, “it’s no different than what happened
to the blue-collar worker who once was a crafts-
man with dignity, an individual.” The ultimate
degradation—which we will discuss “a bit later”
on—is fast coming upon us: the Professor. is
being replaced by the Machine.

Consider, finally, the teaching situation itself. |
Here is a state of affairs that almost all faculty,-of-
whatever rank or campus, find grim and depres- -
sing. Many of the faculty come from elite under-
graduate colleges, or.did their apprenticeships. at
leading universities. (In the Fall of 1961 57% of
senior college Ph.D. holders did their work at ei-
ther Columbia or NYU). Many are committed
scholars and teachers, driven to understand the®
world around them and to-communicate and’ share’ *
their findings with their students. Tucked: away ©
somewhere in the minds of many is an ideal ~
university where dedicated faculty work with ©
eager students, in relative leisure, to omy, learn,
pursue knowledge.

CUNY is not that place. It is a processing fac- ©
tory, dedicated less to truth than to “post- second-
ary education” in the service of corporate capital-
ism. Newly-arrived faculty find, in addition to
bad working conditions, a student body that is not
wholeheartedly given over to learning. Many stu-"
dents are bored, resentful, and here only because
the whip of the job market and’ its certification *
requirements drive them on to “get that piece oft
paper.” Others, though enthusiastic about learA-
ing, are blocked from pursuing it as fully as they *
wish: they must work to stay alive or support their
families, they do not live on campus.(such as it is) ~’
and so are not available for the kind of easy;
informal communication of elite schools. They”
simply do not have the leisure required for sus-
tained intellectual exploration.

Under these circumstances, different faculty ®:

publishing house’ staff; -


. 24 .

act in different ways.

There are those—many of whom chose to teach
at CUNY—who appreciate the burdens their stu-
dents face, and find them particularly exciting to
teach,’ precisely because of their backgrounds.
CUNY students are often older, often have a rich-
er experience from which to contribute to class
discussions, often have a more genuine désire for
understanding than do students at elite schodls,
for whom college is often just a place to hang out
during late adolescence. Student-faculty relations
based on this mutual commitment are truly
rewarding, and many faculty work very hard to
develop such a relationship. Some break up large
lecture classes into smaller groups, others team-
teach “skills” courses, and “content” courses to
integrate the material, others develop new curricu-
la to use in traditional courses.

Yet faculty who make such efforts face enor-
mous obstacles in time, energy, and bureaucratic
red tape (to say nothing of not being paid for extra
work). Classes get larger and larger, commit-
tees doing meaningless work proliferate, ser-
ious intellectual dialogue with fellow faculty be-
comes more difficult. College P&B committees,
moreover, are slow and sometimes openly op-
posed to recognizing creative or innovative or just
plain effective teaching as the primary criteria for
tenure and promotion. Faculty are expected to
publish, to be serious professionals, yet the Uni-
versity: constantly encroaches on the time and
energy needed for intellectual exploration, and
University regulations cripple or prevent attempts
at curricular experimentation. CUNY, to be sure,
does set,up special programs to improve teach-
ing, but ‘most of them are concerned with the
development and application of ‘“labor-saving”
technology.

Under this kind of pressure many faculty get
discouraged. They resign themselves to teaching
as “just a job.” They mentally clock in in the
morning and out in the afternoon or night. More
and more,they seek enjoyment and satisfaction in
their diminishing leisure time. .

Many faculty seek comfort in the cynical notion
that their students aren’t willing or able to learn,
anyway. Why invest a lot of time and energy in
teaching, they ask wearily, when your classes
consist of diploma-hunters and illiterates? Job
applicants in several departments of one senior
college were recently told by faculty members that
the students were destined to be “city bureau-
crats,” and that it was therefore pointless to
expect them to do anything intellectually demand-
ing. This, in time, becomes a self-fulfilling pro-
phecy. And the cynics strive to perpetuate them-
selves. In a search for a new Dean of Faculty, one
community college recently instructed inter-
viewers to be sure that the prospective adminis-
trator had no “idealistic notions about these kids
going on to a four-year college.” This is a
poisonous mood.

Worse still, there are those professors who
blame the students directly. They posit a golden
age in the past when traditional teaching methods
worked. They may recall when they taught over-
whelmingly white, middle-class students, i.e., of
their own background. The dramatic shift in the
student body, the presence of many more low-
income Irish, Puerto Ricans, Italians, and blacks,
has been a culture shock of profound signifi-
cance. The new students frequently hold different
assumptions about life, about authority, about
book learning. This cultural shock, coupled at
times with long-held but buried racial and reli-
gious prejudices, sometimes generates overt
hostility. For many faculty, the solution appears
to lie not in pressing ahead and guaranteeing to
all students the opportunities that once were re-
stricted to a few (and learning something new
themselves), but rather going back and “tight-
ening standards.”

But turning the clock back is no solution, and

- attempts to do it will be met with overwhelming

resistance both from the students, who have a le-
gitimate right to higher education, and from the
big businessmen who want mass higher educa-
tion to supply them with a skilled but manageable

_ work force. If we truly value learning, scholarship,

and critical thinking—if the concept of a universi-

ty still matters—then we have no. choice but to
move ahead, to forge a new kind of higher
education. This requires, at a minimum, piacing
the blame for our present. problems where it
belongs—not on the students who want an
education, but on the class that has decided to
give them only that amount of education that will
in the end secure greater profits for themselves.

What’s Going On Here?

The natural questions at this point aré why is
life so disagreeable for so many of us at CUNY
and how did it get to be that way?

Why does the university channel students by
class, race, and sex into different colleges and
programs? Why is a college degree being rede-
fined as a higher form of working papers? Why
does a Harvard BA get you a better job than a
Queens BA? Why does a Queens BA get you a
better job than a Medgar Evers BA? Why does the
kind of education you get depend on how much
money your family makes? |

25

Why is the faculty stratified by rank, race, sex
and campus? What purpose does it serve? Whose
purpose does it serve? Why are more and more of
the faculty in adjunct positions? What is hap-
pening to job security and why? Why are ‘“cost-
accounting” standards determining the structure
and content of education more and more these
days? Why are firings up and real wages down?

Who’s responsible for the current state of
affairs?

Take the last question first. It is certainly not
the students or faculty who are responsible. They
have less and less to say about how the university
is run. But it won’t ‘do to blame the growing
number of administrators for everything, either.
Some of them don’t like what’s happening any
more than we do. And most of them aren’t really in
a position to change things. even if they wanted to.

The truth is that CUNY’s problems are hardly
unique. Students and faculty in colleges all over
the country are complaining of pretty much the
same things that we are: financial crisis, nar-
rowly defined vocationalism, internal divisiveness,
creeping managerialism, powerlessness. We're
not the only ones who are having arough time of it
in higher education these days, so it obviously
can’t be simply a local problem we're dealing with.

For that matter, the problems of CUNY and the.
campuses are not so different from what people
everywhere are complaining about:

Faculty firings, layoffs, cutbacks? Workers. of



26

all kinds are being thrown off their jobs: recent
_Census Employment Survey figures show that, in
_ New. York City, as many as seven of every ten
. workers either can’t get full-time work or are living
_ below what the Government defines as poverty
‘levels. ;
_», In¢reased pressures for productivity and effi-
iency? Any auto worker, key punch operator, or
_insurance salesman can tell you what that means.

- Exploitation, manipulation, powerlessness?
People all over know what those are: the banks
_,bleed them for mortgages and credit, the govern-
“ment milks them, the corporations bilk them, and
the politicians con them. .

_ Not enough money for work-study, the library,
or remediation programs this year because of a
budget squeeze? Well, inflation is so bad every-
where that some people are eating dog food.

Deadening, overcrowded, and often pointless
classes? Work of almost any kind these days
seems boring, meaningless, and a waste of time.

Unequal treatment :for the unaffluent? Million-
aires often pay less taxes than policemen, and it’s
all within the law.

Lack of control over key decisions? Giant cor-
porations like ITT and Exxon dominate whole
nations.

Crumbling buildings, litter-strewn hallways,
roach-infested toilets? Nothing really special
there: after all, our streets:are full of holes and
garbage, the subways are filthy and noisy, and the

“ air stinks.

What’s the matter with CUNY? The similarities
between the crisis on the campus and the crisis in
the country give us a clue about how to answer
that question. To get a grip on our local difficul-
ties, we must begin to try and grasp our more gen-
eral problems.

_Well, then, what’s the matter with the country?
Why are things in such a mess? Is it inevitable?
Human nature? Fate? Accident? Corruption?
Temporary and short-lived difficulties? The so-
called energy crisis? Our own inabilities, greed,
or laziness?

No. Most of what ails us, inside CUNY and out,
can be traced back to the way things are organized
and run in this country, to the system. called
capitalism:

What is capitalism?

Capitalism is the ownership of machines, fac-
tories, computers, raw materials—what the econ-
omists call the ‘means of production” —by private
individuals, rather than the public. These indivi-
duals—capitalists—can live without. working.
They make their profits by owning; the more they
own, the more they make. In fact the capitalist
system ensures that the largest incomes go to
those who do the least work.

How do capitalists get their profits? Basically
by paying the people who do work less in wages
than they are worth. Workers create more value—
with their time, skill, and energy—than capitalists
pay them in salary. Capitalists also get enormous
handouts from the government in tax write-offs,
or just plain subsidies, and those handouts again
come from people who work and pay the bulk of
the taxes.

Capitalism promotes the theory that what’s
good for General Motors is good for the U.S.A.;
capitalists like to say that the self-interest of the
business community will automatically benefit
the rest of us. In fact their interests and our inter-
ests usually conflict. As, for instance, when the
auto companies and oil companies and rubber
companies sabotage cheap electric mass transit
so that we must shell out for cars and gasoline
and tires, despite the cost to us in money, lives,
accidents, pollution, and traffic jam-ups.. We
don’t produce according to what people need. We
produce only what makes a profit for capitalists,
and hope that our needs will somehow be met.
They often aren’t. Consider the state of housing,
transportation, health care.

ASK NOT LIKAT
STANDARD OIL CAN DO
For 4ou...B0T WHAT
300 CE DO FOR i

Capitalists like to say that this is a system of
“free enterprise” based on “competition.” But that

is nonsense. Capitalism is based on monopoly— >
giant firms getting together to fix prices-at a nice,

high level so that they all win, and only the rest of
us lose. Check out the price of airline tickets,
liquor, appliances, steel, gas, or almost anything.
Phony “competition” characterizes the political
system, too. The rich underwrite both political
parties, and ensure that only millionaires or lob-
byists sit in positions of power; those they don’t
elect, they buy- later.

Capitalism repeatedly collapses into depres-
sion. Why? Under the current system, capitalists
pay their workers as little as they can get away
with. This keeps their profits high. But capital-
ists also are forced to rely on those very same un-
derpaid workers (in their role as consumers) to
buy all the products that are produced. But that’s

-not possible. Working people just don’t make

enough money to buy all the goods pushed on TV.
So sooner or later the system breaks down. Fac-
tory production is cut back, because there’s no
profit in full production when they can’t sell all the
goods. Workers are laid off. They then have even
less monéy to buy goods. So more factories close
down. Soon we have a depression. Factories
stand empty while millions are unemployed. In
the great depression of the 1930s, millions were
also on bread lines, while at the same time pigs

27

were killed, milk dumped in rivers, kerosene
pouréd on potatoes, and _ fruit left to rot. It’s
insane. But under capitalism, it’s logical: capital-
ism is less concerned with feeding people than
with harvesting profits, so supply was artificially
restricted to drive prices up even though people
were Starving.

Most people know about or lived through the
depression of the thirties, and they know it was
ended only by the Second World War. But most
people are not aware that we have depressions all

..the time. We have had massive tinemployment,

foreclosures, and hunger in the 1810s, the 1830s,
the 1850s, the 1870s, the 1890s, and the. 1910s,
with lots of recessions—like the one today—in
between. Depressions are built into capitalism,
and we are, in all likelihood, about to have another
one. Unless, perhaps, we have another war.

Capitalism sorts people into distinct levels,
depending primarily on the kind of work they do.
(or don’t do) and how much property they.own.
The level you’re in determines most of your jife
style—eating habits (McDonald’s vs. French res-
taurants), health-care (run-down clinic vs. Park -
Avenue doctor), wealth (currently one-fifth of the
population owns three-quarters of the entire
country), recreation (bowling vs. vacations in
South America), clothes (John’s Bargain Store vs.
Saks), power and influence (taking orders vs.
giving them, landing in jail vs. beating the rap,
obeying the laws vs. writing them). For all the talk
about this being a classless society, there are
extraordinary differences between the way people
live in America. ;

And—our focus in this pamphlet—there are
great differences in the way people are educated

in America.

,



28°

We will argue that capitalism is a system that-

- has, from the beginning tried to use the schools
and colleges for its own purposes. Capitalists
have long felt that education—like everything
else—is useful only if it in some way increases
profits, or enhances the possibility-of making.
future profits. So capitalism has tried to make the

~ schools into educational factories for the produc-
tion of better workers. To do the basic research
needed to keep their factories humming. To per-
petuate the multi-layered class nature of Ameri-
can society. To promote the values, attitudes, and

“beliefs that would retard any serious questioning
of the capitalist order: That these have been their
wishes is a_matter of record, and we intend to re-
view that record here.

L “We ‘hope; moreover, to show you that capital-
ists are not simply interested bystanders whose
wishes and values may be safely ignored. They are
far and away the most wealthy, most powerful
class in the United States, and they have had an
enormous impact on the content, style, and or-
ganization of American education in general, and
of the City University of New York in particular. —

We do not mean by this that there is some cen-
tral: committee of capitalists. somewhere which

. has secretly plotted a take-over of the entire
educational system. On the contrary, we want to
show that capitalist educational policy has almost
always been formulated and debated quite openly:
The problem is not that they operate out of
smoke-filled rooms. The problem is that we have
not. been taking them seriously enough to keep
track of what they’re doing. : ,

We want:to show,..too, that none of these
groups or individuals works like a General Staff,
~ poised on top of a chain of command that is res-

ponsive to their every wish and whim. Rather they
are Masterplanners. Their think tanks, commis-
sions, foundations, councils, consultants and
specialists define “objectives,” discuss “options”
and “trade-offs,” and then let individual schools
and colleges work out their own “game plans”
within the generally-accepted “guidelines.” No
cloak-and-dagger stuff, no conspiracies. They
simply structure. the educational order so that
“standard operating procedure” works to their,

sand not to our, advantage.

We don’t mean to imply here, either, that the
capitalists have always had their way with the
educational system, any more than they- have

“always had their way with their workers.. Student

and faculty opposition to capitalist interventions
in the schools and colleges has been a constant
theme in the history of American education—
including the history of the City University.

With these points in mind we will begin, in the

immediately following chapter, to explore the
complex relationship between capitalism and
education at all levels over the past century and a
half. Without establishing this larger context at
the outset, we'll never make complete sense of
-what’s happening to us from one day to the next.
To put it differently, our first task is to get a
picture of the whole forest before examining
individual trées. .

‘Once the larger context has been established,
then it will be an easy step to considering the
origins and development of what is now CUNY,
what lies in store for both CUNY and American
higher education generally, and—the final issue—
what. we are to do in light of what we have found
out.

29

2.Capitalism
and Education

There is a logic to capitalism, and no one has
more brilliantly sketched out where that logic—if
unchecked—might lead than Aldous Huxley in his
little novel, Brave New World. Central to his vision
of the capitalist utopiais a thoroughgoing school-

ing, and a look at that as yet imaginary system

may help make our investigation of capitalism’s
actual efforts in the field easier. ;

In Huxley's Brave New World, education begins
early. Embryos packed in bottles glide along a

conveyor belt through the various chambers of the |

Central Hatchery and Conditioning Center. In the
Social Predestination room the embryos are sepa-
rated into batches of occupational and class
groups according to the latest projections of
future economic ineeds. Embryos destined to be
steel workers or miners in the tropics are passed
through cold tunnels and bombarded with -painful
doses of X-rays; by Decanting time, they hate
cold and thrive on heat. Caste differences are con-
trolled by varying the oxygen supply. Those em-
bryos destined for the upper strata—Alphas and
Betas—get the most oxygen, while those destin-
ed for the lower strata—Deltas, Gammas, Epsi-
lons—get progressively less. The result is an
appropriate mix of human product, from Alpha

; pluses (Emotional Programmers or World Control-

lers) down to the Epsilon sub-morons (machine
tenders, elevator operators).

After Decanting, education proceeds in the
Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Rooms. Hypnopedic
suggestion (taped messages played all night to
the drugged infants) create future consumer de-

mands (“1 do love having new clothes, I’ do love.
-..”)to meet future industrial production. Man-
ual workers learn to. hate books. Everyone learns:
to hate thinking in generalities. And, most import-
ant, everyone is trained in Elementary Class Con-
sciousness. All night long speakers whisper at.
Sleeping Betas: “Alpha children wear greyThey:

“l was wondering,” said the
Savage, “why you had them at all—.
seeing that you can get whatever —
you want out of those bottles. Why
don’t you make everybody an Alpha
Double Plus while you’re about it?”

Mustapha Mond laughed. “Be-
cause we have no wish to have our
throats cut,” he answered. “We be-
lieve in happiness and stability. A
society of Alphas couldn’t fail to be
unstable and miserable. Imagine a _
factory staffed by Alphas. .. . It’s -
an absurdity. . . . Alpha-condi-
tioned man would go mad if he had
to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work—
go mad or start smashing things
up.”

—Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”



30
work much harder than we do, because they're so
frightfully clever. I’m: really awfully glad I’m a
Beta, because | don’t work so hard. And then we
~ are much better than the Gammas and Deltas.
Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and
Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, | don’t want to
play with Delta children. And Epsilons. ...” In
~ time, the sorted and conditioned pupils leave their
Hatchery for the real world. And they are all Very
. Happy. :
Education in America is not this bad, of course,
Not yet. But the most farsighted members of the
capitalist class recognized a long time ago that
“the educational system could be a valuable tool
for increasing profits and stabilizing the social
system, and they have been inching toward a
-Brave New.schooling system ever since. And they
have hailed each step in that direction as a
“reform,” as a sign of “progress” and “modern-
ity.” ,

Sabvade),

The Early School Reform Movement

One of the first to see the. potential value of
education for capitalist development was Robert
Owen, the English cotton manufacturer. Early in
the 19th century, Owen began to advise his fellow
manufacturers, and the British ruling class in
general, that force was not the way to make their
workers. more productive, orderly, and obedient.
Much the better method, he-said, is to mold their
characters and train their minds so as to make
force unnecessary. And nothing could do all this
quite so.well as schooling, which Owen had
proved to his own satisfaction by experiments on
his workers’ children. The quality of the “living
machines” laboring in his mills had improved
significantly, he liked to recall, and there could be
little doubt that schools were the cheapest and
most effective way for the “privileged classes” to
make workers “industrious, temperate, healthy,
and faithful to their employers.”

No time should be wasted, Owen emphasized.
“The governing powers of all countries should
establish rational’ plans for the education and
general formation of the characters of their sub-

jects. These plans must be devised to train —

children from their earliest infancy in good habits.

.. . They must afterwards be rationally educated,

.and their labor be usefully directed.” A benevo-
lent and kindly man, Owen was convinced that his
system of reforming workers’ characters would in
the end increase their happiness, too, and that
general education would thus usher in an era of
class harmony and cooperation.

4

Owen’s message did not go over well in En-
gland. Workers charged him with advocating a
new kind of slavery, greedy fellow capitalists pre-
ferred immediate profits to investing in future sta-
bility, and crowned heads worried that extensive
education might upset the social order. (Owen
himself, rejected by the ruling class, developed a
vision of a new, more equal society, allied him-
self with working class reform movements, and in
one of history’s pleasanter ironies, became a
socialist.)

On the other side of the Atlantic, however,
where a rising class of American capitalists was
confronting serious working class unrest for the
first time, Owen’s original program of character
formation found a far more enthusiastic audi-
ence. :

The great New England mill owners of the
1830's and 1840’s—the Lowells and Lawrences
and Appletons—had reaped huge profits from the
labor of the children, country women, and im-
poverished Irish immigrants who toiled sixteen
hours a day in their factories. This exploitation,
however, had generated an angry working-class
backlash of labor strikes, riots, unionization, and
‘workingmen’s parties. The nervous capitalists de-
bated how best to respond to this challenge. They
quickly and prudently organized municipal police
forces, but violent repression seemed risky and
shortsighted: the power of their class was not yet
sufficiently secure. Besides, they believed they
could wring more profit from a voluntary rather

than the involuntary work force of slaves that the _

Southern ruling class favored.

The beleaguered capitalists thus listened with
intense interest to a tiny band of “educational re-
formers,” gentlemen like Horace Mann who were
pushing Owen’s idea that schooling would “im-
prove” working-class attitudes. The problem, the
reformers told the rich, was that those found “at
the head of mobs, and strikes, and trades’ unions”
were lacking in the “moral restraint which a good
education would have supplied.”

Create a free, public, compulsory school sys-
tem, the reformers urged. Put it under the control
of acentralized, professional bureaucracy. Dedi-
cate it to the formation of “character.” Take the
children of, the working-class’ at an early age,
isolate them from “bad” influences, teach them
self-discipline and respect for authority. Teach
them that poveriy was the result, not of oppres-
sion or exploitation, but of laziness, tardiness,

31

and immorality. er
Let the way you taught them, the rigidities. of
the process itself, turn unruly children into steady
workers. Let well-ordered classrooms, rote learn-
ing, strict teachers instill in children the habits of
industry, frugality, punctuality, and docility—all
character traits desired by the factory owners. A
laborer disciplined by such schooling, one. re-
former wrote, “works more steadily and -ch er-
fully and therefore more productively, than one.
who, when a child, was left to grovel in igno-
rance.” .

“Education has a market value;

. . . itis so far an article of mer-:»
chandise, that it may be turned to'a
pecuniary account: itmaybe | ~
minted, and will yield a larger
amount of statutable coin than
common bullion.”

— Horace Mann, 1841

Do all this, the reformers said, and you will
implant in every working-class schoolboy the con-
viction—in the words of one school textbook—
that he “should endeavor to cultivate in himself
those qualities, to attain that knowledge and skill
which will make his services most acceptable to
the capitalist.” Indeed, his conditioning will have
been so effective that a mill owner might lower a
worker's wages, and he will “not engage in strikes
[but rather] increase his productiveness” to make |
up his lost earnings!

And all of it, the reformers pointed out, would
be at public expense. Not surprisingly, the manu-
facturers liked what they heard.

While Mann and the reformers were delivering
their pitch to the manufacturers, however, the
workers were. putting forth their own vision of a
system of free public education. They too were
dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs, but
for a different reason: the capitalists were mono-
polizing knowledge, they said. Existing public
schools taught at best minimal proficiency in the
three R’s—and.only to self-avowed “paupers”—
while exclusive private schools gave a broad edu-
cation to the sons of the wealthy. This class-
biased system, said the New England Working-
men’s Party, kept “knowledge, the chief element
of power, in the hands of the privileged few,” and


32):

doomed the children of the workers to a life in the.

mills merely to satisfy “the cupidity and avarice of
their employers.” What must be done, the workers
demanded,.was to smash the “monopoly of
talent,” to provide equal knowledge forall classes,
to have free and universal schooling with a broad
and comprehensive curriculum, and to place the
new system “under the control and suffrage of the
people,” not professional bureaucrats.

The public school systems that emerged in the
middle of the 19th century, as it turned out, repre-.
sented an almost complete triumph for the capit-
talists and gentlemen reformers. Especially in
Massachusetts, rigid and politically reliable
bureaucracies ran the new schools expressly—as

_the Lynn school board remarked—to teach “so-
»briety, industry, and frugality, chastity, modera-
tion and temperance” to working-class youth.

And the results: were encouraging. The children
seemed to acquire “habits of application, respect
to superiors, and obedience to law,” and what this
meantfor labor discipline on the whole was obvi-
ous. As one grateful manufacturer told Mann in
1841, “in times of agitation, on account of some

_ ‘change in regulations or wages, | have always
‘looked to the most intelligent, best educated, and
the. most moral [workers] for support.” He said
~. educated workers were noticeably “more orderly.
- and respectful in their deportment, and more
ready to comply with the wholesome and neces-
sary regulations of an establishment.”

“ The workers were anything but pleased. They
voted against the new schools whenever possible
“until the reformers removed control from local to
state levels. They stayed away in droves, driving
truancy rates to 40 or 50 per cent, until the re-
~ formers made attendance compulsory and hired
truant officers to track down runaways. Students
disrupted classrooms, and, when teachers re-
stored order with corporal punishment, parents
invaded classrooms and beat up teachers. So the
reformers claimed in loco parentis powers for the
teachers and barred the schoolhouse doors. Immi-
grant communities rioted over the content of the
curriculum and set up their own schools. Despite
an_ occasional concession or accommodation,
however, working-class resistance proved too ill-
organized to withstand the tide. By mid-century
non-capitalist conceptions of public education
had all but disappeared, and those who held out
for an alternative were dismissed as backward,
parochial, anti-Progress. The schools had become



allies and adjuncts of the factories.

_Efficiency and Vocationalism: the Modern
" System Emerges

The first public school system reared by the
Manns and the Appletons served the capitalist
class sufficiently for more than a generation. But
toward the end of the 19th century, in the age of
the great Robber Barons, it became apparent that
the schools were not keeping pace with new
developments in the economy and society. Indus-
trial organizations were vastly larger and more
powerful than anything imagined in the days of
the. Abbots and. the Lowells. Factories had be-
come more mechanized. Management wanted

' efficiency, precision, speed. The insatiable de-

mand for cheap, unskilled labor brought millions
of uprooted farmers and immigrants to the cities.

The working class was changing too. It was be-
coming more organized; more vocal, more pre-
pared for struggle. The union movement grew
rapidly, and socialist parties blossomed. Open
class warfare broke out in the streets of eastern

‘cities and obscure western mining towns. Great

strikes convulsed the country, shutting down fac-
tories, railroads, and entire cities. If public

schools were supposed to help prevent this sort of |

thing, they were doing a terrible job.

The best course of action in this crisis, advised
a new generation of reformers, is not to abandon
the schools, but to increase their efficiency: Bring
them up-to-date by using the most modern man-
agement techniques. Curricula should be judged
by cost effectiveness standards. Teachers should
be judged by their “productivity,” which could be
increased by freezing salaries or increasing class
sizes and instructional hours, or both. Students,
too, should be judged by their productivity, in this
case through the use of standardized “achieve-
ment” tests. Schoo! superintendents should think
of themselves as plant managers, of their teachers
as workers, and of their students as raw material
to be shaped in accordance with the needs of
industry. In short, the schools should become
factories themselves, subject to the same criteria
of success and the same methods of management
as all capitalist organizations. (Current CUNY
faculty might note the attitude of a popular manu-
al of the day toward the position of teacher:
William Chandler Bagley’s Classroom Manage-
ment (1907) insisted that teachers owed “‘unques-

!

“The school pupil simply gets used to
established order and expects it and obeys
it as a habit. He will maintain it as a sort of
instinct in after life, whether he has ever
learned the theory of it or not.”

—William T. Harris, U.S.
Commissioner of Education, 1891



34

tioned obedience” to superiors, for their position
was entirely analogous to laborers working in “the
army, navy, governmental departments, [and the]
great business enterprises.”)

Just how far towards the Brave New World all of
this could be carried became clear in the so-called
Platoon Schools of the early 20th century. In-
vented in the industrial center of Gary, Indiana,
the Platoon School’ aimed at maximizing plant
utilization by achieving assembly-line standardi-
zation and efficiency. Orderly “platoons” of stu-
dents moved, by the bell from room to room on
precise schedules, enabling every teacher to see
as many as 400 a day and teach up to 1000 a week!
To the reformers, it was a triumph of scientific
management. By 1929 more than a thousand
schools in over two hundred cities were on the
Gary Plan. Only determined teacher resistance
képt it out of New York City.

Managing the schools like factories was a
means to other, still more vital ends. Labor disci-
pline, as in the past, was one of the most impor-
tant. As the president of the National Education
Association said, good schools did more “to sup-
press the latent flame of communism than all
other agencies combined.” Good schools, agreed
the federal Commissioner of Education, would
contribute to class cooperation, combat the writ-
ings of Karl Marx and Henry George, and teach
pupils “first of all.to respect the rights of orga-
nized industry.” Good schools, added the Presi-
dent of Harvard, Would also teach the masses
greater respect for the experts and specialists who
were to direct public affairs. “The democracy
must learn . . . in governmental affairs,” he said,

“| hear the whistle. | must hurry.

| hear the five minute whistle.

It is time to go into the shop. . .

I change my clothes and get ready
to work. ...

| work until the whistle blows to
quit.

| leave my place nice and clean.”

—English lessons for immigrant

employees, International
Harvester Company, early 1900s

“to employ experts and abide by their decisions.”
Schools, he added, should “make the masses
aware of their limitations.” (“Alpha children are so
frightfully clever, I'm awfully glad I’m a Beta.”)

Besides striving for better labor discipline, the
new improved public schools would strive to do a
better job of sorting students along appropriate
class, occupational, and ethnic lines. One educa-
tor formulated the mechanics of it this way:

“We can picture the educational system as
having a very important function as a selecting
agency, a means of selecting the men of best
intelligence from the deficient and mediocre. All
are poured into the system at the bottom; the
incapable are soon rejected or drop out ‘after
repeating various grades and pass into the ranks
of unskilled labor. . . . The more intelligent who
are to be clerical workers pass into the high
school; the most intelligent enter the universities,
whence they are selected for the professions.”

It all sounded “objective” and ‘‘meritocratic.” It
was nothing of the sort. Working-class children
got tracked and counselled and tested into the
manual-industrial programs (and such programs
expanded enormously in this period) while middle-
class children were sorted into the college-bound
groove. The relegation of working-class children
to the factories was now justified on the conve-
nient grounds that their grades and test scores
demonstrated insufficient ability to advance any
further. The tests themselves—such as the IQ test
—were grossly class-biased in the first place, and
so the whole apparatus simply served as a sup-
posedly “scientific” device for reproducing the
existing social order.

It was brilliant and simple, and it caught on .

swiftly. A new sub-profession of educational

psychologists sprang up, devoted to creating,

administering, and interpreting more and more
tests. By. the 1930’s almost every major school
system in the country had adopted the IQ test and
its allegedly “objective” measurements of ability.
Everywhere the goal was the same: to persuade
the children of factory workers that being sent
back to the factories was due, not to exploitation,
but to heredity,

The new tracking system was aimed at the
entire working class, but it specialized in the
Americanization of immigrant workers. “For the
immigrant children,” declared one educator blunt-
ly; “the public schools are the sluiceways into

Americanism. When the stream of alien childhood

flows through them, it will issue into the reser-
voirs of national life with the old world taints
filtered out, and the qualities retained that make
for loyalty and good citizenship.” Special text-
books taught immigrants cleanliness, hard work,
and how to apply for a job, and they were swiftly
tracked into vocational programs.

The result, declared the Cleveland Superintend-
ent of Schools (in an early example of perverting
language by giving bad practices good names),
was not discrimination, but rather-a wholesome
and appropriate differentiation: “It is obvious that
the educational needs of children in a district
where the streets are well paved and clean, where
the homes are spacious and surrounded by lawns
and trees, where the language of the child’s play-
fellows is pure, and where life in general is per-
meated with the spirit and ideals of America—it is
obvious, that the educational needs of such a child
are radically different from those of the child who
lives in a foreign and tenement section.”

What is important to keep in mind here is that
all of this was done openly and with endless

professions of good will. No secret meetings, no .

midnight directives: it was sufficient that the
reformers believed themselves to be on the side of
social progress, for the capitalist class had long
since succeeded in identifying social progress
with its own enrichment. Nor, by the same token,
did the reformers need: to think too deeply about
the nature of their reforms. As the agents of
progress, they could genuinely claim to want
nothing more than to uplift and improve the
ignorant working class. - -

35,

“However successful organized __
labor has been in many ways, it has
never succeeded in directing the
education of its children. Capital
still prepares the school books and
practically controls the school
systems of the world.”

— Roger Babson, 1914

Capitalism Goes to College

While scientific management, testing, and:
tracking were sweeping the public schools, capi-
talism was also beginning to extend its power
over higher education as’ well. Until now, Ameri-”
can colleges were few in number, often under reli-
gious control, and almost: always dedicatd to
training the Alphas of society—merchants, law-
yers, ministers, gentlemen. Their curricula follow-
ed the classical liberal tradition, frowned on sci-
ence, and aimed at preparing students to deal
responsibly with the large issues of their day. The
gates of these quiet, elitist sanctuaries were
closed, of course, to women, blacks, and anyone
else without the proper social credentials.

For the great capitalist Robber Barons: who
came to power after the Civil War—the Goulds,
Rockefellers, Carnegies, and others—such a sys-
tem was old-fashioned, limited, and not suffi-
ciently practical. What the new induSirial order

needed was not a handful of well-bred, ciassical-

ly-educated gentlemen, but armies of specialists:
in management, marketing, accounting, engineer-
ing, business law, public relations, labor rela-_
tions, government, economics, and the sciences.
What the new industrial order needed was not a

‘limited number of men trained to think in general:

ities, but swarms of experts who would concen-
rate upon one small area of knowledge and leave
he larger questions about the shape and direction
of society to others. What the new industrial order
needed was:to marshall and train its best minds
or the deepening struggle against. socialism,
communism, and unionism. What the new indus-
rial order needed was large numbers of teachers
to help train and track the working class in the
burgeoning public education system. What the
new industrial order needed, in short, was a
massive expansion and reorientation of higher



36

education analogous to the expansion and reori-
entation of public schooling a half-century earlier.

And what the capitalists wanted, they very
largely got. In one college after another, the
demand for experts and specialists saw the old
classical curriculum replaced by the free elective
system, which as Richard Hofstadter noted,
“seemed like an academic transcription of liberal
capitalist thinking [for] it added to the total effi-
ciency of society by conforming to the principal of
division of intellectual labor.”

“Educate, and save ourselves and
our families and our money from

mobs.”
‘ —Henry Lee Higginson,
benefactor of Harvard, 1886 -

Sexual barriers against women in higher educa-
tion were deliberately lowered to fill the demand
for public school teachers (from the end of the
Civil War to 1900 the number of women in higher
education rose from practically nothing to some
61,000—about 40 per cent of the total college en-
rollment—and 43,000 were in teacher training
programs.) a

Faculties and academic bureaucracies every-
where grew by leaps and bounds as the schools
expanded to accommodate a rapidly-growing stu-
dent population of potential Betas as well as
Alphas.

- Ultimately, with the multiplication of new re-
search centers, professional schools, and grad-
‘uate schools, a new kind of institution came into
being—the University, higher education’s equiva-
lent to the giant industrial corporation.

There wasn’t much doubt as to who was in
charge of things, either. Rich industrialists and
financiers were pumping millions into the col-
leges and universities for libraries, classrooms,
and professional schools. Business schools were
especially popular monuments to individual. phi-
lanthropy.- Joseph Wharton, a wealthy Philadel-
phia manufacturer set the standard, but John D.
Rockefeller started a boom: his College of Com-
merce and Administration was founded in 1898,
by 1915 there were forty such schools, by 1925
one hundred and eighty-three. ‘

Sometimes entire universities were built from
scratch by impatient Robber Barons. Rockefeller

took thirty-four million dollars and created the
University of Chicago. Railroad mogul Leland
Stanford, Jr. immortalized himself with Stanford
University. Soon everybody wanted one. Carnegie
built a university for himself, and Mellon, and old
Vanderbilt, and Charles Pratt of Standard Oil, and
Johns Hopkins.

And what the capitalists didn’t buy or build,
they took over. Big businessmen, bankers, bro-
kers, and philanthropists flocked to seats on the
governing boards of colleges and universities
until, as Charles and Mary Beard put it, by “the
end of the century the roster of American trustees
of higher learning read like a corporation direct-
ory.”

The new owners of American higher education
did not hesitate to use their power to see that the
system produced the kind of product they wanted.
They busied themselves with assuring ideological
orthodoxy by removing radicals and liberals from
their faculties, much in the way they heaved union
organizers out of their plants. Leland Stanford’s
widow learned that economist Edward A. Ross
advocated free silver and municipal ownership of
utilities. She was appalled. “God forbid that Stan-
ford University should ever favor socialism of any
kind,” she said, and sacked him. At Chicago,
President William Rainey Harper called economist
Edward W. Bemis on the carpet after the latter had
delivered a mild anti-railroad company speech
during the Pullman Strike (1894) -and told him:
“Your speech has caused me a great deal of
annoyance. It is hardly safe for me to venture into
any of the Chicago clubs. | am pounced upon from
all sides.” Exit Bemis. Wisconsin bounced Rich-
ard T. Ely, Indiana evicted John R. Commons, and
Northwestern dismissed Henry Wade Rogers; the
first two harbored antimonopoly views, the third
opposed American imperialism of the 1890s.

Enter the Foundations

By the turn of the century, however, it was
already becoming apparent to the most farsighted
capitalists that direct, heavy-handed interventions
in higher education were not in their best inter-
ests. Many campuses were in turmoil, and a
national organization of faculty, the American
Association of University Professors, had taken
the field to fight the grosser cases of political
retribution against its members. In their factor-
ies, too, capitalists learned that workers were

willing to meet violence with violence, and that
the recurrent bloodbaths at Homestead, Pullman,
Coeur d’Alene and scores of other sites were be-
ginning to -seem counterproductive. Aside from
the expense and disruption, popular opinion was
shifting against the arrogant. attitude of such
Robber Barons as Jay Gould, who had once
boasted that he could “hire one half of the
working class to kill the other half.” Increasingly,
in their plants and on their campuses, some
capitalists began seeking subtler, less abrasive
means of accomplishing their objectives.

The general solution—one almost dictated by
the swift development of the corporations—was
for the Robber Barons to take a lower profile and
let impersonal organizations with corps of public
relations officers polish their images. John D.
Rockefeller, an early pioneer in this field, hired Ivy
Lee, a prototype of Huxley’s Professors of Emo-
tional Engineering, to work on his. Lee knew
Perfectly well what he was Supposed to do. As he’
put it: “We know that Henry VIII by his obsequi-
Ous deference to the forms of law was able to get.
the English pecple to believe in him so completely
that he was able to do almost anything with
them.” Blunt imposition was on the way out;
tactful indirection on the way in.

The specific solution for smoother dealings
with higher education was what could be called
the Foundation Strategy.

37

In 1902 John D. Rockefeller established the
General. Education Board, a private foundation
with an endowment of. forty-six million dollars.
Three years later, in 1905, Andrew Carnegie (“the
richest :man in the world,” according to J.P.
Morgan) set up his own Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching, which would soon
be worth over 150 million dollars. The purpose of
these new organizations, in the words of the GEB
director, was “to discourage unnecessary duplica-
tion and waste, and to encourage economy and
efficiency” in higher education. More to the point,
they aimed “to promote a comprehensive system
of higher education inthe United States.” Mr.
Rockefeller, said his aide, “desires the fund all the.
time to be working toward ‘this great end.”

Carnegie’s organization provides a superb illus-
tration of how the Foundation Strategy worked.
The CFAT did not tell professors and administra-
tors what to do. Rather,. it generously offered vast
sums of money to colleges to pay for professors’
pensions, no strings attached. Of course, since
there were so many colleges in the country, and
since not even Carnegie could hope to endow all

, of them, some means hadi to be devised to select
the most “worthy.” The GFAT thus set us some
standards—that is, defined what it considered to

be the best kind of institution—and announced
that only colleges and universities meeting those
standards would be eligible for Carnegie’s lar-
gesse.

A proper college, to the CFAT, had to have at
least a $200,000 ‘endowment (later raised to
$500,000)—forcing many institutions to greater
dependence upon private concentrations of
wealth. A proper college also had to have strict
entrance requirements (“Carnegie units,” as they
were in time known)—which meant, in turn,
wholesale changes in high school curricula
throughout the country. A Proper college was

———oooooooE;;_iwCO«~«x~=~;«=~==—e=&{&{x{[#["¥#=»_—_—»_—=—™-_
“We know that Henry VIII by his
obsequious deference to the forms
of law was able to get the English
people to believe in him so'com-
pletely that he was able to do
almost anything with them.”

— Ivy Lee, spokesman for
Jahn D. Rockefeller, 1915



38

non-denominational, had .at least eight depart-
ments with each headed by a Ph.D., had so many
requirements, so many library books, and so on.

It worked like magic. The colleges jumped for
Carnegie’s money, abandoning the old order with
hardly a look back. Says one historian of this re-
markable process: “There. were emergency ses-
sions of boards of trustees throughout the coun-
try, and charters that had been considered invio-
late were in many places quickly changed.” The
trustees had, after all, little choice. With Carnegie
money, colleges could buy the best faculty and
divert their own resources to other improvements;
without it they might go under. The impact on reli-
gious colleges was stunning: either they dropped
their_denominational affiliations overnight, or
with their religious banners flying from their
masts, sank slowly out of sight for lack of funds.

From 1902 to 1938, Rockefeller and Carnegie
spent a total of $680 million on higher education,
most all of it for “noncontroversial purposes.”

This sum amounted to two-thirds of the total —

endowment of all American institutions of higher
learning—colleges, universities, and professional
schools included—and one fifth of the total oper-
ating expenses. All the while that massive trans-
formations were underway, the foundations could
correctly claim that they were imposing nothing
on these institutions—whether they conformed to
“standards” or not was up to them: The reality, of
course, was that in capitalist America, where
education like everything else could only survive if
it turned:a profit, the Foundations’ wishes had
virtually the force of law.

To gain still greater leverage over the system,

the foundations concentrated their benevolence
on the top twenty colleges and universities, which
received about 73 per cent of all foundation mon-
ies between 1902 and 1934. As there were more
than a thousand institutions in the United States
this was concentrated giving indeed. Not only did
this multiply the weight of foundation dollars, but
it also accelerated: the tendency toward centraliza-
tion and homogenization in higher education. A
few great university centers, their reputations and
resources enhanced by foundation money, were
increasingly able to call the tune in curricula,
scholarship, and ideology for other, poorer insti-
tutions. By their preeminence in Ph.D. product-
tion, moreover, these few great university centers
supplied satellite college centers in the provinces ©
with their duly certified professoriates. The super-
star status of the lvy League was in large measure
a capitalist construct.

By the eve of World War Il, American higher
education had undergone a breathtaking trans-
formation. Capitalism still ruled the nation’s col-
leges and universities, still treated them as. vital
elements in the new industrial order. But the

‘crude, rough, direct control of the Robber Barons
had been muted. Real power over higher educa- -

tion now belonged to the foundations, which
established uniformity, conformity, and ortho-
doxy with barely a ripple on the surface of public
opinion. As a former division chief of the Rocke-
feller Foundation said with smug satisfaction,
“the foundations became in effect the American
way of discharging many of the functions per-,
formed in other countries by the Ministry of Edu-
cation.”

“SA university principal who wants

his institution to expand has no
alternative except to see it expand
in the directions of which one or an-
other of the foundations happens to
approve. There may be doubt, or
even dissent among the teachers in
the institution, but what possible
chance has doubt or dissent
against a possible gift of, say, a
hundred thousand dollars?”

—Harold Laski, after a stay at Harvard

wh

The Era of the Multiversity

World War Il brought a third great change in the
relationship between capitalism and higher edu-
cation. In 1956, the top management of General
Electric pointed to three distinct services which
higher education performs for business: “(1) new
knowledge through research and competent
teaching; (2) an adequate supply of educated

‘manpower; and (3) an economic, social, and

political climate in-which companies like General
Electric can survive and continue to progress.”
None of these, of course, was entirely new. What
was new, rather, was the degree of capitalist
dependency upon the higher educational system,
and the organizational changes brought about in
that system as a result.

Let’s examine each of GE’s three goals in
greater detail, and what lies behind them.

NEW KNOWLEDGE: American capitalism now
spends some $20 billion a year on research and
development. R&D, as they like to call it, is now
the prerequisite for technological development,
upon which hinges the continued survival of the
capitalist system. At the very center of this enter-
prise, moreover, stands the American university.
University labs perform so-called basic research;
whenever they. come up with something that
might have productive applications, it is whisked
off to the corporate labs, there to be transformed
into a marketable, profit-making commodity—or a
new weapon with which American business can
ensure its continued dominance abroad.

EDUCATED MANPOWER: For the last century
or so, as we have seen, the universities were

expected to supply more and more highly skilled |

workers for the relentlessly-expanded capitalist
productive system. Until roughly World War Il,
however, higher education still devoted itself to
training society’s Alphas and Betas. Now it is ex-
pected to train Deltas and Gammas_as well—and
even, on occasion, future Epsilons. What that
means is not only preparing students to accept
dull, dead-end jobs without regret or complaint,
but also smothering their aspirations for some-
thing better later on. Behind this new expectation
lies a dramatic change in the composition of the
nation’s workforce. Blue collar and unskilled
occupations, while still a large element of the
work force, have declined relative to so-called
white collar occupations, that is, clerical or

‘

39

professional-technical work. These new workers,
says the Bureau of Labor statistics, “generally
acquire their occupational training in a four year
college or university.”

Only some of the skills required in these new
workers are technical, as in, say, inhalation thera-
py or computer programming. Many are also in
more basic areas, such as literary or competency
in human relations. The Chase Manhattan Bank,
for example, wants its tellers to be literate and
capable of effective public relations, for which it
gives them courses in sociology, psychology, and
English, along with the usual training in account-
ing or “secretarial science.”

“Educated manpower,” in other words, means
manpower trained not only in specific skills, but
in character as well—trained, that is, to take
orders, to work efficiently, to cultivate self-disci-~
pline, to “relate” effectively with other workers,
and so on. This kind of training is new to higher
education, though not to the public schools. It is
still largely alien to the great elite institutions that
produce administrative and professional workers
who must be able to organize, innovate, decide,
and rule—abilities that capitalists deem inappro-
priate, even subversive, for the great mass of
college graduates. ; ’

There’s no real.mystery as to why the colleges
and universities were designated to train these
new workers. For one thing, as with the creation
of mass public education in the pre-Civil War Era,
the creation of mass higher education since World
War II has enabled American capitalists to contin-
ue training their workers at public expense. We
thus have a situation in which working class
parents must find all or part of the money to give
their children the college education that will quali-
fy them to remain in the working class! Then,
too, a centralized system of higher education can
respond more-effectively than any other existing
institutional system to the labor needs of the
capitalist class, while at the same time maintain-
ing the illusion that its products are free to choose
their own futures.

Finally, the very nature of life in modern
colleges and universities is looked on by capital-
ists as excellent preparation for work in complex
bureaucratic organizations. The Carnegie Com-
mission, for instance, firmly believes that today’s
“college graduate has demonstrated his willing-
ness to accept functional authority, to postpone
gratification, to work steadily.”


40

SOCIAL CLIMATE GOOD FOR CAPITALISM: In
this, the third of GE’s three tasks for contempor-
ary higher education, American colleges and uni-
versities have also done their best. Many aspects
of college and university life, in addition to the
bureaucratic environment just mentioned, help
construct a climate of values and expectations
hospitable to the expansion of capitalism. These
might be called the “silent curriculum,” for
though. they do not appear in the catalogues they
are taught just the same. “ .

At the top of the list is daily indoctrination in
the individualistic, competitive morality of “free
enterprise” capitalism. Each student is on her or
his. own in a dog-eat-dog, sink-or-swim competi-
tion for recognition, grades, and even admission
to courses. To survive is to become self-reliant,
cynical, combative, and ready, when necessary,

even to cheat or connive against friends in the |

quest for success and personal advantage. Those
who drop out of the running are stigmatized as
weak, ineffectual, doomed to failure. The notion

“If business and industry could not
draw upon a large reservoir of edu-
- cated manpower, they would be
handicapped in every phase of their
‘operations. American education
does a job for business and in-

dustry.”
: —Frank Abrams, ex-head of GM

of learning as a collective enterprise has little if

any support. Indeed, one learns that learning is”

work—and like all work in capitalist society some-
thing to be avoided, evaded, and escaped from as
soon as possible.

Along with indoctrination in competitive indivi-
dualism goes specialization. Knowledge is broken
into pieces—sociology here, egonomics there.
Nobody deals with whole problems anymore, and
that is an important preparation for a world in
which no worker ever produces a whole product.
Anyone who defies this intellectual compartment-
alization, who attempts to think about whole
social or moral questions, is dismissed as a
visionary or a fool.

Students learn instead to be “professionals” —
that is, to ignore the consequences of what they
do in the laboratories, computer rooms, and libra-

ries. Their teachers, of course, rarely encourage
them to do otherwise, for (largely thanks to Carne-
gie and company) American colleges and universi-
ties now have “professional” faculty, whose pro-
fessionalism is measured exactly by the depth of
their commitment to narrow, exclusive “speciali-
ties.” Teachers who might rebel against this divi-
sion of intellectual labor, whether in classrooms
or publications, are accused of “unprofessional”
conduct and abusing their “academic freedom.”
Small wonder that big business looks to higher
education to create a climate within which capital-

‘ism can flourish: the very approach to knowledge

in American colleges and universities practically
guarantees that their graduates will accept some
basic premises of the system. +

A final component of the “silent curriculum” is
instruction in passive obedience to -hierarchical
authority. Authority in the typical college or uni-
versity starts at the top and flows down. Its ob-
jects—students, faculty, and lower-level adminis-
trators—have little or no defense against it, little
orno role in deciding for what purposes it is used,
and little or no knowledge of where it comes from
in the first place.

Colleges and universities, in short, are now
organized and operated pretty much like large
bureaucratic structures in business or govern-
ment. Mere survival requires submission and ac-
ceptance and resignation. The “system” must be

acknowledged as too tough to beat, even for those:

who know how it works. More and more often the
campus is a breeding ground for one of the
strongest props the system has—cynicism. Atti-
tudes like “you can’t fight 80th Street” become
“you can’t fight City Hall” become “you can’t beat
the system—so you might as well join it.” The
university engenders a weary acceptance of what-
ever the capitalist planners propose as the next
step, and the planners know it. As the Carnegie
Commission said, a major function of higher
education is “to create greater appreciation of the
intricacies of a society in constant change and a
sense of being able to cope with these intrica-
cies.” College, they added, tends to “reduce the
tendency toward blind reaction to the ordeal of
change.” College graduates, in other words, cope

~with—they do not question, or oppose—

“change.”

New Knowledge, Educated Manpower, and an
Appropriate Social Climate—these are what GE
publicly suggested it wanted from American col-

41

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42

leges and universities. It tactfully did not add two
other major features of the post-W.W. Il system of
higher education in the United States that big
business has applauded and encouraged: track-
ing and cooling out the unemployed. Let us briefly
examine each. of these, too.

TRACKING: The mass influx of working-class
youth into colleges and universities since 1945
‘helped to expand capitalist production, but it also
threatened to upset the capitalist social system.
Previously, as we have seen, higher education
was reserved for the elite, and college graduates
could expect elite careers. With millions coming
to the campuses, however, this arrangement was
in trouble: elite jobs simply couldn’t be found for
everybody, but if everybody were equally edu-
cated the great majority might begin to question
the justice of their occupational destinations.

The solution was to set up a complex class-
tracking system, very much like the one set up
when mass public education was created a cen-
tury before. In essence, the idea was to make sure
that working class youth did not get a college
education equal to that given middle class (to say
nothing of ruling class) youth. First, a handful of
institutions would be set clearly above the rest—
and access controlled by high tuition charges and

strict admissions policies. A diploma from one of |

the lvy League colleges, then, would be worth dis-
~ tinctly more on the job market than a diploma
from, say, the City University of New York.

More to the point, working-class youth would’

_be channeled into an entirely new kind of higher
educational institution: the two year “community
college.” These would charge either very low
tuition, or none at all. As a famous sociologist
suggested in the Wall Street Journal several years
ago: “If we can no longer keep the floodgates
closed at the admissions office, it at least seems
wise to channel the general flow away from four
year colleges and toward two year extensions of
high school in the junior and community col-
jeges.”

These “extensions of high school” are intended
to serve black and white working class youth,
giving them technical and industrial training, but
little else. Training is kept specific—graduates
have only a narrow range of occupational skills,
and will thus be locked into one occupational slot.
They are given only the scantiest of liberal arts
coursework, usually in a standardized high school
fashion, and, ideally, they get absolutely no

critical awareness about the nature of the econo-
my and society they will soon be entering. The
extra-curricular activities and general cultural life
so important.a part of the elite campus world are
generally absent, and, as most working class
students must work to support themselves, they
would have little time for such amenities anyway.
Quasi-parental controls and counseling aimed at
developing “realistic job expectations” complete
the picture. Such an education will almost certain-
ly guarantee that working class students remain in
the working class despite the possession of a
“college education.”

Or worse. One avowed function of the dreary
community colleges is to flunk out—or, as the
sociologists say, “cool out”—working class stu-
dents when the economic ‘situation requires it.
[See accompanying box] Conned into thinking
that their failures are their own fault, the drop-
outs accept assignment to the lowest ranks of the
job market oneven permanent unemployment.. At

“the same time, they are urged to-accept those who

make it through the university system as superior
to them, and thus entitled to wield power over
them.

“One dilemma of a cooling-out role
is that it must be kept reasonably
away from public scrutiny and not
clearly perceived or understood by
prospective clientele. Should it
become obvious, the organization’s
ability to perform it would be im-

paired.
—B.R. Clark, “The Cooling Out
Function in Higher Education,”
American Journal of Sociology, 1960

COOLING OUT THE UNEMPLOYED: Capital-
ism has also looked to higher education to ab-
sorb, even temporarily, large numbers of young
women and men who might otherwise have enter-
ed the job market immediately after high school—
only to find no jobs. The roots of this go back to
the end of the Second. World War. The fear of
millions of veterans returning to no jobs led to
passage of the GI Bill, enabling millions of poten-
tially unemployed to go off to school instead. In
college, of course, the Gls, and now all poten-
tially unemployed people, are also subjected to

i

the “silent curriculum,” so that, the Capitalists
hope, they will go back out onto the labor market
with “correct” values and attitudes. Not surpris-
ingly, many two-year colleges were strategically
placed-in urban working class areas with high
rates of unemployment. The point, of course, was
not primarily to help the jobless, but to reduce the
likelihood. of their angrily turning against a system
that condemns them to permanent poverty.
Together, all of these capitalist demands upon
America’s colleges and universities since-1945—
demands for new knowledge, educated man-
power, a favorable social climate, social tracking,
and the cooling out of the unemployed—have
brought profound changes in the entire landscape
of American higher education. The embodiment of
all these changes is the “multiversity,” a mam-
moth enterprise with thousands of employees,
tens of thousands of students, and budgets that
fun into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The
hallmark of a “muitiversity,” though, is not size or
expense alone. It is rather extreme sensitivity to
every wish and whim of the great “philanthropic”
foundations, corporations, and government—the
three main vehicles by which the capitalist class
communicates its needs to colleges and universi-
ties generally. Let us consider each of these in
turn, for these are the agencies which currently
determine much of the shape of our lives. Toge-

" ther they form an Educational. Establishment that

speaks for the ruling class.

THE FOUNDATIONS: Joined by powerful new-
comers like the Ford Foundation, philanthropic
foundations continue to play a central role in
shaping higher education to serve Capitalism. In
the age of the multiversity, though, the founda-

_tions’ tactics have shifted somewhat. The old

Carrot-and-stick method of funding projects
brought to them by others—but only those of
which they approve—is now a task given over
more and more to the corporations and the gov-
ernment, which have much greater financial re-
sources. The foundations instead serve as Master
Planners. They themselves establish what they
want, and propose ways to get it. Consider some
of their activities in the recent past.

At the end of the Second World War, American
capitalism found it lacked sufficient personnel to
run its vastly expanding empire. It required for-
eign service and State Department bureaucrats,
CIA personnel, authorities on communist and
Third World countries, and staff for the internation-

43

“The truly major changes in uni-
versity life have been initiated from
the outside, by such forces as
Napoleon in France, ministers of
education in Germany, royal com-.
missions and the University Grants
Commiitee in Great Britain, the
Communist Party in Russia, the
emperor at the time of the Restora-
tion in Japan, the lay university
governing boards and the federal
Congress in the United States—and
also, in the United States, by the
foundations.”

y

—Clark Kerr, “The Uses
of the University,” 1963



44

al offices of such operations as the Bank of

America, Chase Manhattan, First National City,

Mobil Oil, and the Pentagon. The campuses not

only were not supplying such personnel, they

resisted doing so.

The foundations swung into action. Columbia
University was picked as an early target. The
Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corpora-
tion dangled a small fortune before the Columbia
Trustees, overran faculty opposition, and created
first the Russian Institute, then the School of In-
ternational Affairs. These agencies were largely
run by non-Columbia people (largely OSS veterans
like Allen Dulles, who would later head the CIA, or
members of the Council on Foreign Relations, like
Schuyler Wallace, who would later go to the Ford
Foundation). The foundations provided fellow-
ships for students, guaranteed publication of fa-
culty books and articles, and soon watched SIA
graduates troop off to their intended slots. The
“oundations then moved on to other elite schools
—Ford launched the Institute of International
Studies at Berkeley—and soon transformed the
curricula at most -major. institutions. By 1969
twelve of the country’s top universities had inter-

national institutes, and eleven of .them were
funded by the Ford Foundation.

The foundations acted with similar dispatch to
establish formal ruling class organizations—think
tanks—where leaders of top corporations and
their top academic supporters meet and map
global and national strategy. Chief among these
are the Council on Foreign Relations, the Com-

, mittee for Economic Development, the Brookings

Institution, the Bureau of Economic Research, the

Population. Council, and, Resources for the Fu-

ture. .

The foundations subtly altered the course of
scholarly research. Foundation creations like the
Social Science Research Council (built and backed
by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund)
became the greatest patrons, or clearing houses
of patronage, for the social sciences. Proposals
they liked got funded; those they didn’t, didn’t,
and so often didn’t get written.

An example of how foundation money trans-
formed the academic landscape in the postwar era
was the sudden rise of behaviorism and its intel-
lectual first cousin, pluralist political ideology.
Though neither had: enjoyed more than a local
following before the war, both favored premises
and techniques—a supposedly “value-free” em-

OOOO
XOX?
Woes

vi

piricism, an acceptance of the given socio-

economic framework as the basis of analysis, an —

aversion to theoretical probing that might call the
existing order into question, a focus on gathering
information about the “masses” rather than the
“elites”, an insistence that America is an effective
democracy in which no class wields predominant
political power—all of which seemed tailor-made

for the ideological and economic concerns of the (
capitalist class after the war. Rockefellers SSRC |

was first to recognize the usefulness of behav-

iorism and pluralism, but Ford and Carnegie were ; |

not far behind. By the 1950’s millions were
flowing to those academics who. pursued behav-
iorist research, and by the 1960’s behaviorism had
been enthroned as the dominant discipline in
colleges and universities throughout the country.

Behaviorists ran the big departments and profes- |
sional associations, and professors who thought ~
differently had more and more difficulty getting ||
promoted, getting published, or getting jobs. —

Robert Dahl’s pluralist studies of power got

Rockefeller money; C. Wright Mills was black- :
listed after writing The Power Elite. After a time —
scholars came to know what would and what |

would not “get a grant”.

Behaviorism, to be sure, was not invented by i
the foundations; it was, as David Horowitz has |
observed, “ripe for the times.” But as Dahl himself |
has pointed out: “If the foundations had been ©
hostile to the behavioral approach, there can be ;
no doubt that it would have had very rough |

sledding indeed.” Asks Horowitz: “How many

equally ripe ideas lacked the risk capital to

f

demonstrate their validity?”

We will deal specifically with the foundations’
current proposals for higher education a little later
on. Here let us add only that the influence of the
foundations over the shape and content of Ameri-
can higher education is greater and more perva-
sive than ever before. And, perhaps worst of all,
they know it. Reading foundation reports (see the
accompanying Box dealing with the Carnegie
Commission on Higher Education) is a chilling
business. They have given up suggesting: now
they pronounce. The tone is vintage Big Brother.

“Company contributions [to higher
education] have now been tested by
experience over a long enough span
of time to be proved a sound invest-
ment. They are not philanthropy.
Guided by reason and a clear pur-
pose, they are an aspect of good
management in the conduct of

business.”
—Council for Financial
- Aid to Education, 1956

THE CORPORATIONS: Corporate influence
over American. higher education means money,
and corporation money has been floating around
colleges and universities for a long time. Corpor-
ate giving began early in the century led by
chemical firms like Du Pont. It did not assume its
present proportions until 1951, however, when
Frank Abrams, Chairman of the board of Stan-
dard Oil, arranged a successful court challenge of
a law barring direct corporate grants to universi-
ties (as opposed to being funneled through indi-
vidual businessmen). The judge, in issuing the
opinion that took the limits off corporate giving,
observed that “as industrial conditions change,
business methods must change with them and
acts become permissible which at an earlier peri-
od would. not have been considered to be within
corporate power ~

The very next year, the big foundations estab-
lished a super-foundation called the Council for
Financial Aid to Education (CFAE). CFAE’s board
consisted of sixteen leading capitalists and twelve
university presidents. The top leadership included
Abrams, Alfred Sloan (ex-Chairman of the Board

45

of General Motors), and Irving S. Olds (former
Chairman of the Board of U.S. Steel). The CFAE
promptly began funneling corporate money into
colleges and universities. Its leaders admitted,
moreover, that altruism was the farthest thing
from their minds: “Company contributions have
now been tested over a long enough span of time.
to be proved a sound investment. They are not
philanthropy. Guided by reason and a clear pur-
pose, they are an aspect of good management in
the conduct of business.” Last year the corporate
sector poured some $400 million into higher edu-
cation in the interests of business.

THE STATE: Government intervention in higher

education has expanded enormously in recent :

decades. Its greatly increased role mirrors a gen-
eral tendency of modern capitalism. Though the
state has long been a useful ally of the capitalists,
its use was greatly accelerated by the crisis of the
Great Depression of the 1930s. It became clear to
all but the most shortsighted capitalists that the
system could no longer avoid collapse unless the
state structure was brought in to prop it up.
Guided by Keynsianism, the state became—be-
ginning with the New Deal—the stabilizer of the
system. It regulated excessive competition, it
underwrote loans, it guarded corporate invest-
ments abroad, it primed the pump during the ever
recurring slumps, it established social. security:
and other such cushions to dampen working class
unrest. With the Second World War, the state
moved still more massively into partnership with
the corporations until now the very distinctions of
private and public sector have become largely
meaningless.

So, too, did the state involve itself massively in
higher education. Beginning with huge federally-
supported weapons research during the Second
World War, it expanded a hundred-fold in twenty
years, delivering $1.5 billion a year by the mid-
sixties and now providing over $16 billion annual-
ly. Money is not the whole of it. The Gl Bill of 1946
sent over a million veterans to college. Truman’s
Commission on Higher Education proposed mas-
sive reorganizations, as did an Eisenhower-
appointed panel (headed by Devereaux Josephs of
Carnegie and New York Equitable Life). Reacting .
to Sputnik, Congress passed the National De-
fense Education Act in 1958, to ensure continued
global predominance. Kennedy, spurred by the
foundations, fathered the Manpower Development
and Training Act of 1962 and Johnson added the


46

Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963, and the
Higher Education Act of 1965.

In one institution after another the State ‘be-
came the primary source of income. With the pas-
sing of financial independence went the passing
of institutional independence. The heavy, almost
endless flow of hard cash has, to be sure, provi-
ded many good things—libraries, dormitories,
medical programs. But, as with all largess in
capitalist society, there is a price. Academic

' priorities have been warped and twisted for the
convenience of its patron. Consider only the rela-
tive flow of funds. Of the $16 billion given in

1969, 60 per cent went to physical sciences, 30 per
cent to life sciences, 3 per cent to the social
sciences, and the rest to ‘other’. To receive these
funds, moreover, universities must throw their

existing resources into programs and curricula

that. will attract federal attention. That means -

bigger and better high-energy particle accelera-
tors, cutbacks for the social sciences, and in-
tensified efforts by campus counselors and ad-
missions officers to adjust student enrollments
accordingly. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Little wonder that few courses examining the
social implications of engineering, business, or
science make the catalogs, much less Marxist
analyses of capitalism.

_ Contradictions and Resistances

The entrepreneurial class has for over a century
now sought to have the educational institutions of
America underwrite the social status quo, incul-
cate students with skills and attitudes appro-
priate for a capitalistic industrial economy, and
discourage political resistance to the concentra-
tion of corporate power. They have utilized their
great wealth, their social prestige, and their com-
mand of political power in this quest for stability
under capitalism. They have had a large measure
of success.

lt would, however, be a serious mistake to think
that American businessmen have had everything
their own way, or that every feature of the Ameri-
can educational system has worked relentlessly to

~ the disadvantage of ail:the rest of us. We are not
’ yet in a world of Central Hatcheries and Neo-Pav-
lovian Cenditioning Rooms.

The capitalist class has. suffered many set-
backs. More intriguingly, even their successes
have had unanticipated consequences not to their
liking. They have erected schools and colleges, in

vast numbers, all across the country.. They. have
done this primarily for the benefits they felt sure
would accrue to them as a class (though indivi-
dual capitalists have been motivated by a wide
variety of reasons: some laudable, like a concern
for the betterment of their community; some pet-
ty, like the desire for personal glorification). Other
classes have also benefited—by the widespread
elimination of illiteracy, by the attainment of use-
ful occupational and social skills, by the personal
pleasures that come with the acquisition of new
knowledge. Though many of these benefits were
not always what the capitalist class had intended,
neither were they considered dangerous to capi-
talist interests. But in some other areas, the very
spread and growth of education the capitalists
had fostered began to work to their disadvantage.
Particularly in higher education, they began to
find themselves enmeshed in a number of contra- _
dictions. New solutions turned rapidly into new |
problems, each more ominous than the one before ;
it and harder to solve within the framework of .
capitalism. ‘

Their biggest problem is that the capitalists —
cannot go on forever using the educational sys- |
tem to increase productivity and at the same time
expect it to perpetuate and ratify existing social
arrangements. The more people they educate, and -
the better they educate them, the harder it |
becomes to maintain the Class, racial, and sexual 4
inequalities that are at the basis of capitalist
society. Educated workers are often danger-
ous workers, because they usually learn more ||
than they are supposed to.

Remember that capitalists have, from the be- |
ginning, wanted workers (that is, the great bulk of a
the population) to know only enough to do the |
kind of work they were hired for. At the start, there |
was virtually no schooling for workers; northern —
elites followed southern slaveholders in restrict-
ing knowledge to the rich. As production became —
more sophisticated, capitalists found that effi-
ciency demanded higher educational attainments.
As the workers began to organize and socialism |
emerged as an alternative to capitalism, capital- —
ists found that stability also demanded extensive —
indoctrination in correct ideologies. So schooling —
was increased, but kept as narrowly focused as ©
possible.

But learning had its drawbacks (for capital
ists). People who could read, could read Marx as a
well as management manuals; educated people — |

47

Big Brother Speaks:

(from the Carnegie Commission’ FINAL REPORT)

e On students: They should “develop realistic job expectations.”

e On tuition: “Tuition will need to rise, as we have recommended... . At
public institutions, tuition will need to rise, on the average substantially faster
thanthis....”

e On parents: They should be “prepared to pay rising tuitions as part of their
planning of future family accounts.”

° On faculty power: “New ideas on campus [should] be subject to trial before
review rather than requiring review by faculty committees (and often rejection)
before trial.”

e On the benefits of switching to “individualized” instruction and reducing the
campus sense of “community”: “People do change their minds, although this *

_ is less likely when they are concentrated in self-confirming groups than if they
are widely dispersed.”

e On universal attendance at college: That “would be an unwise development.”
e On democracy on the campus: “To begin with, higher education is not a
‘government.’ . . . There is [thus] no issue of the consent of the governed.”

e On equal opportunity for women: “‘Normal’ expectations, with equality of
opportunity, might be that about 38 percent of faculty members eventually
might be women.

e On the role of the states: “We have found a few states, however, to be quite
derelict in fulfilling their responsiblities.” . .

e On their own influence: “The Higher Education Act of 1972. . . isa great step
forward. Both Congress and the President drew on our earlier proposal . . . in
developing this legislation.” And again: “We note that many state plans now
make reference to our findings.” And again: “We once proposed the creation
of a National Foundation for Higher Education. A National Fund for the Im-

provement of Post Secondary Education, drawing on our proposal, -has not

been established.”

Nor do they underestimate their influence. Their role at CUNY has been enormous. A recent
example: the Cuny Courier of September 6, 1973, has a revealing three-part story. Part one notes the
Carnegie Commission's insistence “that the traditional barriers between -high school and college
come down.” Part two reviews CUNY’s efforts to date in this area. Part three announces the
establishment of a Middle College program for LaGuardia—with a start-up grant from the Carnegie
Foundation of $95,116 and an additional $108,000 from the Federal Government. This particular
program may be good or bad (it seems to be part of Carnegie’s tracking-is-easier-if-you-get-them-
when-they’re-young strategy), but, in any event, it comes from outside the University. Carnegie
notes that “change” on the campus often comes from outside, “by way of the suggestion of new
ideas, of inquiry about possibilities, of new money encouraging new departures.” These‘people are
not kindly dime-tossing philanthropists: they are smug, arrogant, and dangerous masterplanners. It
is a measure of their contempt for those they manipulate that they have the gall to tell us, again in
their Final Report, that the mission of higher education is “TO HELP AVOID 1984.”


“if inadequate adjustments are
made, we could endup .. . witha
political crisis because of the sub-
stantial number of disenchanted
and underemployed or even unem-
ployed college graduates—as in
Ceylon-orin India orin Egypt... .
Higher education will then have be-
come counterproductive.”

— Carnegie Commission on
Higher Education, “College
Graduates and Jobs,” 1973

had a tendency to begin asking sharper questions
and demanding better answers. .And better lives.

, So capitalists sought tighter and tighter control
over the schools, the faculty, the curricula, the
process, again to ensure that students received
only the information that, in CIA parlance, they
“needed to know.” And as the productive appara-
tus became more and more, complicated, and
“more and more workers received more and more
schooling, at higher and higher levels, matters got
more and more out of hand.

Today, with better than one out of every three
high school graduates going on to college, there
are some 7,000,000 students enrolled in over 1,200
institutions, and the capitalists’ problems have
become almost unmanageable. The campuses,
reports Big Brother Carnegie, “are in an unusual
‘state of flux.” “There has been recently too much
excessive, almost paralyzing criticism.” Indeed
there has, as students have rebelled against being

» processed, as faculty have become a significant
center of opposition to capitalism and its imperial
ventures, as the campus, in short, has gotten
increasingly out of control. Complains Carnegie:
“The almost complete dominance of the older
mentality that included emphasis on full political
neutrality, on the cognitive efforts of the mind,
on stiff academic competition can no longer be
taken for granted... ;.” Instead, Carnegie ob-
serves worriedly, there is now underway “an effort
to press instead for a society organized more on
horizontal than on pyramidal, meritocratic lines.”
Indeed.

This contradiction is a double-barrelled one,
however, that only begins on the campus. Recall
that the vast expansion of the college population

in the 1960’s came about as. children of the
working class were tracked into higher education
to supply more college-trained technical, clerical,
and administrative workers. Now when these stu-
dents leave college they will be—despite their
degrees—in the same position as the traditional
proletariat (people who have no way to support
themselves except by selling their labor). They
will be—so long as they remain disunited—
essentially powerless, unable to control the type
of work or lives they will get. Many will find them-
selves unemployed. Many will find themselves
stuck in boring, socially useless jobs. But these
workers, by virtue of innumerable rap sessions
with other students in the cafeterias, by virtue of
contact with the ever growing numbers of critical-
ly aware faculty, by virtue of some of the things
they’ve read and thought about—these workers
are going to be a hell of a lot more frustrated than
their parents were.

Indeed, many already are. And many have
begun to act on their dissatisfaction, to the point
that there is already widespread alarm in the
capitalist class. Says Big Brother Carnegie: “If in-
adequate adjustments are made, we could end
up...with a political crisis because of the sub-
stantial number of disenchanted and under-em-
ployed or even unemployed college graduates—as
in Ceylon or in India or in Egypt... .Higher educa-

tion will then have become counterproductive.” ©

That disaffection might spread: “Frustration may
extend to other groups as well: to young persons
without college experience who are pushed down
by the pressure of college graduates in the market
—even pushed into unemployment—and to older

persons who are passed over by younger and more |

educated persons. These strains on society will
be increased.”
Too many people are getting too much educa-

tion, says the ruling class. This accounts for their 7

drive to cut back on enrollment, their desire to
institute tuition, and, in fact, for a good deal of
the current “crisis” in higher education. The con-
tradiction has gotten out of hand. They are now
trying desperately (as we shall see in a later
chapter) to put the genie back in the bottle. Can
they do it? That will be up to us.

Now that we have understood something about
the steadily-evolving relationship between capital-
ism and education generally, we are in a stronger
position to understand the history and present
condition of our own institution—the City Univer-
sity. of New York. For CUNY’s story, as we shall
see, is in many ways unique. Here, as elsewhere,
people of power and wealth have played a domi-
nant role in shaping institutional programs and
‘politics; indeed, the CUNY multiversity is some-
thing of a monument to capitalist planning in
higher education. And yet there is more to it than
this. From the very beginning, CUNY faculty, stu-

dents, and the working people of New York have

waged a struggle against the bankers and busi-
nessmen that is probably unparalleled in the an-
“nals of American colleges and universities.

The First Hundred Years

On a winter's day in 1849, the Free Academy—
the ancestor of City College—was ushered into
existence. Participants in the dedication ceremon-
ies hailed the Academy as solid evidence of the
“growing democratization of American life, which
was producing a system of popular education for
the common man.”

Such sentiment was not entirely misplaced.
Free higher education had long been demanded
by workingmen’s groups in the City, and in the
referendum that had authorized the new college,
with Tammany Hall placards proclaiming “Free
Academy for the poor man’s children,” city voters
backed the proposal by 19,305 votes to only 3,409.
Popular desire for an expansion of tightly restrict-
ed educational opportunity has been a factor to be
reckoned with ever since.

Yet the record seems clear that the major thrust
behind the establishment. of the Free Academy

49

3. Capitalism
| and CUN!

lies elsewhere. For some time, a tight cluster of
prominent New Yorkers—merchants, judges, law-
yers, Wall Street bankers—had been urging the
formation of a new college to complement the
existing Columbia and NYU campuses.. In 1847,
the leader of this group, Townsend Harris (a pros-
perous crockery merchant and later first Ambass-
ador to Japan), authored a report proposing a Free
College be set up for public school graduates.
Columbia and NYU, he argued, neglected those
branches of learning “most important to a manu-
facturing, agricultural and commercial. people.”
His school would offer “practical” studies, stud-
ies relevant “to the active duties of operative life,

rather than those more particularly regarded as.

necessary for the Pulpit, Bar, or the Medical
profession.” Its graduates would be highly skilled
mechanics and artisans, who had been taught the
dignity of labor and the worth of republican insti-
tutions. Skill and social responsibility for the
city’s workmen: that was the message of Harris’s
manifesto.

Harris met with resistance from the more short- >

sighted members of his class. They suggested

that the working class lacked sufficient intellect-
ual capacity to benefit from higher education;

that once trained, they might become“too proud °

of their superior education to work either as clerks
or mechanics, or to follow any active business
except what is termed professional”; that the
example of providing free public services was a
bad one that might lead to a “mongrel Fourierism”
(a socialism of the day); that it would cost too
much.

The Harris forces did not shrink from factional
struggle with their penny-pinching peers. They
emphasized that education which taught the me-
chanic the underlying principles of his trade (geo-

a——~


50.

metry for masons) would “enable him to perform
what he has to do, in a superior and cheaper
manner.” Then, too, the College would dispel the
illusion that “some occupations are more honora-
ble than others, and for that reason more desira-
ble.” This would prevent working class people
from abandoning “the honest and healthy pursuits
of their fathers, in order to establish themselves in
professions and, mercantile pursuits which are
already crowded to excess.” Finally they insisted
that socialism would not be fostered, but inhibit-
ed, by.a curriculum dedicated to “erecting altars
patriotism and virtue.”
ith arguments such as these Harris and his
compatriots convinced the bulk of the City’s elite
that a Free College was in their interests, and so
the New York State Legislature approved the pro-
ject, thus allowing the matter to be submitted to
popular referendum.

“In every organism there must be
diversity of members. There will be
head, and hands, and—we must

~ venture to say it—feet, too.”

—“Plain Truth,” an early opponent
of the Free Academy, 1847

When it- passed there was a general rejoicing.
One voice, however, entered a dissent. Mike
Walsh, working class editor of a newspaper en-
titled The Subterranean, argued that the laboring
classes’ children would never get to the Free
Academy. They could not afford not to work; and
the Academy, while free, gave no stipends. The
Free Academy, he predicted, would become yet
another aristocratic ripoff, different from existing
colleges only in. that it would “be under the
supervision of a different set of jackals, known as
the Board of Education.”

Walsh proved a fairly accurate Cassandra. The
Free Academy became a haven for the sons of the
native-born middle classes. Women, blacks, and
Catholics need not apply. Its graduates invar-
iably became professional or business people
rather than skilled artisans and mechanics. Yet
the goals established by the Founding Fathers—
vocational training and socialization for the work-
ing classes,.to be paid for out of public tax money
—set the tone and the task of the institution for
the remainder of its history. .

The new college’s leadership, faculty, and poli-
cies were chosen by a screening pane! of affluent
citizens. The first such group included, in addi-
tion to Townsend Harris: John A. Steward, the
“dean of American bankers”; Thomas Denny, a
Harvard graduate and wealthy Wall Street banker;
Henry Nicoll, a prominent lawyer; and Robert
Kelly, arich Democratic merchant. Boards of Edu-
cation continued to be dominated by the wealthy
after the Civil War. In 1876, William Wood took the
helm as Chairman, fresh from a career in foreign
trade and banking. In 1886 he was replaced by J.
Edward Simmons, a wealthy Wall Street banker

‘and President of the New York Stock Exchange.
And so it went. ;

These gentlemen, in turn, selected only trust-
worthy academics. The first two Presidents of the
College were West Point graduates, one a Gene-
ral, and both ruled the institution with a firm mili-

* tary hand. The faculty were chosen for, and held

to, the strictest orthodoxy of “correct views upon
political economy.” The Boards, in short, ensured
the College’s dedication to the ideology and
needs of American capitalism. : ’
As those needs changed, the institution
changed too. In the late 19th and early 20th cen-
turies, as the industrial elite demanded more tech-
nical business, and professional training, City
College responded by creating, among other

things, a new Department of Technical Education
in 1890. But really thorough retooling did not be-
gin until after the inauguration of John Huston
Finley as President in 1903.

Finley had been urged on the Board by Grover
Cleveland, the conservative President of the Uni-
ted States, and Nicholas Murray Butler, the con-
servative President of Columbia University. The
Board, headed by Edward Shepard, the conserva-
tive corporation lawyer of the Pennsylvania Rail-
road, heeded their advice. Finley soon launched a
“new era.” Technological, pedagogical, and busi-
ness. schools sprouted as Finley moved to in-
crease City College’s “service to society” (which
tended to get confused in his mind with service to

industry). As S. Willis Rudy, the college’s centen- ©

nial biographer observes, ‘City College had fallen
in step with the vocational and professional trend
which was sweeping the world of American higher
education.” Finley’s work was carried on by his
successor, “reformer” Presidents, Sidney Edward
Mezes (1914-26) and Frederick Bertrand Robinson
(1927-38), both chosen by the. usual conclave of
corporate types on the Board. When President
Robinson remarked that “organized business and
our government bureaus and offices need compe-
tent leaders, lieutenants and craftsmen who are
also scholars,” he had gotten the word from the
horse’s mouth.

Throughout its first century, City dealt severely
with challenges to the new order, of whatever
variety. During Finley’s reign some of the faculty
(labelled “conservatives” by the Finleyites) op-
posed the rampant vocationalism. In 1911 they
charged that “modern colleges had degenerated
into mere service stations for industrial, commer-
cial, and agricultural enterprises.” These dissi-
dents were eased out either by the “progressive”
faculty, or by the corporate administrators.

But most attempts to disrupt the general cele-
bration of industrial capitalism came from the
students, and they were dealt with harshly. As
early as 1878, President (General) Webb had taken
to throttling free speech on campus whenever it
was “abused.” But it was during the 1920s that the
first serious strains of protest against capitalism
moved onto the campus. In 1925, students voted
2092 to 345 against compulsory military training.
The student newspaper, the Campus, was forbid-
den to support the anti-militarist drive. And in
1927, President Robinson began the first of a
long, long series of suspensions and expulsions

51

of the ideologically unsound.

Robinson really swung into action during the :

thirties because in the depression decade. anti-

capitalist radicalism blossomed at City College, .
and at its two newer companions, Hunter and |

Brooklyn.

As left groups sprung up, Robinson quickly
moved to put them down. He banned the Social ~

Problems Club in 1931. He fired a left professor,

Oakley Johnson in 1932 and, when over a thou- “
sand students demonstrated on Johnson’s behalf, ~

he expelled the student leaders. Shortly thereafter
the Board of Higher Education announced that a
regulation “against political agitation on the col-

lege grounds” would be “vigorously enforced.” ~

In May, 1933, Robinson had his finest hour in
the struggle against subversion. During an anti-
ROTC demonstration he waded into the crowd of
students, beating them with his umbrella. “ROB-
INSON RUNS AMOK ON CAMPUS. MADDENED
PRESIDENT ATTACKS STUDENTS,” -went the
campus paper's headline. Recovering from. his
frenzy, Robinson—in a more methodical mood—
suspended nine, expelled twenty-one, and ‘shut
down the student paper. By November this tactic
had hardened into a general. policy. Freedom
of discussion would henceforth not be permitted
“to degenerate into agitation or propaganda for a
particular economic or political theory.” Using
this doctrine of academic “neutrality,” the College
then refused to allow the League for. Industrial

Democracy, a socialist group, to form a campus ©

chapter. But a few months later President Robin-
son staged a massive, official reception for a dele-
gation of 350.Fascist students from Mussolini’s
Italy. When a sea of hissing, anti-Fascist students
disrupted the celebration, twenty-one left leaders
were expelled. For discourtesy to guests. A year
later Robinson refused a faculty-student request
to use the same hall to denounce Mussolini’s in-
vasion of Ethiopia.


52

Increasingly during the thirties radicalism also
took root among the faculty. Given their treatment
and condition, this was to be expected. Taking ad-
vantage of the depression, college administrators
created new titles such as reader and tutor (similar
to today’s adjuncts) and paid faculty at one-third
the official rate; some got as little as $600 a year.
Appointments were annual, and teachers were
held in low ranks long after they had earned pro-
motions.

Soon faculty were seething, and organizing. An
Instructional Staff Association, an Anti-Fascist
Association, and a unit of the Communist Party
were in operation by the early thirties. Morris
Schappes, a tutor in English at City, founded an
underground paper called Teacher-Worker (its
Brooklyn counterpart was The Staff), which de-
nounced local conditions, discussed the role of
bankers in education, and dealt with international
affairs. Then came the College Teachers Union (a
local of the AFT, but a militant organization) and it
demanded a thoroughgoing democratization of
college government. ,

In April 1936 Schappes was fired after eight years
of service, touching off a series of massive student
demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, and
widespread publicity. In addition to forcing
Schappes’ reinstatement, the disorders and the
complaints of various alumni groups at the crudi-
ties of the Robinson regime brought a shakeup. A
liberal, Ordway Tead, was brought in by Mayor
LaGuardia to head the BHE, and President Robin-
son was replaced with Harry Noble Wright. A
mildly liberal year or two passed, marked by the
Board's vigorous support of the appointment of
Bertrand Russell to the faculty of City College, an
appointment scuttled in the end not by the BHE,

, but by state and city political figures.

In the aftermath of the Russell affair, in fact, the
New York State Legislature, worried that the BHE
was not enforcing sufficiently rigorous ideological
control, entered the fray directly. The notorious
Rapp-Coudert investigation into “subversion on
the campus” was launched. With the aid of inform-
ers and inference, the committee subpoened
dozens of college faculty and grilled them on their
political beliefs. Union members got special atten-
tion. Some were, and many, more were only ac-
cused of being, members of the Communist Party.

At first the Board gave only restrained support to
the hunt. Then some of its members, particularly
Charles H. Tuttle, protested at Tead’s softness,

“The bankers, headed by J.P.
Morgan, still control the city’s fi-
nances. The Citizens Budget Com-
mission, representing the largest
real estate interests of the city, are
seeking to overthrow free higher
education by the imposition of a
$75 fee. This would deprive many
thousands of students in New York
City of a college education and
would force a considerable portion
of the staffs of the municipal col-
leges into the streets.”

—“The Staff,” Brooklyn
College, October 1936

and so on March7, 1941, the BHE roundly declared
it would:not retain any member of a Communist
group, or, any “member of any group which,
advocates, advises, teaches or practices subver-
sive doctrines or activities.” The next week the
Board preferred charges against Schappes (who of
course had been subpoenaed by State investi-
gators) and other charges followed.

Formal trials began in June and featured exten-
sive cross-examination into beliefs, books read,
publications followed, and views on current politi-
cal events. The accused teachers were not even of-
ficially charged with being communists, but with

“conduct unbecoming a member of the staff” or,~

in a few cases, with lying to Rapp-Coudert investi-
gators. None was accused of trying to indoctrinate
students, and none was cited for poor scholarship.
Some, like Philip Foner, mustered impressive cre-
dentials on scholarly and teaching abilities, but to
no avail. In the end, some twenty faculty members
were ousted and eleven others resigned under the
threat of ouster.

Many of the faculty sat it out. A new faculty
organization, the Legislative Conference, had
emerged in 1938, but its members were conspi-

cuously silent during the Rapp-Coudert hearings
and Subsequent purges. The LC’s leaders—Harry
| Levy, Mina Rees, and Ruth Weintraub—were all
/ anti-communist. Many faculty, in fact, fled the
q College Teachers Union during the purges for the

relative security of the LC. At this time Belle Zeller
resigned as president of the Brooklyn College CTU
chapter, moved to the LC, and shortly became its
president.

‘In 1938 the College Teachers Union
L sent to the Board of Hi i
ing proposals for democratization and faculiy participation. aueation the follow.

e Stripping the presidents of all actual authori i
p ; ty and declaring the faculty to
me supreme governing authority” of the college, with full power over invest
gation, administration and the adoption and amendment of by-laws.

e Departmental control Subject t isi
: , © faculty supervision, ov i
salaries, promotions and increments. . “Tr @ppointments,

e Exclusive faculty control over disciplinary matters.

e Faculty control over plans for future development.

e Faculty control of budgetary matters.

e Faculty self-organization under faculty by-laws and rules

e Rection of faculty committees by secret faculty ballot. , ;

° the prosidoncommunieation with the Board of Higher Education, bypassing

e Faculty represetnation without vote on the Board of Higher. Education

e Reduction of the functions of the Presidents to those of a ministerial offi .
responsible to the faculty, without real power except in cases of emer ency,
and even giving the faculty effective control over the nomination and ap.
pointment of candidates for the presidency. *”

e Nomination of candidates for deanships and di
basis of secret faculty tone p irectorates by the faculty on the

(Report of the Subcommittee Relative j
f i to the Public Educational Syste f j |
State of New York Legislative Document [1942], No. 49, 165th Session DD. 286.50 ‘ee of Now York,

53 =


54
a
“In my judgment the present situa-

tion demands an intensified em-
phasis upon American history and
United States Government. . . .
Such study will provide the basis
for an enlightened consideration of

our own social problems in terms of

the traditional rights and responsi-
bilities. . . . It will also arm youth
ideologically against false and
subversive doctrines.”

—Dr. Earl J. McGrath, Remarks at the

inauguration of Buell G. Gallagher
as President of City College, 1953

a

Toward a University, 1945-1960

By the end of World War ll, there were now four
municipal colleges: CCNY, Hunter (1869), Brook-

lyn (1930), and Queens (1937). They were grouped
together in a loose federation under the overail
direction of a Board of Higher Education that had
been set up in 1926.

These colleges were, even before war's end,
being lined up to play a still greater role in advanc-
ing and stabilizing American capitalism. One les-
son of the war years was that American economic
and military power had become more dependent
than ever before on technology, and local officials

- were already talking of the municipal colleges as a
breeding-ground for a new labor force of highly-
skilled scientists, technicians, managers, and
workers.

As early as 1944 the Strayer Report urged the
municipal colleges to meet the demand for this
new labor force by adopting, among other things,
“two year terminal technical or semi-professional
courses” and an improved program of business
education. The four college presidents, now acting
as the Administrative Council, agreed completely
and called for a massive expansion of the system:

The increased preparation demanded of those
whoare to go into directive positions in industry
and comimerce, the increased neéd for technolo-
gical workers, the increasing enrollment in all
types of general and vocational secondary
schools, the upward reach for an ampler social
and spiritual life—these are the forces that will

make our present inadequate facilities utterly in-

capable of meeting the increasing demand for

post-high school education.

That America and American capitalism would
come out of the war in a position of unchallenged
world supremacy seemed equally important for the
municipal colleges. As Mayor LaGuardia told an
audience at CUNY; the United States “must spread
the benefit of science, machinery and progress. to
all,” and our colleges—if they “adjust themselves
to existing business conditions” —will have a vital
part to play in this “great job” that awaits us
abroad.

Such missionary zeal in the municipal colleges
became more intense with the advent of the Cold
War. “Anyone who reads the daily newspapers or
listens to the radio,” declared the Chairman of the
BHE in 1948, “is aware of the ever present question
that is puzzling the American community: how can
democracy best protect itself against totalitarian
Communism? This question is paramount not only
in political discussions but has become a question
of policy in educational institutions throughout the
country.” John J. Theobald, president of Queens
College, was also troubled by “the development of
ideologies which present threats to our American
way of life.” Right here at home, he said, were
“extremists” who ;

emphasize and make political. capital of the his-

toric tensions between various groups in our So-

ciety in an attempt to divide and conquer. Their
major points of attack have been against the rela-
tionship between Catholics and Protestants,

Christians and Jews, Negroes and Whites, man-

agement and labor. These groups do, of course,

often have different cultural backgrounds.

Banning such radicals and extremists from the
municipal colleges was one way to help in the
ideological struggle. Theobald himself favored
more subtle forms of indoctrination. Individual-
ism, the merits of free enterprise, and the absence
in America of serious class and social conflicts
should be emphasized in the classrooms. The
objective at the municipal colleges, Theobald
concluded, must be “to teach our young people
that the American system works.”

Both of these post-war services to capitalism—
training the new labor force and waging the ideo-
logical struggle against communism—were neatly
summarized in the 1950 Master Plan Study
directed by Donald P. Cottrell. New York’s
municipal colleges, Cottrell wrote, have great new
challenges to face:

Every thoughtful citizen recognizes the fact that

a more complex world requires more and better

education. Social and economic change is

occurring at an accelerated tempo. Improved
means of transportation and communication
increase contacts among far-flung peoples.

The job or profession of today requires many

abilities in human relations as well as technical

skills. Conflict between world powers and
ideologies takes place on Main Street as well as
on the international scene.

Men and women must be able to do more than

just earn a living. They must carry their share of

the responsibility for our democratic leadership

at home and abroad.
The responsibilities of the colleges were clear. On
the one hand they must combat alien ideologies
and inculcate’ Americanism. Class and race
differences must be smoothed over so that New
York's children can “become Americans in loyalty,
language and outlook.” On the other hand, the
colleges must also aid in reshaping the working,
class by preparing students for the “sub-profes-
sional and technical work” that American
employers. were demanding more of.

Lest anyone worry that this policy might result
in too many well-educated people, Cottrell
hastened to add that “there must always be
‘drawers of water and hewers of wood’”. “It is a

mistake to assume,” he went on, “that all who .

take some form of higher education should expect
a professional or highly technical position. This is
an Old World, leisure-class tradition. It has no real
basis in our American democratic way of life.”

In short, the ‘municipal colleges could move
ahead with the task of creating a new working
class. without fearing that their efforts would
obliterate class differences. The best strategy
here, Cottrell concluded, would be to shove vast
numbers of students. into two-year technical
colleges, where they would receive “a more
specialized and less academic type” of instruction
than was offered in the four-year colleges.

The Cottrell Report was right in line with
developing New York State priorities. In 1946,
Governor Dewey and the State Legislature had
formed a Temporary Commission on the Need for
a State University, a panel chaired by Owen D.
Young.. It returned two years later with detailed

proposals for a State University system, and.

SUNY. was soon a going concern.

Stimulated by city, state, national, foundation,
and corporate pressures, the municipal colleges
meanwhile embarked on a decade-long program

55

“Those were the days, also, in
which, if a student and a college .
president faced each other across:
the president’s desk, it could be «-.
assumed that it was the studen
who was in trouble.” -° ~ 2 aN}

Buell G. Gallagher, former; . .,
president of CCNY, 1974

of expansion and reorganization. o

By 1960, Hunter College in the Bronx had’ been:
elevated into a four-year coeducational..college.
(1951), the School of Business had become the
Baruch School (1953), and four new two-year
colleges had appeared on the scene: New York
City Community College’ (1953), Staten Island
Community College (1955), Bronx Community:=*
College (1957), and Queensborough. Community
College (1958). To insure improved central control.
over this rapidly-growing educational empire,
plans were laid for the office of Chancellor.

At the same time, the municipal system began'”
to cooperate more closely with government and~:
the corporations in order “to do. their share in-:’
meeting the demands of industry and national”:

. defense for skilled specialists in technology and®:

science.” Baruch’s Foreign Trade International
Cooperative Exchange Program (begun in 1948
under the aegis of the State Department; the:
Justice Department, the Institute of International

Education, and Pan American World Airways). was:: ,
already a-booming success. “Its fame,” said BHE-“:
Chairman Gustave Rosenberg in 1955, had spread;
“from Peru and Venezuela and Brazil to. Greece, <

Israel, Indonesia and Formosa.” Now, .in-the:»

1950’s, similar programs mushroomed in the.:
municipal colleges. / $
Sixteen chemical industry corporations sup-..'
ported a chemistry program at Brooklyn... The...
Rockefeller Foundation came up with. funds. for
area studies programs in the Far East, West Asia, .
and North Africa. The Ford Foundation delivered
cash for redesigning courses-in political science
and. economics. The Carnegie Corporation...
blessed Brooklyn with a substantial grant to
deepen studies in the. Caribbean, sub-Saharan
Africa, and the Soviet Union. As Rosenberg noted
in 1958, “industry and government are insatiable
in their demand-for highly qualified personnel.”
At the same time, not surprisingly, concerted


56
efforts were made to rid the faculty of subversives
-and other potential critics of the new order. The
results resembled the purges of the thirties and
- forties. From roughly 1948 to 1958, first under the
leadership of the liberal Ordway Tead and then,
when Tead was criticized “for not urging stronger
methods in: dealing with alleged Communist
influence in the municipal colleges,” under the
more hard-nosed Joseph B. Cavallero, the. BHE
worked to sniff out and destroy suspected leftists.
The Board worked hand in glove with state
inquisitors—the 1949 Feinberg Law required an
annual certification of ideological purity—and
‘with national inquisitors—the McCarthys, Jen-
ners, and McCarrans. When they finally ground to
‘a halt they had fired fourteen professors and
forced twenty-nine others to resign. The hunt died
out for a variety: of, reasons, among them that the
Supreme Court ruled favorably on Professor Harry
Slochower’s appeal that he had been denied due
process. Slochower, like others, had refused to
cooperate with the McCarran Committee, and had
been fired under Section 903 of the New York City
Charter; which made such .non-cooperation
grounds for dismissal. Siochower was ordered
reinstated with back pay in 1956.
The BHE’s campaign against enemies of
capitalism was only part of the story. Local
college presidents started their very own reigns of
terror. The most notable of these campaigns was
‘led by Harry Gideonse of Brooklyn. When the
Board appointed Gideonse, they knew about and
approved ‘of his staunch anti-left background;
-indeed: Gideonse “had made it explicitly a
“condition of his acceptance of the post that he be
allowed to deal with such Communism as he
might find on the campus with a free hand.” With
unrivalled arrogance and a serene disregard for
due process, Gideonse shut down campus
papers, banned left-wing speakers on or off the
campus, expelled student critics and fired faculty
ones. ‘In 1951, writes an enthusiastic supporter,
he ended student elections. These had, after
_ all, led only “to meaningless conflicts utterly
unrelated to the education role of student
activities, to ‘impeachments,’ and student
‘strikes,’ and propaganda”; they allowed students
to. gain office, simply because they were “able to
pile up a majority.” No more. Now only leaders of
officially approved clubs, each assigned a faculty
watchdog, could sit on a sanitized council—a
puppet government, in effect.
So zealously did Gideonse go about this work

that he became something of a sensation among
witch hunters on the national level and won an
invitation to testify before the Senate Internal
Security subcommittee. He had been the first
college president so honored, said Senator
Jenner, the committee’s chairman, because “in no
other‘universtiy in the country had the problems
of Communism been taken so firmly in hand.”

The Birth of the University, 1958-1961


The city colleges, then, had been doing their.

best to meet the post-war requirements of

capitalism, as had the new SUNY system. But i
when Sputnik was sent aloft in 1957, “American |
capitalists, terrified by its implications, undertook |
a major reappraisal and reordering of the entire :

educational system. In New York State they acted
swiftly and ‘decisively.
- The new campaign began,

to’ the Governorship in 1958. One of his first

_ actions after taking office was to establish a panel |

to advise him on reorganizing higher education.

This panel was the Heald Commission and its |
three members represented the very top of the |

corporate capitalist hierarchy. Henry T. Heald was
the president of

relations with the Rockefeller Foundation,

Governor Rockefeller, and other members of the |
Rockefeller family. John W. Gardner was the |
president of the Carnegie Corporation, and he had |

a reputation as a strong advocate of “excellence”
in higher education and the man who had recently

intensified the Corporation’s interest in improving | |

the formal structure of American higher educa-

tion. Marion B. Folsom, the third member, had i

served three years as Secretary of Health,

Education and Welfare under President Eisen- |

appropriately i
enough, after the election of Nelson Rockefeller ©

the Ford Foundation, a |
nationally-known proponent of better educational |
management and financing, and a man under- |
stood to enjoy close working and personal |

hower, and she represented the federal govern-
ment’s deepening concern for higher | education in
the post-war era.

The extraordinary composition of the Heald
Commission was clearly reflected in the tone and
logic of their 1960 report. Like Cottrell and
others who had argued on behalf of expanding the
municipal college system in New York City, they
emphasized that higher education must be made
more responsive to new social, economic, and
ideological needs; particularly now that “the
Russian sputnik illuminated our educational
skies”:

. higher education in America [the Commis-
sioners argued] has been propelled into a dis-
tinctively new era by a combination of powerful
world wide forces. There has been an accel-
erated pace of human events, an explosion of
knowledge, a surge of population, an almost
unbelievable breakthrough in science and tech-
nology, and possibly more important than any
other force, a menacing international contest
between democracy and communism.

The difference between the Heald Commission
and earlier groups was that they believed these
new needs could not be served without a massive
effort to centralize control over higher educational
policy and financing in the state. New York, they
observed, is the nation’s “leading business,
industrial, scientific and cultural center.” Yet its
system of higher education remains “a limping
and apologetic enterprise,” desperately in want of
both organizational streamlining as well as a “new
alignment” of its component institutions to meet
the global crisis. The current system—and that
included the municipal colleges—was “not
equipped to meet the needs of the future.”

To remedy the defects, the Commission urged a
massive system-wide centralization. At the top
should go a Council of Higher Education

Advisers. The Commission suggested it be
composed of a “small body of prominent
citizens . . . interested in higher education but

not employed by an institution of higher educa-
tion.” Their function would be “to assess higher

- education in the state, to compare it with what is

being accomplished in other states, to review
progress that is made toward the achievement of
the goals and objectives set by the Governor and
the Legislature, and to recommend publicly and
loudly what ought to be done to keep our system
of higher education in line with our needs—
statewise, nationally, and in view of-.the world
situation.”

“57

The Commission next suggested that the
municipal colleges of New York City be absorbed
with SUNY into a new statewide higher
educational system. SUNY officials would be
required to prepare a Master Plan and then “take
the full responsibility for ‘implementing the
policies and goals set forth in the Plan.” A
uniform tuition of $300 would be imposed on all
units. (This would, of course, have ended the city
colleges’ long-standing free tuition policy, and it
touched off an explosion of outrage and dismay in
New York City that we shall examine shortly.)

The Heald Commission also urged the intro-
duction of modern management techniques to
improve efficiency. “Education could learn from
such dynamic industries as chemicals, elec-
tronics, petroleum, and even agriculture,” in
which rapid technological improvement, high ex-
penditures on research and development, and
administrative streamlining “has enabled produc-
tivity to rise dramatically.”

For the municipal-colleges, what all of this.
boiled down to was nothing less than a brutal vote

-of no confidence in their recent efforts to meet the

new postwar requirements of capitalist develop-
ment. Administrative reorganization, the creation
of community colleges, the addition of many new
programs in direct cooperation with business and
industry and government—the entire program of
the past dozen years had been examined and
found wanting: by representatives of the foun-
dations which now determined higher educational
policy on the national level for.the Capitalist class.
The municipal colleges fought back. The BHE’s
Committee to Look to the Future, appointed the
year before “to develop a long range plan for the
municipal college system as a whole,” issued one
of the first official replies to, the Heald: Commis-
sion. A-hastily-drafted Interim Report, inserted in
the BHE Minutes for December 1960, recommen-
ded that all the New York City colleges be
reorganized as the City University of New York,
not merely to strengthen centralization, but also


58

_ to meet “an increasing need for doctoral programs
to serve business, industry, education and all seg-
‘ments of community life.” Final authority over the

new structure “would, of course, remain in the

~ hands of the Board of Higher Education,” though
~ the Board would be glad to “keep in constant
communication with its co-equal, the State Uni-
versity. of New York.” There would continue to be
no. tuition charged.

_. The municipal colleges, in other words, would
go along with Heald and Rockefeller on a more
efficient organization for capitalism, but they

would fight to retain local control and free tuition.

A. massive public struggle against the. unwel-

“come portions of the foundation verdict was
_spearheaded by a broad coalition of CCNY-alum-
ni, organized labor, various ethnic, racial, busi-
ness and civic groups, all under the unofficial
leadership of Mayor Wagner. The intense lobbying

.and public-relations campaign made it obvious
that the municipal colleges enjoyed the solid sup-
port of the city’s middle and. working classes.

= They—not the banks and corporations and. Wall

- Street law firms who wield such power in the City
—rallied behind the colleges to fight Rockefeller

and the foundations. Nor was there any paradox in
the fact that they did so: despite the colleges’ at-
tentiveness to the demands of the capitalist class,
the preservation of local control and free tuition
had also in fact kept public higher education in

~- the City unusually responsive to the aspirations of
middle and working class youth. What Wagner
and his coalition knew full well, in sum, was that
local control and free tuition were essential to
continuing inter-class support for the colleges’
policiés and programs. Rockefeller, in his zeal for

having the form of higher education more closely .

resemble its content, had gravely endangered that
arrangement and had to be stopped, lest higher
education in the city become an object of open
class struggle.

Rockefeller was stopped. Under enormous
pressure from the Wagner forces, the legislature
agreed to take no action on either Heald’s
recommendation to impose uniform tuition on the
state’s public. universities and colleges or on his
‘proposal to give the state representation on ‘the
BHE. In the spring of 1961 it then passed legis-
lation creating CUNY and providing funds for
one-half of the debt service on CUNY’s capital
construction program. Upon. signing this legis-
lation, moreover, the Governor vowed not to make

‘triumphed, CUNY had emerged, and the first

the tuition issue a barrier to further state aid to
CUNY, but neither side was under any illusions
that the conflict had been settled.

For the moment, however, the city had

Chancellor, John Rutherford Everett, had been in-
augurated with pomp, splendor, and a clear sense
of the future responsibilities of thenew university.
Mayor Wagner laid out the ideological ground
rules for the assembled guests this way:

During the first half of the twentieth century our
American universities have been confronted
with a grave and fundamental menace, global
in. nature, and never before encountered,
contemplated, or adequately comprehended. It
is, namely, the threat to our national security,
the threat to our individual freedoms and to
our way of life.
In this era of national peril we must call upon
all institutions of higher learning to. further
develop within their students traits of leader-
ship that will enable the American people to
answer the momentous challenges that face «—
us .... The universities of tomorrow must
provide the laboratories for liberty, learning,
and leadership.

The new Chancellor was in hearty agreement.
This mid-twentieth century, he said, is “a period
of fright.” We are struggling to “establish our
institutional, our public, and our private lives
upon some foundation that will save us from the
gathering storm.” Our universities were just such
a foundation, he went on, for they supplied |
knowledge to government, to industry, and to “the _
defense establishment.” But mere knowledge was __|
not enough: “For a university to be truly great it —
must be distinctly and unequivocally par-
tisan. . . . The context of its instruction must be
an affirmed and a declared and a positive
commitment.”

The Multiversity Emerges: 1961-1969

Successful resistance to the Heald Commission _
gave the new City University breathing room anda —
chance to continue planning for the future.
Exactly where CUNY was going became evident in
1963, when Albert Hosmer Bowker replaced Ever-
ett as Chancellor. Fascinated with the systems
analysis approach to higher education—a cue he
took from the prestigious American Council on
Education—Bowker argued in his inaugural ad-
dress that the crucial element in planning CUNY’s _
future was.“the employment profile of our city.” |



The pattern of jobs had been shifting rapidly, he
noted, though the city’s private colleges appeared
to “tack the resources or the incentives” to deal
with the new requirements.

The heart of the matter was the dramatic drop in
jobs for unskilled workers and the sharp increase
in» opportunities for workers in categories
requiring two years of education beyond high
school. On the other hand there were enormous
numbers of unskilled blacks and Puerto Ricans
moving into the city. CUNY’s mission was to put
jobs and people together. Said Bowker: “There
will be more jobs in developing New York City, but
they will be jobs of a new kind—jobs which
require what has been called sub-professional
education. The jobs will be here—the question is,
will young New Yorkers be trained to fill them, or
will they have to be filled by persons brought in
for the purpose from elsewhere? Our tremendous
Push on the community college front represents a
major answer: We want the children of the newer
migrations to rise to fill the newer needs!”

Bowker was as good as his word. The University
continued to expand, added the Graduate Division
(1962), York College (1966), John Jay College
(1966), Richmond College (1966), a mass of new

top-level administrators at the Central Office—

and two new community colleges, Kingsborough

59

and Borough of Manhattan (both 1966). As BHE
Chairman Porter R. Chandler reported to Rockefel-
ler and the legislature, the new community col-
leges were particularly notable because, strategic-
ally located in the city’s ghettoes, they would give
local residents “personal upgrading in market
scarce job skills.”

And, he added, the Board planned to do more.
A community college planned for the South Bronx
would provide a “comprehensive health careers
complex for the training of young ‘people and
adults in paraprofessional health skills.” A new
teacher-training complex was: contemplated for
Harlem, while in East Harlem a projected “Health
Sciences Institute” would offer “advanced training
in medical technologies.” Bedford-Stuyvesant
would receive a college offering two-year career
programs in education and nursing, while the new
BMCC would arise “near the World.Trade Center
and New York’s Civic Center and {thus be] acces-
sible to the largest concentration of office
employees in the world.”

Finally, Chandler saw Brooklyn’s Atlantic
Terminal Urban Renewal site as the place for a
new “campus with course curricula oriented to
business and public administration, geared to
meeting managerial personnel requirements of
business and government in the Metropolitan

“How diminished is the product of
the engineer if he has no trained
aides? Must not a top-flight scien-
tist depend on a corps of workers

under his direction? Should one
who has the great gift of teaching
do routine paper work?” A

— Gustave Rosenberg,
BHE Chairman, 1963

na



“60

area.” — : ,

: Now on paper it might seem a self-evidently
splendid goal to bring educational institutions to
the people, and to provide the unemployed with
needed skills. But we must be clear about what
motivates Porter Chandler and his kind. They
seek, as they say, to meet the “managerial per-
sonnel requirements of business and govern-
ment.” Their focus is on the needs of the employ-

“ers, not the employees. There is not a word in
_Chandler’s report about bringing education to the

_ people so that they might understand the social

forces shaping their world. Not a word about giv-
“ing students the intellectual tools they might need
to become active agents in shaping their own fu-
ture. Not a word about the personal or cultural
“benefits that might flow from philosophy, lan-
guage, or literature courses. Nothing but concern
for the “managerial personnel requirements of
business and government.”

Nor do the Chandlers spell’ out some of the
other less-than-noble reasons for their sudden
concern with expanding working-class education
in areas like “health services” (a term usually
reserved for manual-technical work; they are not
training many doctors in the ghettoes.) They do
not dwell on the collapse of the American “fee for-
service” medical system. They do not explain that
American hospitals are now on the verge of total
bankruptcy, that millions of working and middle
class Americans cannot afford to be sick (in
marked contrast to the free health care available to

British citizens), that this is due in large measure
to the desires of the giant insurance companies
and AMA elite to perpetuate their own profits, that
these groups are struggling against the introduc-
tion of a truly socialized medicine, that they prefer
to stave off disaster to profit-oriented medicine by
staffing hospitals with the cheapest possible
labor force, and that this has something to do
with their sudden concern -with “expanding edu-
cational opportunity” for ghetto residents.

Bringing the campuses to the people? A fine
idea, but until it is truly done with the interests of
the people, rather than corporate profits upper-
most in’ mind, it will not live up to its true
potential.

While CUNY’s administration forged ahead, the
new guiding trinity of American higher educa-
tion—the foundations, corporations,, and the
federal government—were also hard at. work.
From 1961 to 1969, at least seven different
national foundations—Rockefeller, Ford, Car-
negie, Sloan, Field, Russel Sage, and the New
World Foundation—gave money to one or another
of the colleges for various types of projects.

At Brooklyn College, for example, Rockefeller
and Carnegie helped finance new courses in the
Far East and India, the Middle East and North
Africa, the Islamic world, the Caribbean and West
Indies, and Africa south of the Sahara; Ford
poured money into Queens for urban education
research and the Institute for Community Studies,
and into the Central Office for developing a

“I challenge the speaker's charge that we have one health care sys-
tem for the rich and another for the poor. To us, there are no poor!”

“pre-tech” admissions program, “in which some
700 students in fifteen city high schools are being
prepared to enter a community college to study
health, engineering, or business. technology”;
Rockefeller gave money to Mt. Sinai “to study
motivation for family planning,” and to CUNY to
help start the Center for Urban Education; and so
on, almost endlessly.

“We want the children of the newer
migrations to rise to fill the newer

needs!”
° ~— Chancellor Bowker, 1964

Meanwhile, Chase Manhattan Bank and CUNY
officials were huddling over ways to cooperate
more effectively, aware that “programs like SEEK,
which reach into disadvantaged neighborhoods,
provide employers with a new resource of
management talent,” and that already CUNY “has
been actively soliciting summer jobs” which will
better “acquaint students with the ways of the
business community.” Chemical Bank, not to be
outdone, was soon in the act with grants to BCC
for a small business course for Puerto Rican

_merchants, and to KCC for small business work-

shops that provided “a basic background in
management practices for beginners and an
advanced program for. established business
owners.”

Various departments and agencies of the
federal government—HEW, the Office of Educa-
tion, the Atomic Energy Commission, National
Institute of Health, Justice Department, the
Public Health Service, and the Small Business
Adminisiration—pumped money into CUNY for
counselor training, nuclear technology programs
and basic research, hospital administration
studies, work-study programs in nursing schools,
special courses in the operation of business
machines, secretarial and management training
for prospective federal employees, and even the
creation of a Psychological Center at CCNY to
“extend knowledge of psychological problems
among the poor.”

CUNY, in short, allowed its priorities to be
dictated from without. In this, of course, it was’
not unique. Clark Kerr, in his Uses of the
University (1963), observed that most campuses
were moving ahead vigorously, but that their
“directions have not been set as much by the
university’s visions of its destiny as by the exter-

61

nal environment, including the federal govern-
ment, the foundations, the surrounding and
sometimes engulfing industry.” Robert Paul
Wolff, toward the end of the decade, put his finger

“on the consequences of such a system. American

universities had forgotten—in their rush to be of

, service to “society”—to distinguish between true

social or human needs (“a want of something
material or social, whose presence would contri-
bute to physical and emotional health, to the full
and unalienated development of human power—in
a word, to true happiness”), and. effective or.
market demand. The latter meant simply the exis-
tence in a market economy of buyers who have
money in hand and are prepared to spend it fora
particular service or item. Many human needs
under capitalism simply do not get expressed _as
market demands; most people don’t have the
money to compete with the Rockefellers. So in the
end, Wolff noted, the more appropriate title for
Kerr's book would have been University for Hire! .

The Rockefeller Wars—The Free Tuition Struggle,
1961-1969

Throughout the sixties, obviously enough,
CUNY did yeoman service for capitalism. But also
during the sixties, it stubbornly refused to go
along with Rockefeller’s grand strategy of incor-
porating CUNY into SUNY and instituting tuition.

Recall that the legislature did not act on Heald’s
uniform tuition proposal when it created CUNY
in 1961. But-it had, in the act establishing the
new university, cleverly removed the 125-year-
old statutory mandate for free tuition and empow-
ered the BHE to charge.tuition if it saw fit. A
strong incentive to do so was concurrently sup-
plied in the act creating Scholar Incentive Awards
for students attending tuition-charging institu-
tions, and made still stronger in. 1962 when the


, 625

SUNY trustees adopted a $400 tuition rate. The
coalition: that had emerged to fight the Heald
Report saw the dangers in these measures and for
several years waged a vigorous campaign both to
restore the free tuition mandate at CUNY and to
roll back tuition at SUNY. Rockefeller and the
legislature risisted, however, and on both-counts
the City forces were unsuccessful.

_ More important still in prolonging the conflict
was the certain knowledge that CUNY’s continued
expansion would be impossible without substan-
"tial increases in state aid. The vast operating and
capital costs of expansion became clear in 1962
with publication of the BHE’s Long Range Plan,
but the Governor and everyone else knew that the
_ plan would never bear fruit if the City alone had to
bear the financial burdens. ;

Despite earlier promises, Rockefeller was thus
‘in-a position to drive a hard bargain: if CUNY
wanted great sums of money from the state, it
should expect to give the state at least a propor-
tionate voice in its affairs, and it should also
expect to do the fiscally responsible thing and
charge tuition. Sheer financial necessity, in other
words, would in time put the University right
where Rockefeller and Heald wanted it.

CUNY’s prospects of survival grew dimmer in
1963, when the Governor's forces tried to split the
coalition opposing them along class and racial
lines. The attack began when the Republican
Assembly Speaker, Joseph P. Carlino, blasted
free tuition as a policy that meant, in effect, free
higher education only fora middle-class elite. The
case was distressingly persuasive: without tui-
tion CUNY could not finance adequate facilities,
and without adequate facilities it had to restrict
admission to those comparatively few, well-to-do

students who stood at the top of their high school
classes. .

Other voices picked up the refrain, and by the
following year black and Puerto Rican spokesmen
were also beginning to doubt their interest in
preserving free tuition. Rockefeller meanwhile
floated word he might build SUNY branches in the
city fof students turned away from CUNY because
of inadequate space.

Alarmed, Mayor Wagner and his forces moved
quickly to deal with the threat. A College Discov-

ery Program was inaugurated to attract more min- |

ority students into the colleges, and the free
tuition policy was extended to the two-year insti-

tutions. It was apparently at about this time, too, '

that serious thinking began on what would later
become the Open Admissions program.

Before the effects of this counterattack could
be discerned, however, CUNY’s united front was
shattered by an internal explosion. Early in 1965
fears mounted that the city had run out of money
for CUNY and would be unable to give it addition
al aid for the upcoming fiscal year, despite.an an-
ticipated 25% jump in expenses. Suddenly faced

’ with the disaster that Rockefeller had been await-

ing, Chancellor Albert H. Bowker devised a plan

for presentation to the BHE: if the state would -

agree to assume the full operating budget of the
senior colleges, the University would agree in
return to a “nominal imposition of tuition” and
pledge the proceeds to the State Dormitory Au-

thority as backing for capital construction bond
issues. Before Bowker had a chance to present his
plan formally, however, its contents were leaked
to the public by President Meng of Hunter and
President Gallagher of City College. The ensuing
uproar made the response to the Heald Commis-
sion report sound like a tea party.

The BHE responded by calling a special meet-
ing to assure everyone of its firm support for the
free tuition policy. It also scolded Meng, Galla-
gher, and Bowker for insubordination, whereupon
Bowker, Meng, and Gideonse of Brooklyn sub-
mitted their resignations. Meanwhile, Mayor
Wagner and an expanded coalition of some thirty
alumni, business, and civic groups rallied to
defeat Bowker’s scheme and find new revenues
for CUNY. By November the situation had become
so grave that the Assembly’s Joint Legislative
Committee on Higher Education was preparing to
launch a thorough investigation.

If Rockefeller thought that CUNY was now
within his grasp, he was, as it turned out, to be
disappointed for’a second time. In March of 1966,
after several months of hearings, the Joint Legis-

~ lative Committee issued a series of recommenda-

f

tions that gave the University a new lease on life:
(a) the free tuition policy should be continued; (b)
the Governor should abandon plans to build SUNY
units in the City; (c) state support should rise to
65% of undergraduate operating costs; (d) the
city,and state should each pay $200 for every
CUNY student into a City University Income Fund,
which. would pledge these monies to the State
Dormitory Authority as backing for capital con-
struction bonds. Elated, CUNY’s supporters cam-
paigned vigorously for legislative adoption of the
committee’s proposals. Coordinating this effort
was a new umbrella organization of labor, busi-
ness, and civic groups in the City—the Ad Hoc
Committee for CUNY.

Rockefeller, obviously dismayed, declared his
willingness to see the state supply half of CUNY’s'
capital and operating costs, but no more—not
unless the University was willing to charge tuition
and accept some form of merger with SUNY. He
won at least that point. When the Assembly

‘passed the so-called Travia bill in July 1966, it

f

provided that the state would pay half the operat-
ing budget for all undergraduate and graduate
education at CUNY, except at the community

. colleges, where the figure would be one-third. A

second provision of the Travia bill created a City

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64
University Construction Fund, which resembled
the JLC’s “income fund” idea except that. it
worked with student fees, not matching city-state
grants—a subtle modification probably designed
to placate the Governor somewhat, since higher
fees and/or the adoption of tuition would give
CUNY additional resources for financing capital
construction. A third provision of the bill estab-
lished the SEEK. program, doubtless a great help
~in'the Ad Hoc Committee’s struggle to avoid a
split between its low income and middle income
- members on the tuition issue.

Six years had elapsed since the Heald Commis-
sion report proclaimed. the intention of the capi-
talist class to absorb the municipal colleges into a
new, massive system of higher education. In
1961, and again in 1966, the colleges had suc-
cessfully defended their independence and unique
no-tuition -_policy—thanks in large part to the
emergence of a powerful coalition of Democratic
politicians, organized labor, and various business
and civic groups. After 1966, with increased co-
operation from racial and ethnic organizations,
this coalition would become the main political
force behind the new University and its preser-
vation. But the power behind the next major
transformation at City University—guaranteeing
admission to every high school graduate in the
city—was not the Ad Hoc Committee, or the
Board, but the students and faculty on the cam-
puses themselves.

The Battle for Open Admissions

During the Rockefeller wars, as we have noted,
the Board of Higher Education seems to have be-
gun thinking seriously about instituting open ad-
missions at CUNY. Such a policy would help keep
‘minority groups firmly within the pro-CUNY power
bloc. But open admissions looked attractive for
other reasons too/ Black ghettoes were exploding
_all across the nation, and it was clear to CUNY of-
ficials that they were sitting on a powder keg of
their own. Some were also concerned liberals who
had become increasingly unhappy about school
and college systems that patently discriminated
against the poor and minority groups. But the
consideration that weighed most heavily upon
them was still the changing nature of the New
York City job market.

Blue collar work that did not require advanced

:

“How can we make our school
system, upon which we spend more
money than any other people, fit
the children for their life-work and
furnish our industries . . . with the
army of skilled and willing workers
they need?” a

—G. Stanley Hall,
“Educational Problems,” 1911

education had continued declining rapidly. White
collar service jobs that did require some “postsec-
ondary” training had continued growing in num-

‘ber. Planners now predicted that by 1978 the city,

would require 75,000 fewer manufacturing wor-

kers, but 250,000 more service workers; by that.

year, according to their projections, almost 50 per

cent of all job openings would be in service or’

clerical categories.

The working class of the city, however, was
increasingly composed of blacks and Puerto Ri-
cans—the least educationally prepared to take on
the jobs the planners wanted them to take on.
Minority group population doubled during the
fifties, and there was every indication that their
percentage would continue to rise swiftly.

As the New York City Master Plan of 1969
summed up: “The growth of the city’s economy is
in jobs requiring education and skill. [But] the
growth of the labor force has been in people who
have little education, and few skills.” Fifty per
cent of Puerto Ricans were in blue collar jobs, as
were 27 per cent of blacks; while only 12 per cent
of whites were so employed. And.blue collar jobs
were rapidly disappearing. The consequence was
deepening unemployment that struck all working
class people, but particularly minority groups. As
unemployment increased, so did welfare rolls,
anger, frustration, and violence.

The public schools were doing precious little to
improve matters. As the composition of the
schools began to change—in 1960 37 per cent of
primary and secondary school children were black
and Puerto Rican, but by 1968 the figure had risen
to 54 per cent—they began increasingly to act:
as barriers to continuing education, rather thari.as

stepping stones to it. In 1968, out of every 100:

children who entered a ghetto’ school at the first

grade level, only 45 had not dropped out by. high:

Om

school; and only 13 would graduate with an aca+
demic diploma. A steady filtering process lighten-
ed the hue of the:public academic high schools
with each year of attendance. Thus 11th graders in
1968 at such schools consisted of 24% blacks,
11.7% Puerto Ricans, and 64.3% whites and
others. The next year found that blacks had
dropped to 21.0%, Puerto Ricans to 9.5%, and
whites and others risen to 69.5%. By 1970, when
that class graduated, it had changed once. again:
blacks—18.5%, Puerto Ricans—7.5%, whites
and others—73.8%.

CUNY, too, was little help. In 1969, first-time:

entering freshmen. were 13.8 per cent black, 5.9
per cent Puerto Rican, 75.9 per cent all other
white, and 4.4 per cent other, figures that were
way out of line with the black and Puerto Rican
college age population in the city.

The Board of Higher Education, taking its cue
from a.spate of foundation studies, decided to
open CUNY’s doors wider. The objective was
simply to repair the damage done by the public
school system and to integrate the black and
Puerto Rican populations into the changing pro-
ductive system. As Bowker had said, the planners
wanted. the “children of the newer migrations” to
fill..the newer, low-level clerical and technical
slots.

The first official announcement of the new
policy came in:the 1968 Master Plan, which laid
out the BHE’s justifications for what they called
100% Open Admissions. This policy, they said,
would provide “each. student, regardless of high
school achievement, the opportunity for more
advanced study so that each may progress to his
fullest potential.” The program would begin oper-
ation by 1975 at the earliest.

It all. sounded very progressive—until you
looked a bit more closely at what the Board had in
mind. By no means were they prepared to guaran-
tee all students access to the same kind of educa-
tion. Rather they wanted to keep them in three
separate tracks. The'top 25% of high school grad-
uates (overwhelmingly white and of the higher in-
come levels) would be allowed into the senior col-

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65

leges. The remainder of the top two-thirds would
be sent to the community colleges. And the bot-
tom one-third (overwhelmingly the least affluent
whites, blacks, and Puerto Ricans) would be

restricted to what the BHE euphemistically called: ©

“Education -Skills Centers,” where they would be

given vocational training. This was hardly open -

admissions. It provided even less access than did
the grossly tracked California system. It did not
even measure up to the Carnegie Commisssion’s
call for at least the community colleges to. be
totally “open door” colleges. lt was definitely a
Brave New Worldish proposition. And _ finally,

such changes as it would bring were to be put off. ;

for almost a decade.

This tidy scheme was blown apart in the Spring
of 1969 by infuriated students and faculty.

Early the previous winter, a black and Puerto
Rican student community group at CCNY had
presented President Buell Gallagher with four
demands. They wanted the racial composition of
all future entering City College classes to reflect
the racial compostion of the city’s high schools—
then about 50 per cent. They wanted a separate
school of Black and Puerto Rican Studies. They
wanted separate orientation for black and Puerto
Rican students. And they wanted a voice. on
hiring, firing, and educational policy in the SEEK
program. Later they would add a demand that all
education majors—most destined to teach in the
city’s schools—be required to take some black
and Puerto Rican history, and to study some
Spanish. These five demands became the basis
for a massive, multi-campus upheaval throughout
the City University. '

Gallagher stalled. One hundred students took

over the Administration building for four hours on
February 13. But still no significant response was
forthcoming.

It was not until April 21, with the school year’s
end fast approaching, that the situation boiled
over. On that day, over one thousand students
paraded through CCNY denouncing racist admis-
sions policies. The next day hundreds of. black
and Puerto Rican students blocked the gates to
ege2

»

Pil
26
by,

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)


66

“the South Campus, and reiterated the five de-~

“mands. Gallagher then shut down the campus,
and it stayed closed until May 5. In the meantime
other campuses exploded. At Queens whites and
' blacks together sat-in by the hundreds, protesting
~ the firing of radical professors. Similar demon-
__Strations broke out at Queensborough Commun-
__ ity. At Brooklyn a coalition of students shut down
. that campus and demanded all black and Puerto
Rican applicants be admitted in 1970. Back at
Queens, hundreds occupied buildings to force
. dropping of charges against earlier demonstra-
.tors, and then Borough of Manhattan blew up—
_ hundreds, sitting in for Black and. Puerto Rican
Studies programs. By May 3 only Hunter, among
.the four oldest colleges, was still open.

_.Back at City, while the Administration debated
a,.demand for guaranteed 50 per cent minority
.-enrollments, pitched battles began to break. out
s-between demonstrators and counter-demonstra-
; tors who opposed further loss of class time and
_ feared. that quotas plus a limited number of
openings at each campus would spell dimin-
ished opportunities for them. Said one black
; student in reply: “So you lose a day, a week, ora
semester. We lost generations and damn it, this is
what we intend to stop.”
_, The confrontations continued in May. The black
and Puerto Rican faculty at City, forty in number,
went out on strike in support of the demands.
..Bronx. Community joined the fray with a twelve
hour sit-in. And finally on May 9, Francis Keppel,
‘Chairman of the Executive Committee of the BHE,
»,gave some ground. He tentatively approved the
SEEK and separate orientation demands, agreed
to the education major demand, but ‘said further
negotiations would be required on the central
issue of guaranteed access.
‘The next two weeks saw a mobilization of
opposition to any such guarantee. Political lead-
ers denounced the plan (Rockefeller and Wagner
.” both oppésed it) and the Faculty Senate rejected
-.it. The Board was trapped. It could not go back to
"the original Brave New World plan—the blacks,
Puerto Ricans, and a great many white students
would not stand for it. They could not. guarantee
..50 per cent of openings to minority groups—the
“many. working and middle class Irish, Italians
Jews, and others who might be frozen out would
not stand for it. The Board,
Nowhere to go but forward.
That was precisely the direction that communi-

in fact, had almost

‘

ty groups, labor unions, social agencies, and the
embattled parties themselves began to urge on
the Board. Go forward, they said, and open up the
system to everybody. And now, not in a decade.

The Board gave in. On July 9, 1969, they held a

special meeting and announced that they had “re-
appraised” the situation. They promised to offer
admission “to some University program to all high
school graduates of the City.” (The “some” would,
in.time, be the escape clause that allowed them to
perpetuate a good part of the tracking system.)
They promised sufficient remedial services, main-
‘tenance of standards of academic excellence,
ethnic integration of the colleges, and all to begin
the very next year.

~ The people of the City had scored a spectacular
victory with which everyone could be happy. /f
access would be truly open. /f sufficient funding
would be forthcoming to make it work. /f Open
Admissions would spell the end of tracking and
discrimination. Not all of those conditions were
fulfilled, but the struggle was an immense step
forward.

The Era of Open Admissions, 1969-1974

The decision to go ahead with Open Admis-
sions brought the University once again to the

-brink of political crisis over the tuition issue.

Resigning in disgust in the wake of the BHE’s

. decision, President Gallagher of CCNY declared

that Open Admissions would strain facilities to
the breaking point and bankrupt the University if
it did not begin to charge tuition. The powerful
Citizens Union agreed. The UFT, the Ad Hoc
Committee, and Harry Van Arsdale of the Central
Labor Council, among others, spoke out firmly

against the adoption of tuition on the grounds

that it would make a mockery of Open Admissions
and exacerbate race and class tensions. In De-
cember 1969 the BHE decided to have the entire
issue of CUNY’s finances thoroughly aired and
named former Mayor Wagner to head a special
commission for that purpose. Everyone then sat
back to see what would happen when Open
Admissions went into effect the following year.

ees) |

Everyone, that is, except the BHE. Mindful of
its primary responsibilities, and nervous about
putting all its eggs in one basket, the Board took
steps to create a separate, parallel structure that
would see to the training and tracking of the
working class should Open Admissions not work
out. This “Regional Manpower System” was set
up in close conjunction with the federal Man-
power and Career Development Agency. Its net-
work of Regional Opportunity Centers, explained
Dean Leon Goldstein, “is a plan for New York
City to provide vocational training, basic educa-
tion and job placement to poverty area adults
lacking a high school diploma.” MCDA created
eleven Regional Opportunity Centers in poverty
areas to administer part of this plan and con-
tracted with the university to provide “basic
skills education” at those eleven centers. In
April 1970 MCDA asked CUNY to further expand
its involvement by assuming responsibility for the
“Vocational training component” at nine centers,
which CUNY did on July 1, 1970.

Administered from the community colleges and
funded by both the city and federal governments,
the new program had a budget for fiscal year 1970
pegged at about $6 million. Its main programs
taught “reading and math skills which are required
for job skills,” enough English “to handle job
skills,” and finally vocational preparation for
“such jobs as typist, clerk, stenographer, key-
punch operator, maintenance-repairman, service
repairman.” Again, the least knowledge possible.

At the end of 1971, however, the University
abandoned the program, and it was taken over by

private corporations. The explanation was that by
then the University felt confident that such func-
tions could be adequately carried out within the
context of the Open Admissions program. CUNY
has maintained some of the other former competi-
tors to the Open Admissions program—the Urban
Center and College Adapter Program for instance
—but most of their functions have now been
switched to the community and senior colleges
themselves.

Also in 1971, a new round in the Rockefeller
Wars began when the Governor called for tuition
charges at. CUNY, linked to “generous” state
scholarships. One week later, William T. Golden
quit as head of the Construction Fund, declaring
that CUNY was going under and could. no longer

service its debts. By the end of the year, with no |

word yet from the Wagner Commission, Rockefel-

67

ler created his own State Task Force on the Finan-
cing of Higher Education in New York ‘under T.N.
Hurd. Mayor Lindsay promptly called for 100%
state financing. of the University’s operating
budget.

By February 1972 the Hurd Commission had
finished its work. Its report was a disappointment
to the Governor, however, for the Commission
had failed to take a firm stand against CUNY’s
no-tuition policy. In April the Governor got more
bad news with publication of the Wagner Com-
mission’s report.

Composed largely of representatives from the
same. groups which, with Wagner himself, had
been, fighting Rockefeller ever since the 1960
Heald report, the Wagner Commission’s conclu-
sions were hardly surprising: (a) continuing free
tuition; (b) raising state contributions to senior

~ college operating costs from 50% to 75% “with-

out achange in the structure of controls, relation-
ships, or identity”; (c) dedicating student fees

-and existing tuitions to service of Construction

Fund bonds, thereby relieving the state of the
need to supply one-half of the debt service
charges; (d) removing community college con-
struction costs from the city’s capital budget and.
funding them on the same basis as those of the
senior colleges; (e) giving the BHE de jure as well
as de facto control over the community colleges;
(f) creating a Chancellors Council of Citizen
Advisors, which would, in effect, serve as a local
equivalent of the Heald Commission’s proposed
Governor's Council of Higher Education Advisors.

(Sylvia Deutsch, in a revealing dissent from this
portion of the Wagner report, argued that the Ad
Hoc Committee she had helped to found already
fulfilled the purpose of such an advisory body. It
now consists, she said, of: _ :

over 60 civic, community groups. It has repre-

sented the community of New York for the past
seven years in the continued battles’ for in-
creased CUNY budgets, in support of open ad-
missions and SEEK and for the maintenance
of a free tuition policy for undergraduates. The

Committee refused a BHE suggestion that it

turn itself into an official part of the University

structure. . . .)

Six months after the Wagner Commission re-
port, in September 1972, the controversy became
still murkier when the Regents issued their “Ten-
tative Statewide Plan for Development of Post-
Secondary Education.” The plan’ commended
CUNY for its Open Admissions program, but ad-


68

METROPOLITAN INSURANCE

VOTE FOR
ROCKEFELLER! |

|[CONSOLIDATED Ti
NATURAL GAS Id
| a

~-monished the University to move more rapidly on
“the ‘necessary capital construction—though it
~-would almost certainly require “a rational tuition
» policy” to do so. Free tuition, the Regents added,
is directly contrary to their state philosophy, and
CUNY’s adamant opposition to closer ties with
SUNY and other higher educational institutions in
New York is deplorable. This challenge to the
Hurd and Wagner reports gave Governor Rocke-

“feller room to resume his offensive. In October,
therefore, he named yet another task force under
Francis Keppel for the purpose of investigating
‘the financing of all higher education in the state.

If the Wagner Commission comprised the
forces that had been opposing Rockefeller since
1960, the Keppel Commission comprised the
forces that had supported Rockefeller since 1960.
Its seventeen members included one SUNY presi-
dent, one SUNY trustee, and representatives from
twelve private institutions of higher learning, ten
of them in New York State. The Carnegie and Ford

Foundations each had delegates, as did the Col-

“lege Entrance Examination Board, the state gov-
ernment, the federal government, and the world of
great banks, corporations, and Wall Street law
firms. And so it came as no surprise that when the
Keppel Commission issued its report in March
1973, it did little more than echo the .recommen-
dations of the Heald'Commission thirteen years
earlier.

It was no surprise, either, that the Keppel report

" met with immediate, withering return fire from the
same forces that had been defending CUNY
against Rockefeller since 1960. Resistance, in
fact, seemed all the more urgent in the late 1960’s
and early 1970’s, for free and equal access to
CUNY seemed to have become the only remaining

~ political bulwark against savage class warfare and

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the continued flight of the middle class from the
city. As Albert Blumenthal put it at the time:
“Perhaps there is no other institution left in this
City which provides the opportunity for the poor
and the middle class to work together effectively.
This is absolutely essential to the survival of New
York City. . . . Acity cannot survive without these
coalitions.” Free tuition and open admissions,
Blumenthal added, were the cement of that
coalition:
To destroy these essential and critical supports
of City University policy would be to invite
disaster for our City. | am not overstating the
alternatives. To destroy Open Admissions, free
tuition, SEEK and College Discovery would
generate intergroup frictions on an order of
magnitude this City has never before experi-
~enced. It would maké Ocean Hill-Brownsville
look like a picnic.
What the Keppel Commission proposes, agreed
Chancellor Kibbee, is nothing less than “a major
change in New York City’s social policy,” and one
that might well “reap the whirlwind and contribute
to the destruction of the city.”

“If the Keppel Commission’s
recommendations were implement-
ed, another resulting development

. would be increased class warfare

between the poor and the lower and
middie income working fami-
lies... .”
—S.H. Lowell, President of CCNY
Alumni Association, in testimony before
the Joint Legislative Committee
on Higher Education, 1973

Such local concerns, of course,’do not impress
Rockefeller and the foundations—or if they do,
not so deeply as the need to assume greater and
greater control over all higher education in the
country. In sum, resistance to direct state rule of
the University should not be romanticized as a
working-class, anti-capitalist uprising—but nei-
ther should it be cynically dismissed as super-
ficial and unimportant. CUNY and the City would
be very different indeed if Rockefeller took over.

Nor should the struggle for control of CUNY be
linked too closely to Rockefeller himself. The

Governor's resignation in late 1973 did give CUNY ©

forces some unexpected breathing room. But just
as pressure for a state take-over of the municipal
colleges had begun well before Rockefeller’s ap-
pearance on the scene, so will it continue under
his successors. The logic of capitalist interven-
tion in higher education, as we have seen, re-
quires that the issue be joined, again and again,
until finally resolved. ,

And neither should it be forgotten that the
struggle for control has and will take place in a
context of increasing cooperation between CUNY

~ and the capitalist system. Even now, the Central

Office is pressing on with its program of turning
the University into a massive training center for
industry and government, at public expense, with-
out the public having any voice in the matter.

The 1972 Master Plan clearly reveals what they
want and we can expect:

“Given City University’s broad‘expansion in the
past decade,” write the Masterplanners, “it is
particularly important that its planning reflect the
manifold social and economic pressures and
trends of its urban environment.” Demographic
and employment profile analyses show that those
“pressures and trends” consist of the following:
continued decreases “in the need for unskilled
and semi-skilled blue collar workers and contin-
ued increase in the need for college-trained
personnel in the professions, government, busi-
ness, and other service areas”; “continued high
rate of technological change which will require
more frequent re-training for many types of jobs”;
the “growth of leisure time [unemployment?] and
job demands for higher levels of education which
will encourage more individuals to pursue higher
education in their adult years”; a “dramatic
change in population mix.”

The meaning of all this for CUNY is that it
must “completely restructure many of its cur-

“Educational programs are con-
sciously geared to preparing stu-
dents for a wide range of occupa-
tions and professions, and to meet-
ing manpower needs of public and
private employers.”
—CUNY Master Plan, 1972

ricula, re-emphasize learning how to learn, and
establish logical points at which undergraduates
can suspend their college careers and qualify for
jobs.” Particular areas in which the Masterplan-
ners believe “the University’s training capability”
can be brought to bear include health care,
education, paraprofessional work, and_ library
science.

The latest indication of CUNY’s commitment to
its work for capitalism comes in the Chancellor's
budget request for 1973-1974—the blueprint for
what is going on right now. It reeks of manpower.
development imperatives. Over and over again we .
read of “curricula to meet professional and career
needs.” Of “new curricula... to improve the
training of vocational teachers: and to provide
management training for minority entrepeneurs.”
Of “the changing skill demands of a. dynamic
economy” and of how “the University is seeking to
keep abreast of this demand.” Of the University’s
“role in providing the academic support for. new,
changed and expanded job requirements.” Of

_ programs that “are critical in meeting the chang-

ing manpower needs of the City.”

How different it would be if less enthusiasm
were displayed for shaping people to fit jobs, and
more for enabling them to shape their jobs to suit
themselves.

Governance, Power, and Control

Who actually runs things at CUNY from one day
to the next? Given the conclusion of this chap-
ter—that CUNY is largely a creation of the capi-
talist class—it would seem we are bound to sug-
gest that representatives of that class are here, as
elsewhere in American higher education, firmly in
control. Yet a good deal of evidence seems to
suggest that his would be a grossly simplistic,
even silly conclusion. Unlike most private insti-
tutions, where control is clearly in the hands of


70

self-appointed and self-perpetuating cliques of
rich old trustees from the worlds of business and
finance, CUNY is a public university. It is exposed
at a great many points to political, governmental,
and public interference. At least a dozen city and

state offices share responsibility for CUNY’s af-

fairs, and when any one of them dares to hold a
public hearing, the parade of spokesmen for civic,
ethnic, business, and community organizations
seems almost endiess. Then, too, the bitter strug-
gles for autonomy, free tuition, and now Open
Admissions have been, as we have seen, precisely
a struggle waged by local working and middle
income groups against ruling class interventions
in University policy.

lt might appear, then, that we are about to be
caught in something of a paradox. Is there any
way to resolve it?

Let us begin to sort out the question of gov-
ernance by considering the seven mayoral and
three gubernatorial appointees who currently sit
on the Board of Higher Education, CUNY’s high-
est governing body. What one notices first of all is
a judicious ethnic balance among the ten. There
are two blacks (Franklin Williams, Vinia’ Qui-
nones), two Irish-Catholics (Vincent Fitzpatrick,
James Murphy), three Jews (Gurston Goldin, Rita
Hauser, Harold Jacobs), two Italians (Alfred
Giardino, Francesco Cantarella), and one Puerto
Rican (Marta Valle). There is also, upon closer
inspection, a sharp difference between Mayor
Beame’s and former Governor Rockefellers ap-
pointees with respect to their status, prestige,
power, and connections to the ruling class.

Hauser, Williams, and Cantarella—the three
“named by Rockefeller—could easily blend in with
the corporate bigwigs who sit on the boards of
major private universities. Cantarella is vice-presi-
dent and director of public affairs for David
Rockefellers Chase Manhattan Bank, where he
handles governmental relations for the bank and
(in his. own words) “an urban affairs program
to help find a solution to the socio-economic
problems besetting the city.” A former fellow of
the prestigious Brookings Institution in Washing-
ton, he also serves as a director of both the Public
Affairs Council and the Empire State Chamber of
Commerce. Hauser is no lightweight, either. A
specialist in international law and partner in one
of the leading Manhattan law firms, she is also a
trustee of the United Nations Association, trustee

of the Legal Aid Society, a member of the Ameri-

‘can Bar Association’s Standing Committee on

World Order Under Law, and, perhaps most sig-
nificant, a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, the shadowy ruling-class organization
that largely determines the course of U.S. inter-
national policy. Williams, for his part, is a former
N.A.A.C.P. official, past Director of the Columbia
University Urban Center, and formerly U.S. Am-
bassador to Ghana, now serving as president o
the Phelps-Stokes Fund, a private foundation that
“supports educational programs in Africa and
among black and American Indian schools.” Wil-
liams is also.a trustee of Fordham and Lincoln
universities, and he sits on the boards of Con-
solidated Edison, Carver Federal Savings & Loan,
and U.R.S. Systems, Inc.

. Beame’s seven appointees, by contrast, are
women and men of more ordinary attainments.
Fitzpatrick and Giardino, the Board Chairman, are
both partners in respected but small Manhattan
law firms. Murphy, another attorney, is a vice-
president with Chemical Bank. Jacobs is a Brook-
lyn businessman, Quinones a hospital adminis-
trator, Valle an educational administrator, and
Goldin a psychiatrist. What all seven have in
common, on the other hand, are long years of

/ involvement in local, community, and business

affairs. Between them they have access to or a
sound working knowledge of all the major reli-
gious, ethnic, and civic groups in the city; they
know their way around the health, welfare, and
educational establishments, the political parties,
and the City Hall bureaucracy. All of the sev-
en, furthermore, have taken a firm public stand
in favor of Open Admissions and free tuition, and
against further state interventions in. CUNY af-
fairs. Indeed, as Jacobs candidly told one student
paper, “Il am for open admissions and free
tuition—or | wouldn’t have been appointed.”
When asked their opinions on the same issues,
Rockefeller’s three appointees either waffied or
refused to answer. .
The conclusion to be drawn here is simple: the
BHE, as presently constituted; is dominated by
the same local forces that have been in the
forefront of the struggle against Rockefeller and
the foundations since 1960. It is especially no-
table in this connection that Murphy, the banker
and apparent exception, served loyally on the
pro-CUNY Wagner Commission, while chairman
Giardino, at the time of his appointment to the

|

71

THE HEAVIES

oundations, Corporations

Civic, Community Groups Bonks, Think Tanks

. Organized Labor

: Consv iting Firms
Ad Hoc Committee Gouernmen? Agencies
Alumni, Student Orgs

v v

Screening
Committees

v Vv

Eoard of Higher Educathon

Alfred Giavclino, Chin. () « Harold Jacobs (M)

o Francesco Cantatella (G) » James Murphy (M)

« Vincent Fitzpatrick (M) Vinita Quinones (mM)

¢ Gevston Goldin (mM) e Matta Valle (m)

» Rita Hauser (6) © Franklin Willams (@)

Vv

( Cooneil of Pres dents |

Chancellor |

+ Robert J. Kibbee! ;
+ Baruch — Clyde J. Wingfield
* Borough of Manhattan — Edgar Draper
» Bronx ¢.c. James A. Colston
« Brooklyn — John W. Kneller
« City — Robert E. Marshak
e Hosios — Cardiclo A. De Leon
Hunter — Jacqueline G. Wexler
« Joun Jay — Donald H. Riddle |
Kingsborough - Leon M. Goldstein J
o La Guardia — Joseph Shenker

Vice- Chancellors

e Lehman — Leonard Lief
» Medgar Evers — Richard D. Trent
«Mary P Bass, Legal Affairs
« Tulius GC. Edelstein, Urban Affais |

Deputy Chancellor

«Seymour Hyman

a New York City —Herbert M. Sussman
° Timothy Healy, Academie Affairs

« Queens - Joseph $. Murphy
Queensborough — Kort Schmetler
Richmond — Edmond L. Volpe ° Anthony Knerr, Budge & Planning ~
° J. Joseph Meng, Admimstahve Atanes
* David Newton, Faculty & Staff Rins. j.

= Staten Island - William Bienbaim
» York - Milton ©. Bassin
« ter S. Spvidon, Campus Plannin

« Gradvate Division - Haro Proshansky
* Mt. Sinai — Thomas ¢. Chalmers D



CHANCELLOR KIBBEE: RUNNING THE TRAINS ON TIME

When the BHE announced in July 1971 that Robert J. Kibbee would succeed Albert
H. Bowker as Chancellor of the City University, just about everyone was astonished
at his apparent lack of qualifications for the job. A native of New York who held an
A.B. from Fordham (1943) and a Ph.D. in college administration from Chicago (1 957),
Kibbee was then in his sixth year as Vice-President for Administration and Planning
at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Before going to Carnegie-Mellon, he had
held deanships in a succession of small midwestern colleges and served briefly as an
advisor on higher education to the government of Pakistan. A ten-year-old article on
“Higher Education in Pakistan” was his only publication of note, and, as the Times
delicately put it, he was “virtually unknown in higher-education circles outside

Pennsylvania.” ;
~~~ The logic of Kibbee’s appointment becomes a good deal clearer when you examine

the contents of his doctoral dissertation, “Policy Formation in American Higher

Education.” Ostensibly a narrow study of decision-making in three small Arkansas

colleges, it was in fact a manifesto for the get-tough administrative policies and
practices that the BHE would find especially desirable in the 1970s.
Colleges and universities, Kibbee declared, are not microcosms of the larger world
around them: students and professors may have certain rights to political
participation in civil society, but that doesn’t mean they have an equivalent right to
participate in decision-making on the campuses. Indeed, his research showed that
*- faculty in particular would be perfectly willing to accept, and probably better off with,
‘a benevolent administrative dictatorship: “several of the decisions made in the most
“arbitrary manner,” he noted, “received almost unanimous support in the faculty while

some of those that had enjoyed the greatest degree of faculty participation...
'.incurred the most faculty disfavor.” So much for democracy.

Altogether too often, Kibbee continued, administrators put adherence to mere
form ahead of goal-oriented effectiveness: they become ensnared in institutional
formalities and procedures, losing sight of the larger purposes for which the
institution exists. When circumstances compel them to act boldly, without regard for

«the formalities, the resulting “hypocrisy” tends to “create frustration and destroy
morale” among those who have been deceived about the role in the scheme of things.
The solution, obviously enough, is to set

matters straight by making sure at the

outset that these people harbor no illusions

about their powerlessness, for then they

won’t be “frustrated” when their wishes are

ignored. Besides, so long as the trains run

on time, they probably won’t mind anyway.

Sound familiar?

BHE, was heading the Ad Hoc Committee for the
City University, the umbrella Organization of all
pro-CUNY groups in the city. Nor is there any
doubt that the seven mayoral appointees see
themselves.in this light. As Jacobs again candidly
declared: “The city still controls [CUNY]. All
seven of the mayor's choices are committed and if
there was ever any major problem we would hold
the majority. In that sense they [Rockefeller’s
people] don’t really have a voice.”

“In the City of New York, recom-

mendations for appointment by the -

Mayor to the Board of Higher Edu-
cation are made by an independent
panel of distinguished citizens.
This procedure . . . has kept gov-
ernance of the City University abso-
lutely free of partisan politics.
Members of selection panels have
included presidents of foundations,
former college and university presi-
dents, present and former profes-
sors, distinguished lawyers, and
civic leaders, who have no political
axes to grind.”

—BHE Chairman Luis Quero-Chiesa, 1973

How the pro-CUNY forces have managed to get
and to hold their position is the next question.
The answer is to be found in the extraordinary and
largely unknown role of blue-ribbon “screening
committees” in soliciting, reviewing, and recom-
mending candidates for appointment to the BHE.
First developed by Mayor Wagner in 1963, amid
mounting criticism that free. tuition was an obsta-
cle to the admission of working-class and non-
white students, and then subsequently continued
during the Lindsay and Beame administrations,
these screening committees have become an
essential fixture of CUNY politics. Their recom-
mendations have rarely been ignored; and since
their advent, every major ethnic, racial, and
religious group in the city, as well as organized
labor and business ‘interests, has been quietly
assured of one or more representatives on the
Board at any time—thereby legitimating and

73

cementing the inter-class alliance that keeps
Rockefeller and. the foundations at bay. The only.
difference in this regard between the present
Board and its predecessors is the presence of the
three gubernatorial appointees since 1974. And:
they, as we have seen, are a different breed
entirely.

It is the make-up of the screening committees.
themselves that holds the key to who runs CUNY;
however. Consider only the three most recent
committees: two named by Mayor Lindsay. and
one by Mayor Beame. Lindsay’s first panel, in:
business from 1966 to 1970, was headed by.none
other than Alan Pifer, president of-the Carnegie
Corporation, director of the Federal Reserve Bank -
of New York, member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, and more. Another leading Pifer panel-
ist—Frederick Sheffield—was a prominent attor-.
ney, corporation director, and trustee ‘of: the:
Carnegie Corporation. :

Lindsay’s second panel, in business from 1970
to 1973, was headed by Arthur Singer, a vice-pres-

ident of the Sloan Foundation, the president of |» .’

which was placed on the BHE in 1970. Singers
colleagues included Robert Carter, a prominent:
black attorney; William T. Golden, a wealthy: -
Corporation director,. trustee of the Carnegie
Corporation, and member of the Council on
Foreign Relations; Charles Monaghan, editor of
Book World and member_of.. the Kings County
Democratic Committee; Virginia ‘Sexton, '‘profes-
sor of psychology at Lehman College: Howard
Squadron, prominent Manhattan attorney - and. ~
former head of the Ad Hoc Committee; Frederick
Sheffield, held over from. the Pifer panel; and at
least four other community, civic, and labor
leaders.

The Beame panel was headed by Abraham
Feinberg, a banker and business executive. with
extensive personal and financial connections to
the Mayor and the Democratic party. Feinberg’s
colleagues included Porter R. Chandler, partner in
one of New York’s top law firms, former chairman
of the BHE, and an outspoken. supporter of
Rockefeller’s program for higher education in the

state; three holdovers from prior panels, Arthur - wah

Singer, Alan Pifer, and. Howard Squadron: two *
former ethnic members of the BHE; Benjamin
McLaurin and Francisco Trilla; Blanche: Lewis,

former president of the United Parents Associa-

‘tion; and E. Howard Molisani, an official of the

ILGWU.


74...

The obvious and striking thing here, of course,

is the presence on the screening committees of

“the very corporate and foundation interests that
now dominate American education in general and
want to dominate CUNY in particular. They do not
by any means control the screening panels:
‘Mayors Wagner, Lindsay, and Beame have appar-

“ently been quite careful to give a sure majority of
committee positions to representatives or offi-
cials of groups which, like the Ad Hoc Committee,
support free tuition, Open Admissions, and inde-
pendence from the state.

The participation of corporate and foundation
representatives in the selection of BHE trustees is
nonetheless extremely significant, for it points to
the existence of an at least tacit accomodation
between. the pro-CUNY forces and their ruling-
class antagonists. The two salient features of this
accomodation can be summarized as follows: (1)
the pro-CUNY coalition is assured of a BHE that is
solidly behind free tuition and Open Admissions,
as well as fairly partitioned among their constitu-

ent groups; (2) the corporate-foundation axis, in
return, receives something like a veto power over
BHE nominees, such that it can be assured of
-Boards sympathetic to capitalist. needs except
“only where Open Admissions and free tuition are
concerned. On those two issues the BHE will
continue to respect the wishes of the city’s

_ “As the institution becomes larger,:
administration becomes more for-
malized and separated as a distinct
function; as the institution be-
comes more complex, the role of
administration becomes more cen-

‘tral in integrating it; as it
becomes more related
to the once external is
world, the administration __
assumes the burdens of
these relationships. The

.managerial revolution has
been going_on also in the
university.”

—Clark Kerr, “The Uses of
the University,” 1963

working and middle-classes.

Given the potentially explosive consequences
of ano-holds-barred fight, this trade-off is doubly
advantageous to both sides. The corporate-foun-
dation axis is able to continue its pressure on

CUNY through Albany, without risking a working--

class takeover of the University. The pro-CUNY.

forces, for their part, avoid the open class warfare

many see as a result of defeat and meanwhile buy
time to build their political strength. The upshot
of it all—and this brings us back to the problem
we began with—is the odd spectacle of a multi-
versity, built and run to serve capitalism, in which
the working and middle classes have managed to
hold small but significant beach-heads.

Capitalist influence in CUNY affairs has been
greatly increased in. recent. years through the

emergence of a massive, ‘“professionalized”
bureaucracy beneath, but virtually autonomous.,

from, the BHE. Or, more accurately, two bureau-
cracies, for just under the Board the University’s
table of organization begins to divide in half—on
one side through the Council of Presidents, on the
other through the Chancellor, who is the Board’s
chief administrative officer. Each of the twenty
presidents on the COP commands a growing army
of vice-presidents, provosts, and deans on her or
his campus. The Chancellor, too, commands an
ever-expanding army of subordinates, this one
based at the Central Office on E. 80th Street in
Manhattan and consisting of the Deputy Chancel-
lor, seven Vice-Chancellors, a half-dozen Uni-
versity Deans, and various lesser: functionaries.
The Deputy and Vice-Chancellors together consti-
tute the Chancellor's “cabinet,” the top policy-
making body in the administration. Officially,
cooperation ‘between these two branches of the
University hierarchy is assured by having - the
Chancellor preside over meetings of the COP, and
by University by-laws requiring him to discuss
certain specific kinds of issues with them.
Unofficially, the COP and ‘its side of the
hierarchy are by far the weaker of the two. Since
the creation of the University in 1961, the Central

Office has absorbed more and more responsibility ;

in such vital areas as finance, collective bargain-

ing, governmental relations, construction, and °

admissions. The independence of individual cam-
puses, along with the power of the presidents,
have declined steadily to the point where the COP
has become more or less a rubber stamp for the
Shancellor. At the same time, of course, the

power of both students and faculty has also
declined sharply, since their access to the Central
Office is even more restricted than their access to
the administrations of the individual campuses.
Creation of the Faculty Senate and Student

“Senate did not materially improve the situation,

since both are merely “advisory” bodies and the
Chancellor is under no obligation to pay them any
heed unless it suits his purposes to do so.

As the power of the Central Office bureaucracy
has grown, so has it become more and more
consciously “professional” in outlook. Many top
administrators, to be sure, have been drawn from
campus faculties and administrations, and most
are entirely committed to Open Admissions, free
tuition, and CUNY’s independence from state
control. Even so, the Central Office has become
notoriously contemptuous in recent years of what
it regards. as incompetence and inefficiency on
many campuses. It has become _ increasingly
enamored of “managerial” values and attitudes

75

and styles. Cost-effectiveness, productivity, effi-
ciency, hierarchical order, organizational unity—
all of these business-like standards of operation
are rapidly supplanting the more leisurely and less _
constricting standards of traditional academic
administration. ;

Part and parcel of this transformed outlook at

_ the Central Office—and here we come to the heart

of the matter—is a growing attentiveness to the
foundation-corporation-government nexus that
secures Capitalist control of the higher education-
al system generally. Why the BHE permits it to
happen is not surprising. The trustees, after all,
have already received the capitalists’ seal of
approval in the screening panels, and their princi-
pal obligation is to see that nobody tampers with
free tuition and Open Admissions. From one day
to the next, providing. only that it adheres loyally
to both policies, the Central Office is free to build
the multiversity as it pleases. ' :



“Nobody deals with whole prob- -
lems anymore, and that is an
important preparation for a world
in which no worker ever produces
a whole product.”

77

4.What Next?

What’s ahead for CUNY? That depends on
who’s making the decisions.

If the decisions are made by the faculty,
students and their families, campus workers, civic
and community groups, and allies in the labor
movement, CUNY wilf look one way. If the
foundation planners, corporate executives, and
state bureaucrats make the decisions, CUNY will
look quite different.

At the moment they are clearly more organized,
more informed, and more sure about what they
want than we are. They have multi-million dollar
foundations steadily at work, studying, project-

ing, calculating, issuing a stream of recommenda-"

tions. They have—and they make no effort to hide
it—a relatively coherent “game plan” for the future
of American education, including the City Uni-
versity of New York. It would be foolish of us to
ignore their intentions. We have already seen that
they have-transformed colleges and universities in
the past, CUNY among them, and we have also

seen that they are responsible for so many of the ©

difficulties in our daily lives. So in this chapter we
intend to sketch out their vision of our future.
Once we are clear about their program, we can
return to a consideration of what ours might be.
Keep in mind as we go along that we are not
describing some basement cabal of conspiratorial
cigar-smokers. Our ruling elite, to be sure, en-
gages in conspiracies when it suits its interest
(the oil companies fix prices, the CIA overthrows
Allende), but normally they operate openly. The
educational masterplanners have already pub-
lished scores of books, reports, pamphlets, and
studies laying out exactly what they’re up to. Then
again they are not—for the most part—nasty Blue
Meanies. Many are liberals who seek to “improve”

and ‘modernize” the educational system. The
problem is that they will never make “improve-
ments” that might undermine capitalism (and if
they did they would no longer be paid salaries
from the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie for-
tunes). And this spells disaster for the rest of us,
for capitalism’s survival requires our continued
exploitation./

The Eightfold Path to the Knowledge Factory

A review of the establishment think-tank litera-
ture suggests an overall strategy of tightening
control over the campus in order to transform it
the way most other institutions have been trans-
formed under capitalism. Like the factory, like the
office, like the school before it, higher education
is slated for a reorganization in the interest of
greater productivity, uniformity, and “efficiency”
—a code wort for management control. That

. reorganization is thought to require the following

tactics. First, gathering ultimate, system-wide
control over higher education into the hands of
the educational elite, by imposing state authority
on the campuses. Second, assigning each cam-
pus a specific educational task within the frame-
work of the overall masterplan worked out at the
system-wide level. Third, ensuring that the right
classes and races are tracked to the appropriate
campuses; this is seen as requiring an imposition
(or increase of) tuition so that the poorest stu-
dents are forced into the lowest-level institutions.
Fourth, instituting rigorous managerial authority
over both faculty and students at the different
campuses. Fifth, eliminating what is left of
faculty ability to hinder “modernization.” Sixth,
with power now concentrated at the top, and
faculty resistance undermined, imposing “scien-


78.
tific management” and “cost-efficiency controls”
at each campus. Seventh, introducing educational
technology (Techteach) as a labor-saving device,
rather than simply a useful auxiliary to human
efforts. Eighth, restoring ideological control in
order to reverse the universities’ emergence as
centers of criticism of capitalism.

Let us examine each of these tactics in turn.

4. ASSUMPTION OF SYSTEM-WIDE CONTROL
BY THE STATE: The masterplanners would like to
impose order on what they consider to be an
anarchic ‘and wasteful university system. They
would like to remove what elements of autonomy
still characterize the American campus world.
This requires, to their way of thinking, grouping
together various campuses (units) under some
larger umbrella authority. Local units should be
combined under a- university system (as the
municipal colleges in New York City were brought
together under CUNY); these university systems

should in turn be brought under the aegis of ©

state-wide planning boards; and the state authori-
ties should in turn receive direction from federal
authorities, themselves advised by the foundation
masterplanners. The scaffolding for this massive
centralized structure is now either in the process
of construction or on the drawing boards.

At the federal level, progress has been especial-
ly. rapid: In addition to the vast influence that such
agencies as the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare and the Defense Department already
possess. by virtue of their control over so much of
the: funding of universities, the federal govern-
ment has already begun to institutionalize its
power over the higher educational system. Sec-
tion 1202 of the Education Amendments Act of
1972 thus established State Postsecondary Edu-

cation Commissions, which will undertake com- ’

prehensive planning for state education systems
and, particularly, occupational education pro-
grams. These “1202 Commissions,” as they are
called, are currently in a sort of limbo, however,
because the Nixon Administration’s 1974 cut-
backs in educational funds temporarily blocked
their development. Nevertheless, it is widely
assumed that as soon as the flow. of cash is
restored, ‘they will swiftly develop into important
instruments for concentrating federal power over
American campuses.

“Another nationwide agency, the Education
Commission of the States (for the membership

and background of this and other groups, see our
list of Masterminds.and Masterplanners at the
back), is also urging the institution of planning
networks. Their Task Force on Coordination,
Governance, and the Structure of Postsecondary
Education recently recommended that each state
establish a central agency to develop (in “consul-
tation” with the campuses) a state-wide education
plan, and that this agency be made sole disburser
of all state and federal funds so that it will have
the power to make the campuses go along with
the plan. As the Task Force blandly puts it, the
educational institutions (private as well as public)
would “be held responsible for achieving the
mutually agreed-upon program and policy objec-
tives.” The agency’s central office would con-

“stantly audit the different campuses to ensure

that “proper fiscal management [had] been
achieved.”

New York State, as we have already seen, has
been in the forefront of the movement to central-.
ize control over higher education. During his long
reign in Albany, Nelson Rockefeller assembled a
string of commissions, each packed with founda-
tion bigwigs and corporation magnificos, and
each dedicated to building pressure for greater
central authority over the state’s colleges and
universities. The recent Keppel Commission, for
example, boasted an eye-popping ‘collection of
luminaries—Wall Street’s Porter Chandler, ex-
head of the BHE; Allan M. Carter of the Carnegie
Commission; Clifton W. Phalen, Chairman of
Marine Midland Bank; a gaggle of private college
presidents; and such consultants as Earl Cheit

(see “Masterminds and Masterplanners”)—who |

concluded, not unexpectedly, that “the size,
complexity and cost of post-secondary education
require a streamlining of governance, planning
and coordination.” Specifically, they urged crea-
tion of a State Planning Council for Post-second-
ard Education, appointed by the Governor. It
would plan and coordinate all post-secondary
education, with special consideration given to
“manpower supply and demand,” and the “estab-
lishment and maintenance of an adequate data
collection system.”*

As we have also seen, the Keppel Commis-

_ sion’s recommendations are being hotly con-

tested by such local groups as the Ad Hoc
Committee and the Wagner Commission, so their
proposed Planning Council is not yet a reality. But
powerful forces are pushing in that direction.

SUNY Chancellor Ernest L. Boyer has predicted
that in the near future the state will move to “force
closer cooperation” between itself and the cam-

pus, and that when it does so, the campuses will”

“have to.begin to ‘fall in line.’”

One disturbing example of the power and

determination of those who are moving to have

the state gather educational power unto itself
concerns the recent battle for control of CUNY’s
community colleges. Though La Guardia, Manhat-’~

tan, and the rest are-under de facto BHE control,
they are in fact /egally under State authority.

CUNY, for many years now, has sought to have

legal control transfered to itself. Last year the
transfer movement picked up speed, and it looked”
for a time as if the switch might be accomplished.

SUNY did not object, and the State Senate and
Assembly voted a transfer bill almost unanimous-

ly. But the new governor, Malcolm Wilson, hesi-

tated. Why, in the face of such apparent unan-
imity? The New York Times explained it this way:
“The only remaining roadblock now appears to’be
manned by some behind-the-scenes lobbyists

who consider the move a threat to their dreams of ©

one super-university that would some day engulf
the city institutions and place all public higher
education under command of the State Univer-
sity.” Albany scuttlebutt had it that the behind-
the-scenes forces included Nelson Rockefeller

and several of the Keppel Commissioners, who of -

course want to see the State absorb CUNY, not
vice-versa. Governor Wilson vetoed the transfer
bill.

In the not too distant future, therefore, we may
expect to see the creation of some super-agency ~

am.
Op ( wy

79,

to “streamline” and “modernize” higher educa- .
tion, and we may safely bet that it will be staffed
by ‘representatives of the foundation elite. Phase
one of the masterplanners program. will then
have been completed in New York State. ;

2. INSTITUTING STRICT DIVISION OF LABOR BY.
CAMPUS: An orderly educational system, the
masterplannerts feel, requires that each campus
(like. each factory) specialize. Each should be ,
devoted to the production of a distinctive product. :
Duplication, overlap, and waste should be elim-..
inated. The demand for. sharply-defined produc-
tion quotas is a staple of the current corporate ,
literature. It is usually couched somewhat. more
gently as the call for campuses to define clearly. . :
their “goals,” or alternatively, their “missions.”
Once “goals” are established, then the univer-, . .
sities would proceed. to eliminate all programs...
that do not work toward fulfilling those “goals.” ae
The clearest and most succinct statement. of.
this ‘popular proposal comes from one of, the most ...
powerful ruling class organizations in the United.
States—the Committee for Economic Develop-...
ment (see “Masterminds and Masterplanners”)
The CED recently issued a study entitled. The..
Management and Financing of Colleges. This.
report recommends that each college and univer-
sity in the country establish a set of goals. It.does
not leave us in the dark as to what kinds of goals
are acceptable, either. It rejects broad, humanist |
goals. It derides as impossibly sloppy and ace
such traditional “missions” as producing “well:
rounded, thinking men and women able to cope
effectively with a wide range of personal and :

),
7)

ne

cs)



from the New York Post, 2/21/74:

_ Dick Freundlich is a smart planner.
He chose plastics,
he chose BCC,
and he’s on

the move!

“When I was in high school,” says Dick, “I

made a decision to go into plastics research.

It's a wide-open growing field with great pay. |
looked around at other schools, but | chose Bronx

Community College to give me the right training ~| :

free. | figured it was.the place for me and | was right!"’

Today Dick is part of the team at Western Electric's
Research Center outside of Princeton, New Jersey, working

on processing and recycling projects that affect everybody’s

future, Like other graduates of BCC’s plastics program, Dick
got a professional-level job with top pay after only a
two-year program,

If you haven't checked out plastics it’s not
too late to make a move.

Find out more. Call 367-7300 ext. 442 and talk
to the professors at BCC about a career

in Plastics. For information on admission

or transfer from other colleges, write:

Office of Admissions, Bronx Community
College, University Avenue and 181 Street,
Bronx, New York 10453,

Act now for September admission.
Tuition-free for qualified city residents.

societal problems‘and needs.”
What the CED is after, instead, are solidly
specific vocational goals. As they bluntly put it:
If a college is.to develop a distinctive mission,
its goals must be described in specific terms,
such as “preparing not less than one-fourth of
the elementary teachers needed by the state
over the next five years”; “qualifying students
to enter accredited schools of law, medicine,
and public administration”; “providing the
basic elements of a scientific and liberal educa-
tion for those intending to seek the Ph.D.”; or
“promoting the acquisition of knowledge and
training in the basic skills essential to (speci-
fied types of) technical vocations.”
Now those are the kinds of goals a business-
man can live with.

3. TRACKING AND TUITION: Suppose now that
the system has been tightened up. Different
campuses devote themselves entirely to different
“missions.” The curriculum of each is tightly
focused on transmitting only those skills that the
future worker needs to know.

The next step is to ensure that the right kind of
people are sent to the right kind of campus and
then to the right kind of jobs. The working classes
must be channeled into the manual, technical,
and clerical positions. Those in somewhat higher
income brackets must be funneled to the super-
visory positions in industry and government bu-
reaucracies—social workers, teachers, etc. Those
of still higher brackets are to be trained for the
professional slots—doctors, lawyers, and the
like. And those sons and daughters of the wealthy
who are destined for command positions in the
banks, corporations, and government will be
given the finest and broadest educations. The
masterplanners’ preoccupation with tracking, as
we -have already discovered, stems not simply

from its alleged potential for greater economic

. efficiency, but also from its role in perpetuating

and strengthening the class structure of capitalist
society.

From the masterplanners’ perspective, how-
ever, the present tracking system is woefully
inadequate and flawed. If higher education is to
remain useful to capitalism in the future, tracking
must be improved in two ways. First, it must be
made much more flexible. Second, it must be
tightened drastically, for too many people are
getting too much education these days.

Consider the need to make tracking more

81

“Chancellor Robert J. Kibbee of the

City University of New York today
announced receipt of a $300,000 ©
grant from the Federal Department
of Health, Education and Welfare to
establish the first large scale com-
puter-based admission and voca-
tional counseling program in the ©
United States. Each applicant who
comes to the center will be given a
career interest survey. Based on the
information supplied, the prospec-
tive student will use a computer
terminal to ask for a list of available
educational programs.”

—“Ken” [Brooklyn College],
| September 10, 1974

aoa

flexible. The problem now is that the campuses
are not sufficiently sensitive to the precise wishes
of big business; individual university centers
often over- or under-produce. many kinds. of
trained workers, and the masterplanners consider
this both wasteful and a source of discontent.
What must be done, as the National Commission
on the Financing of Postsecondary Education re-
cently announced after a fourteen-month, $1.5-
million study, is to subject quantity of trained
workers produced at any given center to more
finely-tuned control (see ‘‘Masterminds and
Masterplanners’’). While the Commissioners
generally praised the universities for doing an
acceptable job of meeting “the shifting demands
for trained personnel,” they fretted that the speed
and tempo of modern industry were getting ahead
of the campus. The “new work-force require-
ments” were difficult to forecast accurately using
the old methods. They concluded that. “post-
secondary institutions will have to develop a
greater capacity for expanding and contracting
their professional and occupational training pro-
grams according to continuing measures of de-
mand. ...” “Demand,” as usual, is to be deter-
mined not by the public interest, but by: the
interest of the capitalists in increasing their
profits.

The second flaw in the current tracking system :



82 | S

endangers not only efficiency, but the class
- structure itself. A basic requirement of capitalist
education, remember, is that people don’t get
“overeducated.” Too much education, under capi-
talism, is not just a wasteful use of resources. It
also starts people thinking about higher wages,
better jobs, better lives—in short, it undermines
the class, race, and sex divisions of capitalist
society. This is exactly what was bothering the
Rockefeller-appointed Keppel Commission when
it observed that “The State’s projected supply of
college-educated citizens appears to exceed the
economy’s projected demand for those who com-
plete the baccalaureate degree and for many
graduate degrees as well. The “demand,” rather,
is for “students at the two-year, technical and
occupational level.” The basic assumption here is
that higher education should be pared down to a
minimum vocational training. The needs of em-
ployers are to take precedence over the needs of
people. Colleges are to be places to train workers,
not places where citizens can go both to learn
skills and to discover and develop their potential
as human beings, to figure out how the system
really works, to become informed and able to take
part in running their own society. In fact, the
masterplanners and their minions sneer at the
educational aspirations of working people. As
President William McGill of Columbia University
recently said: “We... created the ridiculous
situation in which a college degrec-is deemed
necessary to be a policeman, or to drive a truck or
to operate a telephone switchboard.” Obviously a
’ BA is not necessary for efficient truck driving, but
a truck driver just might find one of value.

The device upon which capitalism relies to
control access to different campuses is the
pricing mechanism. Private colleges simply
charge so much that only the rich can attend.
(To be sure, those capitalists who worry about the
future of the system recruit individuals from the
working class to join them, which helps disguise
the true nature of the system while depriving
workers of some of their best potential leaders.
This policy of selective exemptions from poverty
in the form of scholarships will continue. The
American Banking Association has begun funding
a-banking program at Texas Southern; the Kel-
logg Foundation has awarded $250,000 to North
Carolina A.&T. for a business education pro-
gram; the Ford Foundation has bestowed $1
million on the Atlanta University Center for a

graduate school of business. Such corporate
largesse to minority groups, however, is quite
limited. In 1971-2, public and private black col-
leges got about 1% of the corporate dollar for
higher education, and less than 1% of the
foundation dollar. Most blacks are to be chan-
neled down, not up.)

The upper reaches of the system are in good
working order; it is the bottom that is not. Too
many centers properly reserved for the middle

orders are packed with the lower orders. All those .

cops and truck drivers are getting overeducated.
Why? Because tuitions are not high enough to
keep them out. And in some outrageous instances
—most notably the City University of New York—
no.tuition is charged at all!

There are other reasons that free or low tuition
dismays the masterplanners. For one thing, the
ruling class dislikes anything that is free as a
general principle. It gives people bad ideas. It
undermines discipline. Says the Carnegie Com-
mission with a shudder: “Some believe that

“We believe that tuition charges at
many colleges and universities are
unjustifiably low. We recommend

an increase in tuitions and fees, as
needed, until they approximate 50
per cent of instructional costs...
within the next five years.”

—CED, 1973

[higher education] should be a ‘free’ service, as it
is in primary and secondary schools.” The anti-
dote to this dangerous frame of mind, the

Commission adds, is “more reliance on a market

model for higher education and less on.an intensi-
fication of the public utility model.” /

On top of everything else, American capitalism
is in crisis again. Confronted with vigorous
foreign competition, a crumbling international
monetary system, and defeat in imperialist adven-
tures, the corporations must gouge the workers
further to maintain profits. This will be done not
simply by taxation, price hikes, and inflation, but
also by having the public bear more and more of
the cost of its own education (the public already
pays over 60% of all college costs).

For all these reasons, then, a major campaign is
on to smash free tuition, and CUNY is a major
target. The Committee for Economic Development
tells us “that tuition charges at many colleges and
universities are unjustifiably low. We recommend
an increase in tuitions and fees, as needed, until
they approximate 50 percent of instructional
costs . . . within.the next five years.” Rockefeller
and Keppel agree: “Tuition charges should be
uniform in public institutions throughout the
State, including the City University of New York.”
[emphasis added]

Raising tuition is part one of the masterplan-
ners’ plan to strengthen tracking. Part two is to
institute a system of loans (and.in some cases
grants) to needy students, and “needy” means
only the most poverty-struck. But in every one of
the masterplanners’ proposals, financial aid is to
be made available only for the first two years of
higher education. This effectively blocks almost
all the working class from getting any but the
barest-boned occupational training. Here is Car-
negie’s statement of the plan: ‘Public institutions
—especially the community colleges—should
maintain a relatively low-tuition policy for the first
two years of higher education. Such tuition
should be sufficiently low that no student, after
receipt of whatever federal and state support he or
she may be eligible for, is barred from access to
some public institution by virtue of inadequate
finances.” [emphasis added]

What does this mean? First, access to college
would be effectively barred for the second two
years. Second, since poorer students (indeed,
most students) would be utterly dependent on the
state—even for the first two years—they would be

83

completely frozen out if in any given year money
was not available. Who would decide whether or
not money would be available? The State and its
masterplanner advisers. We do not have to stretch
our imaginations overly to understand that this is
where “flexibility” would be attained. If the state
wanted to cut back on student enrollments, they

‘| appreciate and know of the tradi-
tion of free tuition. However, | don’t
believe any policy should be ,
maintained because it is a tradition.
There is tuition at SUNY and per-.
haps it would be a sound policy.
that tuition based on an ability to
pay should be re-instated [sic!] at
the city colleges.” a
—BHE member Rita Hauser, 1974

would come up with a “budget crisis.” Financial
aid,.and thus. access to college, could easily be
pegged to shifting priorities of business, ‘not
social needs. And there would be. no effective
appeal. In 1972, for instance, just after he had
again proposed instituting tuition at CUNY, Nel+

son Rockefeller was asked at a news ‘conference
whether or not he would guarantee sufficient
scholar incentive money to needy CUNY students
to offset his proposed tuition. He would certainly
try, he said. One newsperson then pointed out -
that the state had eliminated 5000 scholarships
that very year, and asked Rockefeller to account
for that. “Financial reasons,” the millionaire said
curtly.

The masterplanners, we might point out, are

not unanimous on ‘the advisability of instituting

and/or hiking tuition. Some are worried that the
working class might erupt over the issue. One
economist employed by the American Council on
Education points out that the new demands for
tuition represent a shift in the rules of the game’at
precisely the time that low-income students have
begun entering the system. “It would seem: that
the current student generation, particularly the
lower-income students; could be justifiably out-
raged,” she says. Representative James G:
O’Hara, chairman of the House Subcommittee on
Higher Education, also worries about the, new
push for tuition. He writes of the enormous


84

burden such.a move would place on the shoulders
of what he calls “the middle class”: “From the
point of view of the Detroit auto worker who is
making over $12,000 a year now and has to
moonlight to make ends meet—from the point of

view of the school teacher or the cop. or the ,

“accountant or the salesman who has seen meat
priced out of his life-style it doesn’t make sense
blithely to suggest that he ought to be forced to
pay more of the money he doesn’t have to send his
kidsto college... .”

One of’ the most alarmed is Fred Hechinger,
Education Editor of the New York Times. In a
remarkable article entitled “Class War over Tui-
tion’ he assails the conventional assumption that
“the majority of families are affluent and that,
except for the aberration of poverty, ours is
essentially a classless nation composed, in the
main, of one all-inclusive middle class.” Not so,
says Hechinger. The so-called middle-class is
actually poised on the brink of poverty. Just
consider the family incomes of college-age
youth: 23% are in poverty (making under $6000 a
year), 58% make between $6000 and $15,000, and
only 20% make $15,000 or more. That 58%,
Hechinger rightly warns, is extremely vulnerable
financially. “A minor financial disaster can push
those on the plus side of the line back into
poverty,” he says, and a tuition hike might be just
the disaster that would do it. :

As yet, however, the Cassandras are not being
heeded by majority capitalist opinion. The bene-
fits that hiking tuition will bring are thought to
outweigh the potential disadvantages.

4. IMPOSITION OF HIERARCHY: The Masterplan-
ners are not simply concerned to. reshape the
higher education system, they want each unit
redone.

The prelude to this part of their program is the
gathering of all authority—actual as well as
legal—in the hands of those at the top. Currently,
power in academia is excessively diffused, or, as
the Committee for Economic Development puts it,
there is “an unusual dependence on voluntary
group effort and broad participation in decision

making.” This unfortunate state of affairs, they
assure us, can be rectified: “Experience has
already shown that many principles of manage-
ment employed in other fields can be adapted
successfully to institutions of higher learning.”

“Faculty remain committed to a tra-
‘ditional ideal of the university as an

integrated community, at the same
time giving constant evidence that
they fail to grasp its real operation-
al nature and managerial compli-
cations.”

—E.D. Duryea, Professor of Higher
Education at SUNY Buffalo, 1974

“Principles of management” means top-down
control. The Trustees or Boards simply must take
charge, the CED insists. “They must take the
ultimate and decisive actions or be ready to
endorse or reject those actions when taken by
others.” Sharing power with the Trustees, but
subordinated to them, should be a strong presi-
dent. This top management should do the plan-
ning both of goals and means.

To help administrators in bringing sound busi-
ness practices to the campus, the CED advises
that they “engage the advisory services of quali-
fied management and financial consultants.”

A whole flock of such consultants is ready to
help, for a fee. In the last few years a mini-indus-
try has sprung up, nurtured by the corporate
foundations and the government. A typical outfit
is the National Center for Higher Education
Management Systems. Currently under a $4.9
million contract from HEW’s National Institute of
Education, it has also received $621,000 from
private foundations over the past few years. Now
developing “computerized systems for measur-
ing, planning, and controlling colleges and uni-
versities,” it is also fervently spreading the man-
agerial gospel. Their director, Ben Lawrence, says
that “those of us who are not up on modern trends
in management must get with it,” and his group
helps by conducting seminars of the new tech-
niques which in the past three years have been

; attended by over 18,000 academic administrators.

These sharks are already swimming in our
waters. In April, 1974, an outfit called the Aca-
demy for Educational Development produced A

Guide to Improving Management at John Jay
College of Criminal Justice; it cost fifty thousand
dollars. (By way of background: the President of
AED is a former Executive Director ofthe Ford
Foundation Education Program, and its Vice-Pres-
ident was. an Associate in the same program. Its
Board of Directors include such heavyweights. as
the Chairman of the Board of Atlantic-Richfield
Company, a Vice President of Standard Oil of
California, and the Better Business Bureau’s
President. One of its “consultants” formerly
served the National Center for Higher Education
Management Systems just. referred to; such
interlocking directorates are numerous.)

The AED scolds John Jay because “lines of
authority are not clear, and certain functions,
such as planning, are not being conducted ade-
quately.” The President is too accessible: “his
closeness to many administrators and faculty has
encouraged some persons to come to him directly
for resolution of issues instead of to their. im-

mediate supervisors.” The administration has :

failed to request written “work plans” from. their
inferiors, and such items are “vital to the process
of orderly and systematic planning.”

AED’s experts propose ‘scrapping the existing
administration altogether. In the new order of
things the President would take control. He
would, with his assistants (almost no role is
envisioned for the faculty or students), draw upa
five-year plan setting academic, administrative
and budgetary priorities. He would, of course,
need help here, and AED proposes that “the
President should announce that the establish-
ment of a management information system isa
major College priority” and then seek funds for a
“software package” (here AED strongly recom-
mends HEPS, already in use at Brooklyn and
coming soon to LaGuardia and Hunter). The
President should then assign authority for seeing
that everyone toes the line to a variety of sub-
ordinates, such as a Director of Internal Audit

and a Director of the Computer Center. Academic '

affairs would be managed by a Vice President of
Academic Affairs who would, together with the
Director of Institutional Research, keep tabs on
“the effectiveness of academic programs and
policies.” What AED wants, in sum, is for John
Jay to “get in tune with the management philoso-
phy and systems adopted by the central adminis-
tration.”

Indeed 80th Street is far ahead of the colleges,

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86

and has been trying for years to institute “better
management.” Way back in 1969, then-Chancellor
Bowker attacked the outmoded practice of elect-
ing department heads and P&B committees:
Faculty contro! of those key spots was, he said,
“the force against the recruitment of outstanding
figures and for the entrenchment of mediocrity.”

NE ————————
“Many of our faculty come from
N.Y.U. and Columbia, and they are

- not the best students from these

_ institutions. The present system is
not leading to outstanding recruit-
ment and selection of faculty.”

—Chancellor Bowker, 1969

2

He proposed that faculty control be ended: “I find
it difficult to see how in this day and age a
president can be held responsible for his chairmen
without appointing them.” The BHE, then chaired
_by the ubiquitous Francis Keppel, found Bowker’s
logic persuasive and in 1971 issued a Statement of
Organizational Policy. In the future, said the
Trustees, there must be “clear presidential au-
thority to appoint a department chairman, at any
time when the best interests of the college
necessitate such action. Such authority neces-
sarily includes the power of removal where neces-
sary.” Under this provision Chairmen have indeed
been appointed and removed, even. at inefficient
John Jay. Only determined faculty resistance
prevented the Board from going all the way and
appointing all Chairmen.

In fact, many of the improvements that those
imbued with the managerial mentality have pro-
posed have encountered faculty resistance. This
accounts for the next component of the master-

- planner’s game plan: a drive to end the Faculty’s
current capacity to impede “progress.”

5. UNDERCUT FACULTY POWER: The attack on
the Faculty is multi-faceted. Many masterplanners
take a cultural or psychological approach. As they
have done for over a century, they cloak them-
selves in the garb of “modernity” and label
themselves “educational reformers.” They run
down the faculties as hidebound and stodgy con-
servatives, blind to the wonders of the computer

~ and production chart. Things old are bad, things

new are good.

Tenure—in particular—is bad. “! cannot for the
life of me see how, especially in these times, an
institution can hope to be good and to remain
good unless it protects itself against dominance
by a heavily tenured and aging faculty body,” one
college president said recently. (Aside from its
anti-age stance—the old in America are never
considered wise—this reasoning ignores the con-
stant flow of “young blood” afforded by their own
revolving-door, cheap-labor, adjunct policy.)

Itis hard in America to-defend past practice, as ~ |

it is: hard to defend and preserve beautiful old
buildings. (We are a nation of “revolutionary new
washday miracles” and plastic monumental archi-
tecture, chiefly because a manipulated passion
for novelty plus planned obsolescence equals
continued corporate profits.) Thus, in the con-
frontation, the professoriate is at a psychological
disadvantage when the masterplanners assault
tenure.

Tenure is not an unquestionable good. It often
decreases social responsibility. It enshrines the
rights of the individual faculty member at the
expense of students and colleagues. But the
capitalists are hardly concerned with these mat-
ters. Their current assault on tenure is an assault
on the faculty’s job security and its potential for
critical opposition to the masterplanners’ goals.

The Committee for Economic Development, for |

example, wants a tenure quota of 50%, with
tenure being given only to those who “clearly

support. the accepted objectives and long-range |
goals of the institution.” For many “modernizers,” |

the ideal is a situation in which a small number of
tenured folk, carefully chosen, help police their

non-tenured colleagues who would serve at the |
‘pleasure of management. But some would press |
further and institute “tenure review,” i.e., elimi- ©
nate tenure altogether. With tenure then out of the |
way, and most faculty on annual or short-term —
contracts, there would be nothing in the way of '

“modernization.” .

Except perhaps unions. Unionization, as al- |
ways, troubles the capitalists. Gloomily the CED ©
notes that “professional pride is not keeping |
faculty members from joining unions.” But man-
agement has shown it can live with unions, and |

even find them useful, if they are the proper kind. |
_If, that is, the unions are run, from the top, by ‘
management’s |

bureaucrats who “understand”

87

“We're pleased to announce these improvements. To r , iminatine
i iti . . pay for them, we're el
full-time positions and changing the way part-time salary is computed.” ctiminating 4,000

side. of things, who will be “responsible” and
agree to enervating ‘“‘no-strike clauses,” and who
will curb “excessive” militancy in the ranks. A
good union is one that stays within acceptable
bounds, and the capitalists are currently urging
that faculty unions accept such parameters. The
Academy for Educational Development’s Vice
President believes that. a proper collective bar-
gaining agent does not concern itself with ‘“‘ques-
tions of basic educational policy, such as educa-
tional objectives, access to higher education,
curriculum, instructional procedures, degree re-
quirements, and evaluation of student perform-

“The rapidity of the pace [of faculty

unionization] strongly suggests
that the time for reaction to the
phenomenon is limited.”

—Education Commission
of the States, 1974

ance.” A proper union limits itself to bread and
butter issues.

Besides seeking to curtail tenure and to limit
the scope of union activity, the masterplanners
are actively experimenting with a variety of anti-
faculty gimmicks. For instance, ‘the Group for
Human. Development in Higher Education—a
creature of the Carnegie Corporation, the Lilly
Endowment, and the Danforth Foundation—has
called for an insurance system that would make
it easier for professors “to leave their profession ,
at mid-career,” i.e., to be fired or eased out. The
premiums for this insurance would be paid for by
the future victims themselves. The GHD calcu-
lates that if they can get 300,000 faculty to go
along with this scheme, each would only have to
pay $810.a year to guard against his own. future
unemployment. Not only was this shameless
hocus-pocus concocted by the foundations and
their agents, but it is now being vigorously
marketed by their media hirelings as well—
Change magazine, for example, which has given
special attention to the GHD proposals, is sup-
ported by both the Ford Foundation and the


88

Exxon Education Foundation.

Once the power of the Faculty is sufficiently
curbed, the masterplanners can complete their
remodeling of the. university. The final three steps
would consist of an efficiency movement com-
parable to that which swept the public schools
early in the century, the mass introduction: of
teaching machines to replace faculty, and the res-
toration of capitalist ideological control over the
campus, a control badly weakened in the sixties.

6. MAXIMIZE EFFICIENCY AND COST EFFEC-
TIVENESS: ‘Scientific management,” which
helps capitalists raise profits through more effi-
cient exploitation, was first applied to education

(Ah, Efficiency)

—with disastrous consequences—more than. a
half-century ago. Now the time-motion tune is
going to be heard in higher education.

Some steps have already been taken, but it
appears there are problems. “Scientific manage-
ment” works with products and procedures that
can be counted, charted, weighed, graphed, and
valued in dollars and cents. Yet how does one put

a value on an exciting seminar or measure the j
' productivity of an inspiring teacher? The CED ]
allows as how “much that pertains to basic edu-

cational achievement cannot be represented in

quantitative terms.” But this appears to be only a i
temporary concession. Other masterplanners have |

already begun an all-out drive to reduce education
to numbers, for quantification of educational

“output” is a prerequisite to cost-effectiveness |

studies.
The biggest effort to date was the fourteen-

month study by the National Commission on the
Financing of Postsecondary Education. (See
“Masterminds and Masterplanners.”) They, too,

were stymied. As their staff noted, although it |
would be ideal to attain “completely quantified /
objectives,” there are two great obstacles. First |

“Eor considerable periods, the four oboe players have nothing to do. Recommenda-
tion: Their number should be reduced and the work spread evenly over the whole of
the concert, thus eliminating peaks of activity. All the violins were playing identical

notes. This seems unnecessary duplication. |
section should be drastically cut. If a large volume of sound is required,

Recommendation: The staff of this
it could be

obtained by means of electronic amplifier apparatus. There seems to be too much
repetition of some musical passages. Scores should be drastically pruned. No useful
purpose is served by repeating on the horns a passage which has already been played
by the strings. Recommendation: It is estimated that if all redundant passages were
eliminated, the whole concert time of two hours could be reduced to 20 minutes and

there would be no need for an intermission. The conductor isn’t too happy with these
recommendations and expresses the opinion that there might be some falling off in
attendance. In that unlikely event, it should be possible to close sections of the

‘auditorium entirely with a consequential saving of overhead expense, lighting,
salaries for ushers, etc.” :

(From a satirical “management consultant study” on the “inefficiency” ofa symphony orchestra.
Cited in response to demands by the Governor of Wisconsin for higher productivity in the state

university.)

“the question of developing an adequate integra-
tive theory remains particularly vexing.” Second,
the data is insufficient and far from uniform. Not
to be deterred, the Commission called for a
massive drive to develop “national uniform stand-
ard procedures” and to extend measurement to
more.and more objectives.

Data collection is now underway. Since 1969,
the Education Commission of the States has been
receiving six million dollars a year from the
Federal Office of Education for this purpose.
Most campuses are converting to one or another
standard information gathering system prepared
by management consultants. One such operation,

, called Oasis (for On-Line Administrative Informa-

tion System), is described by its sellers as a
“management information system . . . to provide
department chairmen, program directors, and top
level administrators with current data compiled,
compared, and analyzed according to their indivi-
dual needs.” It includes, they add, ‘a security
system to prevent one department from calling up
data it is not supposed to see.”

Still, the masterplanners have not yet suc-
ceeded in defining “output.” Though they may
soon develop some standard state or nation-wide
tests (similar to the Regents Exams peddled by
New York State) which all college graduates will
have to take, they have not yet got that far.

For the moment, they have decided pretty much
to ignore matters of quality and go directly to
solid facts they can measure. The CED suggests
concentratiny for the moment on “(1) degrees
awarded and the cost per degree, (2) enrollment
and the cosi per student enrolled, (3) student
credit hours and the cost of each credit hour, and
(4) student-faculty ratios.” The NCFPSE staff
adds such refinements as measuring “square
footage per faculty member.”

Once quality is defined as the number of
students processed—i.e., given degrees—then
the masterplanners will be on familiar territory
and can justify a wide variety of strategies to cut
costs or improve efficiency: packing more stu-
dents into classes, cutting wages, increasing
teaching loads, paring down staff, or replacing
faculty with teaching machines.

dents into classes. The Academy for Educational
Development recently issued a pamphlet frankly
entitled Higher Education with Fewer Teachers,
research for which was paid for by the Exxon

Consider the first option, packing more stu- ~

89

“Class size has to be tied to in-

come, and if we choose to louse it
up by considering the influence of

a teacher ona student, then we'll
go bankrupt.” on .
—Dr. Phelps Trix, Vice President
for Academic Affairs at Detroit
Institute of Technology, 1974

Education Foundation. In it, the AED gleefully
reports interviews with administrators who had
recently boosted class sizes, only to discover that
the conventional academic wisdom—‘“small
classes are preferable to large ones’—is so much
nonsense. “The number of students sitting before
a faculty member in a classroom has little to do
directly with the quality of the educational results
achieved,” the report concludes with evident
satisfaction. Now that another obstacle to scienti-
fic management has been removed, moreover, the
AED anticipated all sorts of innovations. They:
especially liked the idea of “establishing large
lecture classes with from 200 to over 1000” in such
areas as History, Philosophy, Biology, and
Speech. They also advised “hiring only faculty
willing to teach relatively large classes,” but. if
that is not feasible, then “increasing salaries only
when faculty agree to larger classes.” :

And lots of people are listening. At the January
1974 annual meeting of the Association of Ameri-
can Coleges, Dr. Phelps Trix, Vice President for
Academic Affairs at the Detroit Institute of Tech-
nology, asserted: “Class size has to be tied to
income, and if we choose to louse it up by
considering the influence of a teacher on a
student, then we’ll go bankrupt.” A more subtle
version of the same reasoning comes from the
Committee for Economic Deviopment. “In higher
education,” they suggest, “the principal source of
possible savings is in instruction. Theoretically at
least, increased faculty teaching loads, in the
form of larger class-size averages, would result in
significant reductions in the cost of instruction.
This: is not to argue for more large lecture
courses,” they add suavely, “but rather for fewer
unnecessarily small classes.”

Now consider a second option—wage cuts.
One management consulting firm, Robert H.
Hayes and Associates, recently peddled this
advice to administrators: “Must. colleges pay
competitive salary rates? We think not. First


90

employees [faculty] are not that motivated by
money. Second, they do not expect it. And, third,

ona cost-effectiveness basis, colleges will get
very little for their money by increasing salaries to
reflect competitive salary conditions.” Hayes and
Associates counsel each institution to develop an
“agressive manpower-planning program.” Con-
sultants should be hired to bring “specialized
skills” to bear on the “staff-reduction problem.”
But as Robert Nielsen (Director of the AFT
Colleges and Universities Department) observes,
these consultants are simply professional hatchet-
men: their job is to provide “high-sounding
excuses for university managers to make budget
reductions.”

Yet another masterplanner option, increasing
faculty workloads, has already been proposed for
CUNY in-a 1973 report of the Citizens Budget
Commission, candidly entitled Faculty Workload
at the City University: The Case for an Increase.
(By way of background, note that although the
CBC calls itself “a non-partisan civic research
organization supported by public contributions,”
its membership is hardly your run-of-the-mill
“public.” Look the Board of Directors and you
find—not lathe operators, secretaries, college
teachers, or firemen—but a swarm of big bankers:
the honorary Chairman is President of the Bowery
Savings Bank, the actual Chairman comes from
Chemical Bank, and other trustees represent
Morgan Guaranty Trust, Dry Dock Savings, Green-
wich Savings, New York Bank for Savings, Irving
Trust, and Carver Federal Savings and Loan. For
the sake of diversity, one presumes, they have
also accepted officials of General Motors and the
New York Chamber of Commerce.)

The Banker's message to CUNY is that it is

possible “to achieve major savings by increasing .

. faculty contact hours with students.” Currently,
the CBC calculates, with their various duties
faculty work between 26 and 49 hours. For most
the upper figure would seem far too modest. But,
say the Bankers, this is not enough. They propose
a three-hour contact load increase, which would
permit a reduction of 15-20% in full-time faculty
lines. This is a speedup: fewer faculty teach
longer hours.

The Bankers, by the way, approve of the adjunct
policy and want it extended. They even go one
better and propose hiring high school teachers

_ (working high school hours at high school pay) to
handle all remediation work. Neither adjuncts nor

high school teachers, the CBC notes, are likely to
be as effective as full-time professors, but “the
cost savings . . . would be substantial.”

“Remedial education is currently
handled by full university faculty,

of all ranks. Thus, many full profes- |

sors of English teach spelling,
grammar, and composition while
full professors of Mathematics
teach elementary algebra. Were
high school teachers, working high
school hours, employed, the cost
of remedial education at City Col-
lege could drop by about $900,000.
Over the City University system as a
whole, the cost savings would
reach about $15 million.”

—CBC, Inc., “Faculty Workload

at the City University: The
Case for an Increase,” 1973

Another classic of this genre is the AED’s
infamous 319 Ways Colleges and Universities are
Meeting the Financial Pinch. This report was sent
to presidents, financial vice-presidents, and busi-

ness managers of most universities in the country ©

—at whose expense we are not sure—and its 319
nostrums include the following:

e Requiring faculty to be available on campus
for a full 7 or 8 hour day when not in the
classroom;

e Cutting back on the number and extent of

sabbaticals given to the faculty;

e Limiting attendance of faculty and staff at |

conferences away from campus;

e Lengthening the working day without provid- j

ing additional compensation;

e Employing tore part-time evening faculty —

.who are not entitled to fringe benefits.
And so it goes.

7. TECHTEACH: The application of technology to |
education is an idea whose time has unquestion-

ably come. It provides so many answers to so

many questions that one wonders why the capital- i

ists, who pioneered in replacing human beings
with machines, have waited so long to introduce
mechanization into higher education. Consider
the advantages. It saves on labor costs. It breaks
up human interaction between faculty and stu-
dents. It splits student from student by placing
each before a machine. It teaches those very
students, if nothing else, how to work and get
accustomed to the machines they will probably be
using in their jobs when they graduate. It affords
close political control over the content of instruc-
tion. It allows for standardized teaching and
grading. And, last but by no means least, it
affords a stupendous market for such giant
corporations as IBM. Yes, indeed, we are about to
become the recipients. of a “revolution” in
teaching.

91.

Consider these straws in the wind now, blowing

through the nation’s colleges'and universities:

e Alexander M. Mood, director of the Public
Policy Planning Organization of the Univer-
sity of California-Irvine, gets $50,000 from
Carnegie and $130,000 from Ford to write The
Future of Higher Education. One of his
proposals is for a national “Video University”
in which “machines might carry out higher
education in the future without benefit of
faculty or campuses.” The student might sit
at home and play rented cassettes on his or
her TV set, and never, ever have to talk with
anyone else, never discuss, debate, interact
with other human beings at all.

e The University of Nebraska gets more than
$880,000 in grants from the U.S. Office of
Education and the National Center for Educa-
tional Technology, precisely to develop
something like Mood’s Video University.

e At a recent conference on “Cable Television
and the University” (sponsored by the Cable
Television Information Center, the Education-
al Testing Service, and the Interuniversity
Communications Council ((EDUCOM)), Amos
B. Hostetter, chairman of Continental Cable-
vison tells the assembled. educators that
cable TV “is a super technology in search of a
market.”

e Charles Monroe, former president of a Chi-
cago community college, announces: that
“community college students tend to be less

intelligent and self-motivated than senior- .

college students. Therefore, they need more
guidance and control. If students are properly
motivated, the programmed learning ap-
proach seems to provide an ideal amount of
specific direction.”

‘e The Academy for Educational Development,
in its masterpiece, Higher Education with
Fewer Teachers, proposes “closed circuit
educational television for courses enrolling
as many as 2,000-3,000 students.”

e The Carnegie Commission observes: “There
is new technology available, the most impor-
tant for higher education in 500 years.”

The same wind is whistling down the corridors
of power at CUNY, too. Chancellor Kibbee came
out strongly for techteach several years ago,
commenting that it was “one of the few practical


ways a university can keep pace with the prolifera-
tion of knowledge without letting instructional
cost get out of hand.” [emphasis added]

Techteach is in fact already a reality at CUNY.
Consider, for example, CUMBIN (City University
Mutual Benefit Instructional Network). Here lec-
turers sit before a camera at the Graduate Center
and are beamed simultaneously to several or more
local campuses. In the very descriptive words of
two CUMBIN architects: “A student registered for
a course to be broadcast from a remote campus
appears.at the scheduled hour in a receiving
classroom on his own campus. At the designated
time the remote professor appears on the screen
and the lecture begins. . . . The cameras act as
the eyes of the remote student, as if eavesdrop-
ping on the lesson.” Terrific. ~

(© LIKE To

SPOON FEED’
OUR

AUDIENCE

The University plans to expand the CUMBIN
system to all the campuses, but it is expanding
techteach in other areas, too. In KBCC’s College
Learning Laboratory, students sit in row upon row
of individual carrels and study taped lessons. At
Hostos, the college intends to center instruction
around a “Systems Learning Approach,” using
computer-assisted instruction and closed-circuit
TV. At Brooklyn, the university has established
the Computer-Assisted Instruction Research Cen-
ter to do research on furthering computer tech-
nology. At John Jay, television sets linked to a
central computer have been placed in almost every
classroom (and bolted to the floor), so that the
faculty now teach with their potential replace-
ments staring unblinkingly over their shoulders.

CUNY’s basic committment to techteach: is
clear. The question is, what does it mean? There
is, after all, nothing wrong with a judicious
application of technology to teaching. As an aid
to the faculty, computers and tapes and closed-

circuit TV can all be exciting; interesting, and well
worth welcoming. Most of the ardent proponents
of techteach, however, stress the machine asa
replacement for faculty. Consider, for example,
some of the discussion that took place at a CUNY
Conference held in May, 1972, on the theme of
“Innovations in Educational Technology.”

One enthusiast, John Haney, Director of the’
Center for Instructional Development at Queens,
told conference members he drew inspiration
from B.F. Skinner. That paragon of the behavior-
ist, Haney said, was much misunderstood. In
truth all Skinner wanted was “to break the
classroom lockstep, and change the teacher-
centered to the student-centered classroom. He
thought pupils entirely too passive and rein-
forcing techniques much too harsh and inhuman.”
So because faculty-student interaction is so
“inhuman,” faculty should be replaced by ma-
chines. An example of the new order that Haney
described was Psychology | at Queens. In Psych |,
technology handles six hundred students, and is
assisted by one full-time faculty, one assistant,
and one undergraduate tutor. One questioner
wanted to know what TV teaching did to interac-
tion with students. Haney blithely responded: “I
am not one who says we must have interaction.”

John Barlow of KBCC also praised. Skinner, the
invisible Godfather of the techteach movement.
“Skinner's style and emphasis,” Barlow admitted,
“make his method seem to some mechanistic,
even anti-humanist. In my opinion such an inter-
pretation is entirely incorrect.” Computer teach-
ing, he declared pugnaciously, is applicable to
“any subject matter, once one decides, ‘What is it
| really want to teach? How can | measure it?’”

Mary Dolciani, Chairman.of Math at Hunter and
University Dean for Academic Development, noted
another advantage of teaching-machines over
faculty: “In a traditional classroom, there is no
guarantee that the instructor will go through all
the topics. In the learning center, the student has
to learn everything that is there.” A measurable
and uniform output! Quantification at last!

Techteachers argue that, with machines, stu-
dents may set their own pace, get immediate
feedback, have a correct response reinforced, and
be freed from faculty tyranny. This sounds good
in theory and has some measure of truth in
practice. But “student-centered learning” in fact
usually isolates the. student, breaks up any
serious social interaction (a prime capitalist item,

remember, on the “silent curriculum”), and as
Dolciani emphasized, gives the student no one to
blame if he or she flunks out: “The learning center
has placed the responsibility where it should be,
on the student, and many of them are finding that
they cannot meet this responsibility.”

In fact, students are finding the “student-
centered ‘learning process” an enormous drag.
Dolciani was asked at the Conference how Hunter
students liked a new program in which they
“purchased” study units at the beginning of the
semester and then dealt directly with the ma-
chines thereafter. She replied that some liked it
since they could go at their own pace, that some
liked it since they didn’t have to keep up with the
instructor, but most inexplicably—to her way of
thinking—“‘insist[ed] on having a lecturer teach
them.” Indeed, she adds, students “complained
very bitterly in Calculus | in the fall that they
wanted a lecturer, so this semester we gave them
lectures in addition to the materials available in
the learning center.” In the future, she said, there
would be no more such concessions: students
would be barred from “traditional” learning, un-
less they took courses at night. Why the exemp-
tion for night people, she was asked? Because,
she replied, “we tried to introduce the learning
center to the evening in the fall of 1970, but it met
such great opposition and the students protested
so much against it that we limited it.” :

Hunter faculty, too, were far from delighted.
Teachers in the: labs, Dolciani admitted, “go
stir-crazy.” “Periodically a teacher announces that
she is going to give a lecture . . . and sometimes |
have the feeling she is going to give that. lecture
even if the lecture hall is empty. She has got to
give a lecture!” Dolciani, too, missed “the ability
to play it by ear, to look at the faces of the
students and see what is ‘going over.’” But she
and most techteach zealots will steel themselves
to this loss of contact, even when they find
themselves displaced: “Am 1 supposed to say,
‘No. | won’t do this, it doesn’t meet my needs asa
human being?’ That would be most unfair to the
students.” ;

The militant ‘vanguard of CUNY’s techteach
movement is also prepared, it seems, to ride
roughshod over those faculty who don’t buy their
Skinnerian claptrap. Thus John Haney proposed
to the Conference that each course in the instruc-
tional program should be taught both by the
“conventional method” and by machine (his idea

93

“In higher education, the principle.
source of possible savings lies in
instruction.”

—CED, 1973

of “individualized instruction”). The point, he
said, is that this “makes each department develop |
individualized instruction for the course it already
offers.” Asked one astonished listener:

Q. Did you realize that key word? You said
“make” the departments.

A. That was the key word.

Q. “Encourage” the departments [the question-

er suggested].

No, said Haney, there must be “administrative
innovation” if educational innovation is to work.
This apocalptic mood. was shared by Joseph
Buzio. of Kingsborough, who proclaimed: “To
desire failure for innovative approaches and tech-
nological advances cannot prevent their success.
After all, historically, obstructionists, and this
may include administrators and educators, have
been swept away.”

The Buzios may well be the wave of the
future—they’ve certainly got powerful enough
support—and if they have their way, CUNY will be
a very different sort of institution indeed. Exactly
how, no one can predict. But the following
scenario of a. Brave New University isn’t at all
farfetched:

At the Graduate Center, the techteachers will
assemble a small but “eminent” (politically safe)
staff who will deliver lectures, via CUMBIN, to all
twenty campuses simultaneously. At the terminal


94

points, hundreds of students will gather to view
the broadcasts. One “top-flight” historian at the
Center will thus replace at least twenty full-time
historians now employed at the individual col-
leges. Old-style classes would not be eliminated
entirely, however. A flexible teaching force con-
sisting of rotating teams of adjuncts would
supervise recitation sections of 100-200 students
at the CUMBIN terminal points. This would be
cheaper, allow the administrators to effectively
monitor course content, and be a splendid addi-
tion to the “silent curriculum” by teaching passivi-
ty and ending social interaction. Far fetched? The
techteachers have already laid the basis. for an
institution exactly like this.

8. RESTORING IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL: Capi-
talists have become alarmed—and with good
reason—at the political state of the nation’s
campuses. Repeated student upheavals of the
sixties frightened them badly, not simply because
of the disorder, but because of the disaffection
from. capitalism that fueled them. Capitalists are
dismayed, too, by the critical spirit of the profes-
soriate, ranging from consumerism and ecologi-
cal. reform movements to full-scale Marxist cri-
tiques of. the capitalist order. College campuses
~ are also crawling with.subversives again, and
young, graduates headed for the professions, the
government, the corporations, and the media are
taking.that subversive spirit with them.

So one-of the highest-priority items in the
overall capitalist game plan is to curb the cam-
puses. The difficulty here is that there is no

general agreement on how best to proceed. Within
the last. few years, in fact, a serious factional
quarrel has erupted within the ruling class iself on
exactly this issue. ;
On one side, representing the “traditional” -
approach, are the corporate liberals—the spokes-
men from the great foundations, giant corpora-
tions, and government agencies that have been
pretty much running the show for the last twenty-

five years. An early indication of both their

concern and their proposed solutions came at a
massive conclave held at the New York Hilton in
early November 1969 under the aegis of the
Academy of Political Science and the Council for
Financial Aid to Education. (The latter group,
recall, is the super-foundation created in the
fifties; it is now funded by over two hundred
corporations and headed by Roger Blough, former
board chairman and chief executive officer of U.S.
Steel.) In attendance were top scholars, important
college presidents, foundation executives, and a
slew of corporate bigwigs. These people knew one
another well, they had worked together success-
fully in the past, and they hoped to work together
successfully in the future. :
All of the participants knew why they were
there. The very title of the conference was “The
Corporation and the Campus”; the difficulty was
that that connection was'now under severe
strains. Edgar F. Kaiser, chairman of the board of
Kaiser Industries, outlined the problem. We all
know, he began, that the American system “not
only works, it excells” at delivering opportunity,
freedom, and goods. Even so, “some discourag-
ing statistics remain and are seized upon by
those who would shatter the system with social
and economic revolution.” Some of the discourag-
ing statistics were cited by Kaiser. For example:
“26 million Americans . . . still remain entrapped
in the clutches of poverty,” many others suffer
“racial and ethnic discrimination,” there are
gross inequalities in housing, clothing, and edu-
cational opportunity, pollution costs $12 billion a
year, and more. All of this, Kaiser observed
solemnly, has discouraged many Americans.
“Tragically, for themselves as well as for society
itself, some have lost faith in the system... .”
Not only the inner-city dwellers, but also the sons
and daughters of the more affluent on the college
campuses: they are “more conscious of the
system’s imperfections than any preceding gener-
ation.” They blame business. They doubt that

business is able to solve the problems it has
created. They “seriously. doubt whether business
will be where the action is.”

The key question, Kaiser continued, was this:

“How does one reach these children of change?
. . . Where does one turn for help in restoring
their wavering confidence in the abilities and
, motivations of American business?” The answer
was: more of the same, much more. “One of the
most pressing needs in meeting the challenges of
the 1970’s,” intoned Kaiser, “is a new and closer
relationship between business and education.”
Business and education must work harder to
persuade young Americans to work within the
system. They must Strive to combat despair and
hostile ideologies. They must show youth that
“the corporation [is] an institution both concerned
with, and relevant to, the humanistic values of life
and .
structive change.”
The head of U.S. Steel agreed with the head of
Kaiser Industries. Business needs these young
people on the campuses “with all their icono-
clasm and eagerness,” for they will be “the
managers of the world in which mankind will
dwell in the future—the near future.” And if
business wants these young people on its side,
Blough said, it must continue to invest in and
cooperate still more closely with the top manage-
ment of the higher educational system:

The corporation and the campus are interde-
pendent. It is not enough to utter the truism
which has become a cliche—that the corpora-
tion needs educated people to make a profit and
the colleges need dollars to produce educated
people.

Corporate support of higher education contri-

butes significantly to the long-range goals of a

corporation, for business is not only concerned

with producing goods and services at a profit
today but also with the continuity of a profitable
enterprise.

If American business does not aid in the

maintenance of liberal education as the bulwark

of good government, it is not properly protec-
ting the long-range interest of its stockholders,
its employees, and its customers.

CUNY’s very own Franklin Williams (one of
Rockefellers appointees to the Board of Higher
Education) put it neatly when he said that such
support made “good business sense. The univer-
sities are the main source of corporate recruit-
ment now—and they are smart to protect that
source for the future.”

. . an entity capable of bringing about con- :

95

“| pray that you . . . be especially

solicitous of the youth, and see
that they are well instructed and in-
doctrinated so that they do not fall
into the evil and forbidden
opinions.”
—Francis | of France to the faculty
of the University of Paris, 1535



96 A
The problem was that all this boiled down to
empty incantations. It was all fine and well for W.
Clark Wescoe, vice-president for the Sterling Drug
Company to pronounce that “it is natural for the
university and the corporation to exist in symbio-
tic relationship,” to insist that “a healthy econ-
omy spurred by the.success of corporate endeavor
-is beneficial to higher education [and] a strong
university system ensures the future for corporate
enterprise.” But it wasn’t working the way it was
supposed to. And the liberals had little more to
offer than continued, unrestricted corporate sup-
port of the colleges, and continued collaboration
between the ruling class and ruling academic
administrators. :

“More of the same” was also the theme of a
1974 conclave of college administrators. and cor-
poration executives in St. Louis. Many partici-
pants called for a “new detente” between universi-
ties and business, and the New York Times
proclaimed that ‘a new mood of accommodation”
had in fact emerged. “It may be,” said a spokes-
man from the academic side, “that the growing

. alliance between industry and academe will be
~ due to the fact that within the tenor of the current
times there is the overdue realization that We may
really need one another and, indeed, can truly
help one another.” In other words, given the
*. current economic crisis, universities need money,
and. will give capitalists what they want in
exchange for money. And what the capitalists
wanted was not left to the imagination. As
another report of the meeting put it, a number of
the executives explicitly urged “instilling in stu-
dents a greater respect for the creation of capital
and the morality of businessmen.”

Not all capitalists these days think that the
traditional strategy—warm, clubby cooperation
between the campus administrators and the cor-
porate-foundation-government trinity—will be

- enough to restore ideological control. To a vocal
minority of hard-liners, it was precisely this
traditional strategy that allowed things to get out
of hand in the first place. Bleeding-heart founda-
tions and soft-headed administrators, they argue,
actually encouraged the campus upheavals of the
sixties by failing to stand up to small handfuls of
radical extremists when the chips were down, Asa
result, the radicals took over and have now turned
the universities into hotbeds of socialism, sedi-
tion, and smut. A corporate-campus detente? The
campuses, reply the hard-liners, are the enemy. If

ideological control is to be restored, it will be by
getting tough with the colleges, not coddling
them.

The hard-liners’ opening salvo was fired by
Lewis F. Powell, a prominent Richmond attorney
and onetime Chairman of the American Bar Asso-
ciation. In August 1971, writing at the request of
Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the Nation-
al Chamber of Commerce as well as his neighbor
and long-time crony, Powell drew up a memoran-
dum entitled “Attack on American Free Enterprise
System.” Its effect was electric. It was reprinted,
distributed, and debated throughout the capitalist
class, and it helped earn for its author—two
months later—a Nixon nomination to the Su-
preme Court. It bears close examination.

(Powell was perturbed that the American Free
Enterprise System (their term for capitalism) had

-come under heavy attack, not only from “the

minority socialist cadre,” but also “from perfectly

Profits Scoreboard
(Some of Major Corporations Reporting Yesterday)
PER CENT
APR-JUNE. CHANGE

EARNINGS . FROM

| conronarion 1974 1973 |

__$26.500.000__+ 36.6

Champion International _ 33.300.000__++ 19.4 ;
37,900.000__+36.6

Du Pont 161.000.000__ + 1.3. |
B.F. Goodrich 22,000.000__+25.7
NCR 19,800.000__-+47,8
45,200.000___-+ 17.8
30,300.000__+ 68.3
34,300.000 _+142.9
| U.S. Industries. __.~ 36.7

Abbott Laboratories... $12,500,000.........% 22.6
Allied Chemical

American Can

Continental Can

Philip Morris
St. Regis Paper
Texasgulf
12,600.000

Colt Industries.
Control Data..
Crown Zellerbach
Int'l. Paper
PPG Industries.
Reynolds Metal

respectable elements of society: from the college
npus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual
and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and
from politicians.” Polls showed that almost half
the students on representative campuses favored
socialization of basic U.S. industries, and worse.

What was distinctive about Powell’s Memoran-
dum was that he went beyond these familiar
lamentations and accused the capitalists them-
selves of aiding and abetting the new anti-Ameri-
can, anti-business sentiment. | Remarkably
enough, he said, “the enterprise system tolerates,
if not participates in, its own destruction.”
“Appeasement” seemed to be in favor among the
boards of directors and top executives of the
nation’s corporations. True, “businessmen have
not been trained or equipped to conduct guerilla
warfare with those who propagandize against the
system, seeking insidiously and constantly to
sabotage it.” Nonetheless, the time had come for
action.

First the enemy had to be located. That was
easy: it was the campus that had become the
dynamic source of subversion, particularly social
science faculties whose members were “unsym-
pathetic to the enterprise system.” The Marcuses
were perhaps not the majority, but they were “the
most attractive, magnetic, stimulating and pro-
lific.” Their influence was out of proportion to
their numbers. Together with liberals, the leftists
had had an enormous impact on millions of young
students who had then entered’ the media, the
government, politics, and other universities.
Those who entered business, of course, “quickly
discover the fallacies of what they have been
taught,” Powell said, but too many headed for
peripheral institutions, like regulatory agencies,
where they had large authority over the business
system they did not believe in. It was against the
campus, then, that the counter-attack should be

IN REVIEWING THE BUDGET siRE,
I FIND YOU HAVE ALLOCATED
BILLIONS FOR DEFENSE AND
NOT ONE CENT FOR THE Foor

97

launched.

Powell proposed a variety of measures to deal
with the crisis. The Chamber of Commerce,: he
thought, should establish a staff of pro-business
social science scholars to evaluate textbooks
(especially in economics, political science, and ©
sociology) in order to restore “balance.” A team of
pro-business speakers wculd meanwhile carry the
fight directly to the campuses. The FBI compiles
each year a list of speeches made by avowed
Communists on campuses, Powell noted, and in
addition to the 100 of this sort delivered in 1970,
there were many hundreds more by’ leftists and
and liberals. If the campuses did not begin to
issue invitations to corporate anti-communists,
the Chamber should “aggressively” insist» on
“equal time” and exert “whatever degree of pres-
sure—publicly and privately” —was necessary to
get them.

The Powell Memorandum had a good deal more
of this stout-hearted advice on high schools,
media, and scholarly journals (a steady flow of
publications must issue from “independent.scho-
lars who do believe in the system”). Powell
wanted bookstores and newsstands stocked with.
attractive pro-capitalist literature, a multi-million
dollar budget for pro-capitalist advertising,: and
direct political action—buying politicians, filing
amicus curie briefs in crucial court cases, mobil-
izing stockholders, and the like.

But these were stopgap’ measures. The « ‘core
proposal was much uglier. The most “‘fundamen- _
tal problem” on the campuses, Powell asserted,
“is the imbalance of many faculties.” What to do?.

Correcting this is indeed a long-range and
difficult project. Yet, it should be undertaken as
“a part of an overall program. This would mean
the urging of.the need for faculty balance upon
university administrators and boards of
trustees. ; : ;



“98

e.

The methods: to be employed requiré careful
thought, and’ the obvious pitfalls must be
avoided. Improper pressure would be counter-
productive. But the basic concepts of balance,
fairness and truth are difficult to resist, if
properly presented to boards of trustees, by
writing and speaking, and by appeals to alumni
associations and groups. ,

This is a long road and not one for the

fainthearted. ‘

Here is the seed bed out of which will spring the.

next McCarthy committee, the next Rapp-Coudert
witchhunt, the next Feinberg anti-subversive
laws, and maybe the next BHE purge of the CUNY
faculty. ,

It is hard to-tell what individual crusades have.

been launched ‘by Powell’s Memorandum, but
there has already been an impressive marshalling
of corporate resources behind much of his pro-
gram. The National Chamber of Commerce has
set up a coalition of a dozen national associations

(such as the National Association of Manufac-
“turers) and task forces have been put to work. A

center was established to produce propaganda
films, and. business kits (one called America
Needs to Know) were assembled and. dissemin-
ated. The Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis gave a
million dollars to the Woodrow Wilson Founda-
tion to send pro-business speakers on tour of

university campuses, a program heralded in one -

educational journal as. “a nationwide program
aimed at strengthening the detente between the
academic and business worlds.” The Business
RoundTable (composed of executives from Gen-

eral Electric, A.T.&T., American Can, Alcoa and

’

DuPont, among others) set up a Subcommittee on
Economic Eudcation to counter critical investiga-

_tions of capitalism, and it has been joined by such

_as the American Economic Foundation, the Amer-
ican Enterprise. Institute for Public Policy Re-
search, Americans for the Competitive Enterprise
System, the Committee for Constructive Con-
sumerism of the Council of Better Business
Bureaus, the Joint Council on Economic Educa-
tion, the National Center for Responsible Enter-

: prise, the Campus Studies Institute, the National

Schools. Committee for Economic Education,
Inc., and others of the same ilk.

In October 1973, while the Powell Memorandum
was still rousing red-blooded businessmen (or
rather blue-blooded businessmen) for a get-tough

campaign against the campuses, the hard-liners . 1

got another boost from David Packard, chairman

of, the Hewlett-Packard Company and former

Deputy Secretary of Defense. In a soon-to-be-
famous tirade before the Committee for Corporate
Support of American Universities, Packard blast-
ed American corporations for blindly pumping
money into colleges and universities run by their
enemies. Once-responsible governing boards, he
said, had been invaded and taken over by ragged
bands of “students, faculty, alumni, various
ethnic groups, etc.” The faculty had engrossed
more and more power for themselves, and “too
often faculty decisions are determined by a
militant minority of the faculty.” Under these
circumstances, Packard raged, it was no wonder
that one survey should find nine of every ten
college students convinced “that American cor-
porations are evil and deserve to be brought under
government control.” They were taught to believe
it, and yet American businessmen meekly picked
up the tab. The corporate-campus alliance, de-
clared this latter-day Robber Baron, had better be
fixed up so that the corporations get back in firm
control. If business was to put money into higher
education, Packard insisted, it should make damn
sure that the results “contribute in some specific
way to our individual companies, or to the general
welfare of the free enterprise system.”

Packard’s outburst—the right cross after Pow-

“We asked the president of the
university for a list of items that
made up the total campaign... .
but we did not run the risk of
money going into an area without
specification that could militate
against the competitive enterprise
system.”

—William F. Leonard, a vice-president
of Olin Corporation, 1974 ©

N

99

en a

CCCI

v
NN

ca

Ss

ell’s hook—rocked the liberal establishment out
of its complacent talk of a new harmony. Within
weeks none other than McGeorge Bundy, head of
the Ford Foundation, and Alan Pifer, head of the

Carnegie Corporation and member of the mayor's,

screening panel for CUNY trustees, were frantical-
ly counterpunching in an attempt to regain the
advantage. Pifer’s effort, a letter to the New York
Times, accused Packard of harboring reactionary
views on the purposes and administration of
higher education. Did Packard really mean, Pifer
wondered, “to turn the clock back half a century to
the days when powerful businessmen controlled



the boards of trustees and could get professors
who espoused unpopular views fired summarily?”
And if college students today disapprove of Amer-
ican corporations, Pifer went on with liberal
reasonableness, isn’t it the result, not of ideologi-

“cal corruption by their professors, but rather ‘of
“corporate misconduct? “When corporations have

earned the respect of our young people,” Pifer
added, “it will be time enough to start criticizing i
students for being antibusiness.” FN

Indeed, said Pifer, Packard and others like him
were exaggerating the danger of criticism from the

‘campuses in the first place. Business has ‘not


100

really lost control over higher education, and its
financial support is not rea/ly contributing to the
destruction of capitalism. “Fortunately,” Pifer
concluded, “there are many enlightened business-
men who-do sit comfortably on modern, demo-
cratic, diversified boards of trustees” and con-
tinue to.give money freely and liberally to colleges:
“knowing it is the best’ investment they can make
in America’s future.”

- Inasupporting editorial, the Times backed Pifer

' completely. Higher education is “the engine of

economic and social progress,” the paper said,

but if hard-liners like Packard manage to compel

the kind of rigid ideological conformity they think

~ necessary, the result will be institutions that “very

soon cease to supply the nation—and the corpor-

ations—with any human product worth the price
of the degree.” -

Which faction in this controversy wins is not—

/you should excuse the expression—an academic.

question. Should the new Robber Barons, the
Powells and Packards, prevail, then the struggle
to. end campus unorthodoxy will, be a crude and
ugly affair. Should the Bundys and Pifers win out,
the effort will be more in accord with the

Foundation Strategy worked out at the beginning
of the century, an effort marked by more finesse
and restraint. ~

-It is easy, on the other hand, to become so
engrossed in handicapping the factions in this
struggle that we lose sight of their common

outlook and purpose. Liberals and hard-liners
_ alike, after all, want to keep capitalist control over

the colleges and really differ only as to means.
Nor is it wise to pin any hopes on a'liberal victory:
corporate liberals, if necessary, can be as remorse-

‘lessly vicious and destructive in the pursuit of
. their objectives as any of the more straight-talking.

hard-liners: they, after all, masterplanned the
Vietnam War. The point is that either way we lose.

Tighter state control, stricter division of labor
by campuses, better tracking and more tuition,
improved hierarchical control over each campus,
undercutting faculty power, maximum efficiency
and cost-effectiveness, expanding techteach, and
the restoration of ideological control—this is
what we can expect from the capitalists in the
near future if they have things their way. Whether
we let them have their way is the next question.

SOLUTION

101

5.What Is

Now we come to‘ the really tough question:
what are we going to do? We’ve seen what
. capitalism wants from higher education, and how
it tries to get what it wants. We’ve seen how CUNY
in particular has been designed and operated -to
serve the needs of capitalism and how our lives as
students and teachers have suffered as a result.
We've had a glimpse of what capitalism has in
store for us in the future, and it looks grim. Now
we have to decide whether we sit back and let

And how. And for what alternative. .
Perhaps the best way to begin to deal) with
these questions is by having a look at what is
already being done by student and faculty groups
around the University. For in fact at this moment
people throughout CUNY are struggling against
what is happening to them, and we can learn
much from their experiences so far.

The Faculty Union

By far the best-organized and strongest organi-
zation within the University today is the Profes-
sional Staff Congress (PSC), the legal bargaining
agent for the 16,000 faculty and many non-
teaching personnel.

The PSC scored several notable victories last
year, but its greatest achievement was a well-
orchestrated resistance to the BHE’s so-called
“tenure quotas.” Sponsoring rallies, mobilizing
support from political figures, giving effective
testimony at BHE, hearings, and keeping up a
steady barrage of fliers and pamphlets, the union
did more than any other single organization to
make the administration drop a scheme that
would have cost the University many fine teach-

them have their way, or whether we resist them.

“militant as it might be.

‘down to the mid-sixties.

To Be Done?

ers. It also produced a study of Open Admissions
that punctured some official myths about the
program’s effectiveness. It fought arbitrary _ fir-
ings, political harassment, and sex discrimina-
tion. Its newspaper, the Clarion, has become ~
more and more aggressive and outspoken, devot-

~ ing increased attention to the root causes of the

University’s problems. Further evidence of this.
new, broader perspective came during the tenure-
quota struggle, when the PSC issued a leaflet that >
explained the connection between the quota plan

and studies conducted by the Ford Foundation— |

’ an organization, the union noted, which “repre-

sents the financial and industrial giants in a
country-wide strategy.”

But, overall, the PSC is not and has not been as
In too- many ways the
current structure and politics ofthe union form
part of the problem and not part of the solution.
This is perhaps more understandable if we take
account of the PSC’s history.

The PSC represents the merger of two previous
faculty groups. One, the Legislative Conference,
was founded in 1938 to attain legislative recogni-
tion of tenure rights for senior faculty; as we have
seen, it refused in the thirties and forties to fight
purges and attacks on the militant College Teach-
ers Union, and indeed drew much of its eariy
membership from the CTU’s ranks. In the mid-
forties, according to a recent study of the PSC,
the BHE began to “realize that’ mutually accept-_
able results could be achieved by consulting with
the LC in matters that concerned the faculty.”
Thus began a decorous collaboration that lasted
In 1964, Chancellor
Bowker and the CUNY Administrative Council



102

raised the possibility of the LC’s becoming the
‘formal bafgaining agent for the faculty. Belle
Zeller, chairperson of the LC, thought that a good
idea and applied forthe position.

The LC was immediately challenged by Local
4460 of the United Federation of College Teach-

_ers, an AFT local, on the grounds that the LC was
a “company union.” The UFCT had been. organ-

~ ized in 1953 at New York City Community College

~ by Israel Kugler and William McMillan and had
adopted a militant trade union posture. In 1965,
Kugler suggested a merger of the UFCT and the
PSC, but the LC turned him down—citing the fact
that Kugler’s group was connected, via the AFT,
with the AFL- CIO, an affiliation which Zeller and
her gfoup deemed “inappropriate” for their consti-
tuency.

When the Taylor Law legally guaranteed public
service employees the right to organize (though
not to strike), the Public Employees Relation
Board (PERB) arranged for a CUNY-wide election
in which the 8000,faculty would decide (a) whether
or not they wanted a collective bargaining agent
and, if so, (b) which one—the LC or UFCT. At this
point the LC, fearing defeat, called on PERB to
split the faculty. into two units, one for the
full-time, one for the part-time employees. Their
legal brief called the senior faculty “the heart and

core of the university.” The UFCT and the BHE
opposed this stand; “a teacher is a teacher, ” said
the Board. But PERB declared for two units and
the election proceeded, marked by an anti-union
campaign on the part of Chancellor Bowker, who
went so far as to print and mail to the faculty
an anti-union tract at University expense. In the
end the LC carried Unit | (faculty holding actual or
potentially tenureable positions), and the UFCT
won Unit Il (instructors in non-tenure bearing
lines).

The result, then, was a two-headed union,
established more or less by state law, and having
no legacy of rank-and-file faculty struggle for
representation apart from the UFCT’s. earliest
efforts. The faculty had had no preparation and
training in the theoretical and. practical tasks. of
labor union activism. The union leadership was—
and remains—detached from the rank and file.

By 1971, the absurdity of a divided union was
clear to almost everybody, and a merger move-
ment developed. After a year of debate and

maneuver it was consummated in the formation of: ;

the PSC, Zeller and Kugler sharing power. But

fairly soon, under pressure of negotiating: the
most recent contract, the compromise collapsed,
and Zeller managed a thoroughgoing purge of
Kugler and his supporters.

Under its current leadership—composed ‘very
largely of higher-ranking professors—the PSC
has returned to the LC policy of close cooperation
with the University management. The PSC daes
not challenge managerial prerogatives, but limits
itself to bread and butter issues. And while it has
had some successes here (e.g., in gaining at least
formal equalization of pay scales for senior and
community college faculty), even its work in this
area has tended to get only passable benefits for
senior faculty—usually at the expense of junior
faculty, particularly adjuncts (the enormous ex-
pansion of the adjunct class, in fact, coincides
with the formation and growth of the PSC).

The union shuns grass roots organizing. Its
dues (most of which go to affiliates) are forbiding-
ly high for adjuncts, who are thus effectively
barred. The union is not growing, and for this the
leadership.is largely to blame (though, to be sure,
the rank and file has not, until recently, seriously
challenged the leadership’s direction). It ‘has
failed to provide a proper organizational vehicle
for mobilizing the very real discontents among the
faculty. It reflects and perpetuates the current
academic hierarchy imposed by management,
and—except on economic issues—is relatively
acquiescent to administration policy.

The last contract was a disaster. The PSC’s top
leadership, while publicly professing. militancy,
accepted signoffs on key. positions. The most
catastrophic was the union’s agreement to a
“zipper clause,” which reserves to management
every right not specifically granted to the Union by
the contract. This clause also gives the Board the
right to change at will any term or condition of
employment not explicitly stated in the contract,
despite past practice. It was a vital concession,
since the contract says nothing about organiza-
tion of departments, peer judgement, election of
department chairmen or P&B committees, faculty
control over curriculum, and other critical mat-
ters. These are all governed by BHE by-laws,
which the Board can change at will. The Board is
thus no longer bound by traditional and custom-
ary procedures. They have a green light, with
absolute legal authority, to impose a// the mana-
gerial transformations we have been discussing.
There are other unfortunate clauses, eroding

grievance procedures, selling out adjuncts on a
variety of issues, and the like.

The quid pro quo for all these concessions.to
management was money (again, even here,, ad-
juncts were severely short-changed). The PSC got
an impressive-looking series of salary increments,
which was all to the good, but it should be kept in
mind that the rate of increase did not even keep
pace with inflation. So there was no net gain—

“even in the area defined as the PSC’s point of

maximum effort—and a serious decline in most
other areas. :

These and other deplorable actions by the cur-
rent leadership have generated a variety of internal
factions and dissenting groups within the union.
With the old UFCT leadership out of the way,
Zeller and the LC faction now run the PSC ina
ruthlessly authoritarian manner (still another rea-
son for limited faculty support). In response, the
former UFCT leaders have formed the Unity
Caucus to run anti-Zeller candidates. They stand
for opening up the union, encouraging active
membership participation, and confronting man-
agement on such issues as class size and
teaching load, increased space and facilities, and
a cost of living escalator clause in the next
contract. (For more information about the Unity
Caucus write Professor Margaret Donnelly, 245 E.
80th Street, New York, New York 10028.)

Some adjuncts, chief victims of current union
policy, have been protesting within the union.
William Leicht, PSC Vice-President for Part-Time
Personnel, fought the last contract on the
grounds that it discriminated on salary and fringe

103
benefits, eroded job security, and eliminated
multiple positions and tuition exemptions. "

Others have moved to form new organizations.
The Adjunct Faculty Association fought the con-
tract, and issued: a long list of demands. with
“equal pay for equal work” at the top. They seek
“to perform as many as necessary of the functions

_which the PSC is supposed to, but does not carry

out for adjuncts.” Hoping to launch a separate’
union for part-time faculty, the Association

recently protested to the PERB that the current

PSC leadership had discriminated against them

and failed to bargain in good faith on their behalf:

Predictably, the Association got nowhere. It is

now urging all adjuncts to join the PSC and bore

from within. (For more information write the AFA

at Box 176, Ansonia Station, New York, New York

10023.)

Another offshoot of union - discontent in . the
PSC is the Labor Caucus. Formed in April of 1973
to oppose dictatorial methods in the union and to
fight the contract, it now publishes a newsletter
that furnishes valuable commentary on PSC activ-
ities. (For further information, write Bob Cowen,
Treasurer, Labor Caucus, 164-22, 75th Avenue,
Flushing, New York 11366.)

These three groups—the Unity Caucus, | the
Adjunct Faculty Association, the Labor Caucus—
are important developments, but far-from satisfy-

- ing. The Unity Caucus, representing the old UFCT
forces, is not significantly different in orientation

from the PSC leadership. While their principles
and program represent a clear advance over’ the
présent leadership, their past practice and present


104

strategies suggest an adherence to incrementalist

“ policies that will never get to the roots of the
problems we face at CUNY. The Adjuncts face
enormous difficulties in organizing and have tied
themselves up in legalistic and formalistic de-
bates on organizational structure. The Labor
Caucus tends to accept management prerogatives
and is content mainly to organize a more effective
and more democratic faculty body to negotiate
with the BHE over limited issues. None of these
groups‘considers the larger questions of who runs
the University and why—indeed some dismiss
such matters:as simply “theoretical.”

Grass-Roots and Ad Hoc Groups

Events of the past year or two have generated
numerous grass roots groups of CUNY faculty and
students on individual campuses. Though often
short-lived and often out of touch with similar
groups on other campuses, their common aim has
been to resist, as best they can, what is happen-
ing to them.

Purges and firings, of course, have generated
the most resistance. Faculty have often felt the
need to go beyond the union, since its present
leadership typically prefers narrow legalistic
maneuvering over procedural rules to mass mobil-
ization and militancy—the only effective way to
deal with the current assaults on the faculty and
their rights. ‘

Thus at City College, when forty-five faculty
were fired, the union local went through channels,
got seven reappointed, and then praised the
‘administration for being “flexible and fair.” But at

SICC, when the administration fired 200 adjuncts
and: cancelled several hundred courses without
even an official announcement, an ad hoc group
of students and faculty formed swiftly, held
hearings, took testimony, and demanded rein-
statement for all. Ali were reinstated, and Presi-
dent Birenbaum got additional funds by deciding
not to comply with the city’s accrual demands.
(Under city policy, all institutions must give back

a hefty proportion of their budget allocation at the ©

end of the year, which refunds are called “accru-
als.” This is an insane and stupid policy and
Birenbaum is to be congratulated for fighting it,
but of course the primary credit goes to the
militant students, staff and faculty who pushed
him into taking such a step.)

Militancy was displayed often last year. At
Brooklyn, an ad hoc group called the Committee
to Save D.E.S. (Department of Educational Ser-
vices) organized demonstrations when the Admin-
istration fired 20. After two and a half months of
agitation eight were rehired. The group published
a bilingual newsletter, the Brooklyn College Tele-
graph, ran several mass actions, launched PSC
grievances, and initiated state and federal investi-
gations.

At John Jay, midway through registration, the
Administration killed forty courses without con-
sulting or notifying the faculty, to say nothing of
students, and laid off many adjuncts. Outraged
faculty and students demanded that President

Riddle restore the damage done by the Wednes- |

day Night Massacre (which violated the Dean’s
own published guidelines). When he refused,
members of the Jay faculty—which up till then
lacked ‘even a Faculty Senate—organized an Ad
Hoc Committee of Concerned Faculty, issued
several analyses of the situation, and called a
mass meeting to which over one-third of the
faculty turned out, despite the fact that vacation
had not yet ended. The mass meeting in turn
launched a move for a permanent faculty body,
established a Committee of Inquiry to investigate
the administration of the college, and elected a
Steering Committee that negotiated with Presi-
dent Riddle and secured the restoration of some,
though by no means all, of the cut courses.

At Manhattan, students and faculty published
Tiger Paper, which fought cutbacks in student
aid, terrible facilities, and addressed itself to the
larger political issues.

At Lehman, a Committee for Student Rights

picketed the tenure hearings held by the BHE,
demanding increased student participation in
tenure decisions. Also at Lehman, a Lehman
College Coalition of students and faculty held a
mass rally to protest the firing of Suzanne Ross.
The meeting was addressed by Tom Hayden who
told the crowd: “Her only security and her job is
your interest in her keeping her job. After all, she
doesn’t represent the milk lobby, or the Defense
Department, or carry money for bribes.” At open
forums held by the President, Coalition members
hammered away at the Ross affair and raised a
host of other issues.

At Hunter; a CUNY-wide Puerto Rican Studies
Conference drew over 400 students and faculty in
an attempt—as Benjamin Ortiz, Director of Puerto
Rican Studies at Hunter, put it—to mobilize
support for a defense of all such programs
currently under administrative assault.

At Queens, the college faculty overwhelmingly
resolved to have the college-wide P&B: Committee
review the cases of nine faculty members to whom
the Committee had denied tenure, a clear criti-
cism of its action. The faculty also asked for the
abolition of the Committee of Six, a small group
of department heads who make final decisions for
the college-wide P&B—thus demanding the re-
versal of the centralizing tide of the last decade.

In mid-January, the CUNY Women’s Coalition
(CWC) filed the largest sex discrimination suit ever
brought against a university, demanding $40 mil-
lion from CUNY in back pay and benefits. This
class action suit followed CUNY’s failure to re-
spond to prior individual suits and HEW findings
of grdss discrimination. (Information about CWC
activities can be obtained by calling LE 4-5392.)

Finally, in an attempt to bring these, and still
other emerging resistance groups together, some
CUNY students and faculty organized the People’s
Education Project. PEP’s organizational structure
provides for a citywide General Assembly and
local chapters on various campuses. They have
called for a militant defense of free tuition and
open admissions, an increase in financial aid,
equalization of faculty pay and teaching loads,
elimination of racist and sexist practices, and a
democratization of the university and the PSC.
(For further information contact Lorraine Cohen,
Department of Economics, Political Science and
Philosophy, Staten Island Community College,
Staten Island, New York 10301; or phone
390-7606.)

105

“College graduates have no more
control over the kinds of jobs avail-
able to them or the kinds of lives
they can lead than other workers
have over the structure of the job
market. . . . Powerlessness—the
class-determined inability to define
the direction of their own lives—is.
the social link joining college- —
educated workers to the more tradi-
tional sectors of the proletariat.”

—David Smith, “Who Rulés
~ the University,” 1974



106

Bulletin: Brookiyn College -

On October 24, 1974, the arrest of 44 BC stu-
dents and faculty climaxed a three-day occupa-
tion of the Registrar's Office in protest against
President John W. Kneller’s refusal to name Prof.
Maria Sanchez chairperson of the Puerto Rican
Studies Department. Prof. Sanchez had the unan-
‘imous support of her colleagues and students in
the Department; she had also been recommended
to the post by Kneller’s own hand-picked Search
-Committee. But Kneller, arguing that Sanchez
was “unqualified” because she did not yet have a
Ph.D., decided instead to name someone else
who had failed utterly to win the confidence of

either students or faculty in the Department. He .

refused to discuss the matter further and left
Sanchez’s supporters with no way to air their
grievances except through direct action.

_ It was not the first time Kneller had abused his
authority, and from the very start his arbitrary and
capricious conduct toward the Puerto Rican
Studies Department aroused the concern and in-
dignation of the entire BC community. The day
after the arrests, a large and spirited rally was held
to demonstrate support of the Department, speak-
ers from numerous campus organizations as-
sailed Kneller’s position, and a one-day strike was
called. The BHE’s abrupt decision on October 28
to approve Kneller’s candidate has only intensi-
fied the struggle: student and faculty groups are,
even as we write, marshalling their forces to make
Kneller back down and to guarantee that this kind
of situation will not happen again.

The unity of many diverse interests in this crisis
—student government, veterans, ethnic organiza-
tions, political groups, and faculty bodies—re-

flects a widespread understanding that the issue .

goes far beyond who becomes chairperson of any.
one department. First, it touches on the right of

‘all students and faculty to self-determination: if

Kneller has his way here (and remember that the
presidential appointment of chairpersons is a
priority item for the BHE masterplanners), he will
be further along the road to unlimited presidential
interference in any department. Second, the fate
of Open Admissions is involved. BC’s Puerto
Rican Studies Department, a product of the Open
Admissions struggle and one of the most po-
litically militant departments anywhere in the
University, could prove a major obstacle to divert-
ing the stream of Open Admissions students away
from the four-year colleges and into the two-year
colleges where they had been intended to go all
along—unless it can be “pacified” first by the
appointment of an administration lackey as chair-
person. Finally, there remains the larger question
of securing tighter ideological control (see above,
pp 94-100). A department known for the lack of
traditional authoritarian divisions between stu-
dents and faculty sets a bad example for the
campus in general. Then, too, Kneller’s candidate
—who has close personal connections with the
pro-statehood forces in Puerto Rico, not to
mention with certain high CUNY officials—will
help the college crack down on all dissidents,

' especially those militantly opposed to the world-

wide advance of American multinational corpor-
ations. ;

The outcome of this struggle remains to be
seen. Win or lose, however, the emergence of a

broadly-based movement on the BC campus is a «

timely reminder that we can get together. We can
and we must. . °

So resistance has begun. But where do we go
from here?

Newt has no simple blueprint, no tidy strategy
that will—in seven easy steps—guarantee that
CUNY will be wrenchéd free of corporate control.
What we do have, after our months of study, isa
deep anger at the present course of events, an
_ appreciation of the strength of the opposition,
and a conviction that a united effort can turn the
situation around. The proof lies in our own histo-
ry: Rockefeller and the foundation masterplan-
; ners have for over a decade been struggling to

impose tuition on City University students; and
_ they have failed. Rockefeller and the masterplan-

hers sought to block the establishment of Open

Admissions; and they failed. CUNY, to be sure, is

badly flawed; it has been pulled way off course by
_the power and money: of bankers and business-
Men. But CUNY is a far better place to work and
_ Study than the masterplanners wished. That is the
result of our own struggle and the aid given us by
Our many allies throughout the city. We are once
again under assault. We must once again resist.
But how? There is a whole barrelful of tactics
available to us. In our final pages we'd like briefly
© lay some of them out. Most draw on the

107

Getting lt Together:

hostile to any race
to this talse issue by

oysly advocate]
igBerrrine thy
ish People
our oppost
unfortunate
Mr

some Suggestions

experience of friends and allies currently doing ;
resistance work throughout CUNY; they are ap-
proaches that people have found useful and effec-
tive. Some are tactics which can be pursued
alone, some require collective efforts. Some deal
with local campus problems, some with CUNY-
wide issues, and still others with the wider social
system to which the University is so intimately
tied. We are not listing them in any order of
preference. Each is vitally important. All are mutu-
ally supportive and reinforcing.

ANALYSIS

See if Newt’s analysis makes sense on your
campus. Plug into an already established resis-
tance group, or set up a study group with some
friends or colleagues, and begin to examine how :
your campus really works. Investigate who makes
policy, who determines the budget, who does the -
hiring ‘and firing, who plans new construction,
who approves: curriculum changes, who deals
with local employers, campus workers, outside
agencies. Find out what special programs have
been set up in cooperation with banks, corpora-
tions, and foundations, and whose interests they



108 -

-gerve..Check out the percentage and number of
adjuncts on your campus, investigate how far
your administration has gone in the introduction
of technology; study what’s been happening to
class sizes over the past few years. See if “man-
agement consultants” have been called in, or
computer-based management, systems installed,
‘and with what effects. Look into vocational and
: remediation programs to determine how well
they're working, and who they’re working for. Try
to get data on what happens to graduates in. terms

of jobs and salary levels. Find out what's been.

happening to financial aid and work-study, and
why. See if the firings currently. underway follow
any particular pattern. (At BCC this semester
most faculty let.go were in liberal arts and those
kept on in vocationalism.) If there is a pattern,
who’s setting it? According to what criteria, what
philosophy of education? Who gave them the right
“to make such decisions? Ask around about the
extent of administrative interference in depart-
mental and curricular affairs and look for signifi-
cant patterns there, too. (At John Jay, for ex-
ample, the administration has been pressuring
liberal arts departments to bend their disciplines
into a “criminal justice,” i.e., avocational mold.)

This kind of research might also be launched by
- classes in political science, history, sociology,

and economics—or jointly by several of them. The
best scholarship often begins at home.

Such a study. would. be a natural for campus”:

newspapers. Investigative reporting ala Woodward
and Bernstein is alot more interesting than cover-
ing Deans’ teas.

Faculty committees, faculty senates, or union .

locals might also get into applying their skills to‘a
study of their own workplace. 2

Student. governments might. find it rewarding to
sponsor a study that focused on such problems as
course cancellations, increasing class. sizes, in-

/ human registration procedures, class and racial
tracking, diminishing. job opportunities, sexual

discrimination, shrinking work-study and finan-

cial programs, the tuition threat, insufficient

counseling, and the like.

Whoever does the research, Newt will be glad to

help. We can try to answer research questions,

put you in touch with other researchers on your
campus, and so on. But in fact, with a couple of
weeks’ work—digging in files, reading back is-
sues of campus papers, checking out the CUNY
Courier and the PSC Clarion, interviewing cooper-
ative college or university officials, visiting the
public monthly BHE meetings—you'll know a lot
more about the nature of power relationships on
your campus than we do. .

ACTION

Local administrators, either on their own, or under
pressure from the CUNY Central Office, are—right
this minute—cancelling courses, firing faculty,
denying tenure, cutting back student aid, in-

creasing class sizes. They will seek to smother —

resistance to these measures by wheeling out all
the cover stories we’ve’ talked about in earlier
chapters. People in possession of the true facts

ean blow such “justifications” apart. Official rhet-
oric. can be translated; hard questions can be «
. asked. : :

When administrators justify cuts by talking
about “efficiency,” that can be unmasked as a

_.code word for “management control.” When they

prattle about “the mission of the college,” that
can be exposed as a devotion to vocational train-
ing. at the expense of liberal arts and critical
thinking (a devotion fostered by outside agencies
of wealth and power). “Modernization” can be
shown to mean “diminishing democracy,” “com-
puter-assisted instruction” to mean—all too often
—“labor-saving technology” and “dehumanized

education,” “increased productivity” to mean the
old “speed up” (more work for less pay), “tuition
for those who can afford it” to mean another

assault on the working people of the city. When .

they fire faculty because of “declining enrollment”
they can be confronted with the fact that enroll-
ments throughout CUNY are up, not down. They
can be asked why a drop. in student enrollments—
were it to materialize—should not be seized upon
as a chance to diminish class size and thus

decrease the outrageous drop-out rate. They
might be pressed—should a drop occur—to bring
in more students by expanding educational oppor-
tunity; this would allow them to hire more faculty
from the ranks of the currently. unemployed.

When college officials carry on about how: we
must all tighten our belts because the economic
“pie” is only so big (the Ford Administration line),
it might be asked—for starters—why they
shouldn't tighten their own belts first. We might

109

. demand a complete and accurate and_impartial
analysis of the budget, and begin to discuss the
wisdom and necessity of such items as the mil-
lion-dollar outlay for presidential housing (see
accompanying box). mo

The “pie” people could be pushed still farther.
They might be asked how there can be a “budget
crisis” when enrollments are up—when city taxes
are the highest in the nation—when corporate
profits are soaring. We don’t take Exxon. at its

~ word; why should we take the BHE’s?

Get your demystifications out to the community.
By letters to the campus papers (which almost
everyone reads). By guerrilla media: xeroxing or
mimeoing statements and tacking. them to bul-
letin boards. By addressing student and faculty
governance groups. By urging union representa-
tives to spread the word.

RESOLVED, That the Board approve the purchase
as a residence for the President, of The City
College, of a cooperative apartment known as
Apartment 5B, at 101 Central Park West, New
York, N.Y., at a, cost of $115,000 plus any
incidental legal costs; and be it further...

RESOLVED, That the City University Construction
Fund be requested to authorize the expenditure by
the Dormitory Authority of up to $30,000 for the
cost of renovation and rehabilitation work and up
to $20,000: for the cost of furnishing the public
rooms; ;

EXPLANATION: ... Heretofore the Board and
the City University’ Construction Fund have
authorized the Dormitory Authority to acquire
residences for the Chancellor and six of the senior
college presidents. Further, allowances of up to
$30,000 for renovation work and up to $20,000 for
furnishing of: public areas in the residences have
been authorized. The total amount expended for
the acquisition, rehabilitation and furnishing of
these residences was $930,632.86.”

— Board of Higher Education,
Calendar, September 23, 1974.



110

Sometimes a mobilization of community opinion
will be sufficient to reverse arbitrary administra-
trion decisions. Most college administrators are
so accustomed to passive faculty and disorgan-
ized students that a well-informed resistance can
either bowl them over, or force them to pass the
buck upward. Many local administrators consider
themselves friendly and. sympathetic to faculty
and students. The notion that they are straw
bosses for a remote and aloof management at the
‘Central Office is unsettling and painful for them.
Give them a chance to prove their solidarity. Force
them to: take a stand, either for students and
faculty, or for the Central Office. Many, faced with
that. choice, will prefer to channel pressures up-
ward. This is exactly what happened at Staten
Island and elsewhere last year.

At times, however, widespread discussion and
protests “‘within channels” won’t work, It might
then be ‘time‘to pick an issue—the firing of a
talented and popular teacher, aid cutbacks, over-
crowded classes—around which the entire cam-
pus community can be most rapidly and effective-
ly organized, and make a strong stand. This might
mean mass demonstrations, or picketing; or huge
letter writing campaigns (of the kind that proved
quite effective in the thirties and forties). Again, a
clearsighted,: ‘well organized, determined move-
ment is quite likely to be successful, at least on
the local level.

Because it is likely that the serious problems will
get passed upstairs to the heavies at 80th Street,
or to the BHE itself, and because it is probable
that they will support their’ local administrators,
resistance to current CUNY policy must open up a
university-wide front. CUNY officials, after all,
have centralized their power; we, too, should
confront them in a united way. How can this be
done? How can we—given our current divisions—
begin to form the link-ups and connections that
are the necessary ligaments of student and faculty
power? : :

Establish Committees of Correspondence.
Groups already in opposition might link up with
their counterparts.

Campus newspapers doing investigatory work
might contact other CUNY journals, and perhaps
together establish a permanent Intercampus News
Service. Through that network they could trade

stories for publication,..or perhaps issue their
collective work in pamphlet or book form: for
distribution on all the campuses.

Faculty could take over and remake the PSC. As
currently organized and led, the union leaves a lot
to be desired. But.a concerted campaign could
transform it, rather as the Miners for Democracy
transformed the United Mine Workers. ;

Currently many faculty are refraining from join-
ing the union, partly because union membership
is expensive, partly because—given the union’s
past performance—they are doubtful about its
usefulness. The answer to both these objections
is that the PSC will either-help us fight the Central
Office, or help the Central Office fight us. If we
stay out the union will not be strong enough to
fight for our interests even if it wants to. Weak
unions make concessions at the negotiating
table. When they do, whatever is saved by not
paying dues is lost many times over.

If you, or, better, you and a group of your col-
leagues do join, a united and determined presence
at local chapter meetings can quickly make a
decisive difference. In fact, because most local
chapter meetings are poorly attended, and the lo-
cal leadership is often ineffectual, a comparative
handful of energetic faculty can take‘over.an entire
chapter without enormous difficulty. Were this to
happen, newly elected chapter delegates would be
sent to the PSC where, in. conjunction with like-
minded representatives from other chapters; they
could begin working for control of the entire union

apparatus. Within a year or two at most, the PSC

could be completely revitalized and made an
effective instrument of faculty interests. What
would a re-dedicated PSC: do? yo

Publish pamphlets like this one. ey,

Report systematically to the membership. on

CUNY finances, tie-ins. with corporations and
foundations, construction programs, schemes of
management consultants. Have union account-
ants go over university: books to check out their
claims of “financial exigency.” A militant union
would—while vigilantly battling for better wages
and hours—also delve into the “deep structure” of
the university and investigate all the channeling,
tracking, and creeping vocationalism that goes on
here. It might begin to devote serious attention to

the future of the university rather than simply
reacting to whatever moves the BHE makes.
Union spokespeople might spread the word
throughout the country—at all the national con-
ventions they attend—about how, at CUNY and
elsewhere, higher education is corrupted to serve
the interests of bankers and businessmen, rather
than students, faculty, and working people.

Students—having no counterpart to the' PSC—
might construct new university-wide institutions.
A CUNY Student Union might be set up to co-
ordinate local campus efforts more effectively.

ence on a particular issue of concern—tuition for
example.. The imposition of tuition that Rita
Hauser (Rockefeller appointee on the BHE) thinks
might be a good idea, would in truth be a spectac-
ular disaster for CUNY students; it would force
half of them out of college and doom them to
permanent unemployment or the bottommost
rungs of the economy. A conference on tuition
might provide a chance for students from different
campuses to get to know one another and to form
lasting alliances.

Again, eventually the Central Office or the BHE—.
their cover stories exploded and their true inten-
tions laid bare—will be forced to exercise arbitrary
power to get their way. Then analysis and organi-
zational unity may have to be supplemented by
more concerted and militant activity. .For the
union, a strike. For the students, a mass demon-
Stration. Remember that there are sixteen thou-
sand faculty and a quarter-million students at

CUNY. If they decide to work together, to bring to

bear the vast power of their numbers, their collec-

tive energy, their massed talents and abilities,

things will begin happening fast.

If and when we take on the top administrators, the
masterplanners, and the powerful Capitalists be-
hind them, we will need allies. Fortunately there
are many allies in New York City. They have
helped us before, and they will help us again. Who
are they? And how can they be contacted?

One of the simplest ways is for students to talk to
Parents and relatives. They are our greatest allies.
It-is they, after all, who own City University, not
Rockefeller or the Foundations. They are the.

A starting point might be a CUNY-wide confer.’ |

141



112 —

people that Big Brother Carnegie glibly tells to
tighten their belts and to shell out more for
tuition, or to stand by while educational opportun-
ity for their children is slashed. If students were to
talk to. their parents’ organizations—unions, trade
associations, church and community groups, civ-
ic organizations—and ask them to come to the aid

of the university, an enormously potent political
force would be born.

The PSC might reach out to those same organi-
zations. Organized labor, for example, has a siz-
able stake in the City University, both for their
members’ own future education and that of their
children. There are few more potentially powerful
-. (or mutually advantageous) alliances around than
that between-labor and the university. Imagine the
consequences of militant organized labor support
‘for a PSC picket line. Imagine a university that
taught its students not just narrow skills but the
* politics: of work, that clued them in on what it
“takes.to truly survive and resist in a capitalist

economy. Imagine a united effort to expand edu-
*-¢ational opportunity for working people. Right

now the unversity works primarily for the advan-
» tage of employers, there isno reason that it could

not work for the interests of working people
~ instead.

This is no pipe dream! With strong alliances we
can begin to turn CUNY around. Strong alliances
have worked in the.past. With strong alliances we
can go on to demand further expansions of oppor-
tunity, and smash the tracking system once and

“forall. We can demand that students and faculty
run the University, not the masterplanners and
hack bureaucrats. We can demand an end to
racism and sexism on the campuses. We can
demand not only the preservation of free tuition,
but even the creation of the financial stipends for
students that. are common in Europe. We can
demand that-training in skills be complemented
by a critical education in the functioning of the
economy and-society. We can demand that tech-
nology be used to improve learning and teaching,
not as an excuse to boost class sizes and fire
faculty.

We can goa long way toward wrenching CUNY
free from corporate control, if we get ourselves
together, and get together with others. But we
should be under no illusions that a permanent and
satisfactory solution can be attained for CUNY as

ee
long as capitalists dominate the economy; the
society, the politics, and the culture of the United
States. If our study suggests anything, it is that
the university is intricately tied to a social order
that is irrational and exploitative. That social order
corrupts and distorts the university at every point
it touches it.

Capitalism sucks the university into the produc-
tion process” and--makes it an adjunct of the
factory and the office. It uses the campus to help
reproduce an unequal social order by dividing
students according to class, race, and sex, and «
giving them an unequal education. It sets educa-
tional and scholarly trends and fashions by fun-
neling money to people and projects the system
finds useful. It sets limits on the amount of
education working people can get, because it
fears a truly educated work force. These con-
straints operate in the best of times.

In the worst of times—during capitalism's re-
peated crises—matters on the campus, as every-
where else, degenerate swiftly. Tuitions are hiked,
driving the already hard pressed working class out
of college (or limiting them to the barest vocation-
al training); the spectre of a work force that
understands the system gives capitalists night-
mares. When student enrollments decline, they
turn onthe faculty, laying them off by the thou-
sands. So we get to the point where masses of
unemployed teachers walk the streets while mil-
lions of potential or ex-students are deprived of an ©
education. This is precisely the same state of
affairs capitalism generates throughout the econ-
omy: millions of workers are unemployed despite
an enormous need for their services. 1
In the long run, then, the degradation of higher
education is part and parcel of the degradation of
American life under capitalism. The present sys-
tem may be a great benefit to Exxon and Chase
Manhattan, to ITT and A&P, to General Foods,
General Motors, General Electric, and the gener-
als at the Pentagon, but it is an enormous alba-
tross around the necks of the rest of us. The time
has come to cut it loose so that we can begin to
grow again.

113

Appendices

MASTERMINDS & |
MASTERPLANNERS |

GOING FARTHER:
SOME SUGGESTED READING

BIBLIOGRAPHY


414

“415

“Masterminds & Masterplannerr

What follows is a partial checklist of those indi-
viduals and organizations active in formulating
educational policy for the capitalist class. Keep
an eye on them: they’re planning your future for

you.

O Howard R. Bowen ;
A “liberal economist” who has been associ-

ated with many groups in the Educational
Establishment (Ford Foundation, Coordi-
nating Council for Post High School Educa-
tion, Brookings Institution, Joint Council

for Economic Education) . . . currently
Chancellor of the Claremont University Cen-
ter... authority on how to cut costs and

improve “efficiency” in higher education . . .
author. of Efficiency in Liberal Education
(1971) for the Carnegie Corporation.

[1] McGeorge Bundy

The Harvard dean who served JFK and LBJ

as special assistant for -national security
affairs from 1961-1965 . . . reportedly played -

major role in planning Bay of Pigs, the
Dominican Intervention, and escalation of
Vietnam war . . . left to take up present post
as head of Ford Foundation, replacing
Rockefeller’s old crony, Henry T. Heald...
will continue to push the Foundation’s inter-
ventions in all aspects of education.

(1 Earl F. Cheit

Associate Director of the Carnegie Council
on Policy Studies in Higher Education, for-
merly head of the Ford Foundation’s Office
of Higher Education and Research (suc-
ceeded by Peter de Janosi of Standard Oil of
New Jersey)... major claim to fame was
accurate warning in late sixties that higher
education was in for financial difficulties . . .
now one of the leading authorities on cost-
cutting and efficiency... like Bowen,
moves ‘easily back and forth between the
academy and the foundations.

(_] Francis Keppel

Former Rockefeller agent on the BHE

,(1967-71), later headed the so-called Keppel

Commission for Rockefeller... presently
chairman of the General Learning Corpora-
tion (an educational affiliate of Time-Life and
General Electric), trustee of the Russel Sage ©
Foundation, and member of the Harvard

Board of Overseers ...son of Frederick
Paul Keppel, president of the Carnegie Cor-
poration from 1923-42 ... was dean of the

Faculty of Education at Harvard, 1948-62;
Assistant Secretary for Education at HEW,
1965-66; U.S. Commissioner of Education,
1962-1965 .. . author of The Necessary Rev-
olution in American Education (1966).

(J Clark Kerr

Head of the Carnegie Foundation, former
President (1958-67) and Chancellor (1952-58)
of the University of California at Berkeley,
trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, and
trusted advisor to many organizations in the |
Educational Establishment (Ford Founda-
tion, National Science Foundation)...
most widely known for his 1963 ode to the
multiversity, The Uses of the University.

[Alexander M. Mood

Directs the Public Policy Planning Organiza-
tion of the University of California at Ir-

vine... former Assistant U.S. Commis-
sioner of Education (1964-67) under Kep-
pel... author of The Future of Higher Edu-

cation (1973), a study financed by the Car-
negie Commission and the Ford Foundation.


CO Alan. Pifer

President of the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching and council mem-
ber of its-various operating agencies, in-
cluding the Carnegie Council on Policy
Studies in Higher Education . . . frequent
speaker at educational planning conferences

around the country... . strong advocate of .

community colleges as community service
institutions rather than places for liberal
higher. learning... lately emerged as
spokesman for continued cooperation be-
tween: corporations and campuses against
fnardliner backlash . . . also sits on. the
Council on Foreign Relations, HEW’s Ad-
visory Committee on Higher Education,
chaired Nixon’s Task Force on Education,
director of NY Urban Coalition, and member
of the elite Century Club . . . also has sat.on
at least two screening panels for members of
the BHE. 4

(1 Academy for Educational Development, Inc.

Led by former officials of the Ford Founda-
tion’s Educational Program . ... chairman of
Board is: Robert O. Anderson, the Chief
Executive Officer of Atlantic Richfield...
board members include James O’Brien, a
Director and Vice-President of Standard Oil
of California; John Diebold; Theodore
Kheel, labor negotiator and president of the
Foundation on Automation and Employ-
ment, Inc.; and James A. Perkins, president
of Cornell, trustee of the Rand Corp., mem-
ber of the Council on Foreign Relations, and
adirector of Chase Manhattan Bank . . . this
is the outfit that did the recent study of
management practices at John Jay College.

(J Carnegie Commission on Higher Education
Headed by Clark Kerr, with 19 prestigious
members from academia, business, and the
foundations; spent $6.3 million, issued 22
major studies and dozens of other important
documents dramatically influencing the di-
rection of American colleges and universi-
ties . . . officially disbanded October 1973
and replaced by the CARNEGIE COUNCIL
ON POLICY. STUDIES IN HIGHER EDUCA-
TION which continues to work in the same
direction.

O

Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher ©
Education . .
Headed by Clark Kerr, who had. chaired the
Carnegie Commission on Higher Education,
it is the administrative arm of the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
and prepares commentaries on issues and
trends in higher education. Among its prior-
ity interests are “the changes in organiza-
tinal and.structural patterns of faculties and
in retirement, tenure and collective bargain-
ing policies,” as well as the role of govern-

_ment at different levels, budgetary matters,

O

and “the effectiveness of innovations.” .

Citizens Budget Commission
It would be more apt to call this group the

_Bankers Budget Commission because its

membership is almost entirely composed of
representatives from dozens of the New York
City banks. The CBC recommends budget
cuts and economy measures to the city,
including in 1974 its plan for the mayor to
save $28 million by increasing workloads of
the CUNY faculty. Its frankly-titled study,
“Faculty Workloads at the City University:
The Case for an Increase,” should be re-
quired reading by all faculty.

CO The City Club

A powerful group of “four hundred prominent
businessmen and professionals” in the City
_. . Alfred Giardino, Chairman of the BHE is
a club trustee. . . recently issued a report
entitled “A More Effective Labor Policy” that
recommends limiting the kinds of issues that
can be negotiated in collective bargaining
with public employees in order to preserve
management prerogatives .. . arbitration is
acceptable so long as it’s only about wages
and employment conditions. No negotia-

tions, they say, should be permitted about ;

“matters which relate to the nature, quality,
or standards of public services, or restrict
the ability of government officials to manage
the work force.” In short, collective bargain-
ing is OK so jong as management maintains
the power over workers. This view. will
heavily influence upcoming BHE negotia-
tions with the PSC. /

£1 Commission on Academic Personnel Prac-

tices . :
Established by the BHE in May, 1974, follow-
‘ing rescinding of tenure quotas . . . co-

chaired by Quigg Newton, ‘president of the
Commonwealth Fund of the City of New York
(a major financial contributor to special
CUNY projects), and by Francis Kilcoyne,
former president of Brooklyn College...
‘now sitting to suggest policies regarding
hiring and tenure.

CJ committee for Economic Development

CED is the leading domestic policy-making
body of the capitalist class. Its members
include the top management of over two
hundred corporations, banks, and founda-

tions. Its chairman is the Executive Vice

President of Exxon, its treasurer is a partner
of Morgan, Stanley, and its trustees repre-
sent Gulf Oil, General Foods, Dillon Read,
the Brookings. Institution, Manufacturers
Hanover Trust, Standard Oil of California, Du
Pont, United States Steel, AT&T, Chase
Manhattan, General Motors, Ford Motor,
Lehman Brothers, and Xerox, to name a few.
The CED researches and makes “‘sugges-
tions” on domestic policy (a complimentary
group, the Council on Foreign Relations,
handles foreign: policy), and it usually sees
its suggestions implemented. It hires or
otherwise buys the best academic talent
available, while many of -its members slip
effortlessly into top government positions.
CED’s 1973 report, “The Management and

‘Financing of Colleges,” called for high tui-

tion in public colleges, bemoaned the fact
that “professional pride is not keeping facul-
ty members from joining unions,” and re-
commended a 50 per cent tenure quota. It is
a measure of their power and influence. that
the BHE tried to implement this policy
“suggestion” within months after the report
came out.

Educational Commission of the States
Founded. in 1966. Quasi-governmental um-

‘prella agency, based in Denver, which acts

as operating.arm and governing board of the

117

Compact. for Education, an agreement be-
tween the states for interstate coordination
about educational issues. Brings together
educators who want money for schools with
politicians who decide how to spend money
. . . composed of 7 representatives (the gov- -
ernor, 4 persons appointed by the governor,
and 2 state legislators) from each of 45
states, Puerto. Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Member states pay annual dues pro-rated by
population, and the federal government,
through the Office of Education, contributes
heavily . . .ECS compiles information, does

“educational research and performs service

‘functions for member states. Did ten-year-
long study entitled “National Assessment of
Educational Progress,” which was funded
mainly by Office of Education at $6 million/
year. Study claims ECS will have determined
what students know in ten different. disci-
plines ... issued another report about
unionization and labor relations in colleges
and universities, including collective’ bar-
gaining, federal and state bargaining laws
applicable to higher education. Worries
about increasing unionization and how to
deal with labor relations in “public sector,”
especially higher education. Maintains that
higher education is unique, especially since
“faculty members are at times in effect part
of management.” :

The Group for Human Developmentin Higher
Education ‘
Funded by the Carnegie Commission, the
Danforth Foundation, and the Lilly Endow-
ment. Most famous for .its* proposal that
since faculty may want mid-career changes,
an insurance plan should be established for
those who wish to leave teaching. Faculty
would pay for this insurance. i

HEPS, CAMPUS, CAUSE, TOTAL, SEARCH

These are five out of a large number of
computer-based. management -systems.
HEPS (Higher Education Planning System) is
acomputerized planning system now in-use
at Brooklyn College. CAMPUS (Comprehen-
sive Analytical Methods for Planning in
University Systems) uses simulation: tech-



118

niques. CAUSE (College and University Sys-
tems Exchange) seeks to organize informa-
tion relating to computer programs to facili-

tate easy exchange between schools (and

super-funding agencies). TOTAL is designed
to keep total check on all day-to-day opera-
tions of the college. SEARCH (System for
Evaluating Alternative Resource Commit-
ments in Higher Education) was developed

for a consortium of eight colleges by Peat, -

Marwick, Mitchell and Co. and allows simu-
lations ten years into the future. (We found
Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co.’s private,
not-for-citation studies of CUNY helpful in
our work.)

EJ institute for Research and Development in

Occupational Education at CUNY

Has developed a computer program that
allows students to gather information about
possible career options by using a terminal
keyboard themselves, following search in-
structions. This project, designed to help
those not going on beyond high school, is
funded by the First National City Bank.
Gitibank president William Spencer de-
scribed financing of the project as an “in-
vestment.” :

oO International Council on the Future of the

University

Formed in fall, 1970, ICFU is an organization
of European and American educators that
meets in different countries. Recent session
held at the CUNY Graduate Center. Nathan
Pusey, former president of Harvard,Francis
Keppel of Keppel Commission, and presi-
dents of various New York and New England
private.universities were among those who
attended. ‘Professor Paul Seabury, of the
Unviersity of -California, at Berkeley, at-
tacked Affirmative Action Programs and
lamented that the university is becoming “a
public - utility”. [!]... members solemnly

“agreed that higher education in industrial-

ized countries was “trivialized and vulgar-

ized” as a result of student activity of the 60s.

and disapproved strongly of inflation—in
grading policies. (According to a supportive
New York Times editorial, “Such apprehen-
sion is clearly justified by the shocking

(] The National Center for Higher Education

(] National Commission on the Financing o

experience. of some European. campuses
where radical extremists have virtually .ban-
ished academic as well as political freedom.”
Equally alarming are cases .of institutions
“paralyzed by. one-man, one-vote, proce-
dures in which the janitor’s and the presi-
‘dent’s votes cancel each other out.”) A more
extremely conservative offshoot is the Uni-
versity Center for Rational Alternatives,
formed by Sidney Hook and others.

Management Systems
A top-priority federal higher education re-
search organization... funded mainly by

HEW and private foundations .. . has an- —

nual budget of $5 million and works with
advisory bodies from higher education asso-
ciations, national professional .organiza-
tions, statewide coordinating boards, private
and public colleges .. . facilitates coopera-
tion between colleges and coordination of
higher education on state and federal levels.
Especially concerned with centralizing infor.
mation about higher education-and creating
uniform measurment categories to make
cost-effectiveness analyses of higher educa:
tion possible... they have developed
measurement scales for information on such
things as finances, students (including how
many friends the average student has), cam
pus facilities, and faculties .-. . they believ

they have been able to quantify more wit

respect to education than anyone else. .

information is made available to federal an

state agencies, and administrators of col
leges.

Postsecondary Education .
Set up in 1972 by Congress to study fina!
cing of higher education. . . seventeen
member Board with a mixture of administra
tors of public and some private universitie:
and administrators of public educatio
systems nationwide; two Representative
two Senators, a bank president, a go
ernor, a deputy U.S. Commissioner for
Higher Education, and Boyer, Chancellor of
SUNY, are among the members. . . its, 1
_month, $1.5 million study concluded

O

January, 1974... central demand was for

uniform national standards in measuring the-

costs of educating students in all fields, in
all kinds of institutions. Like other such
groups, it also urged targeting financial
assistance on an individual basis. Discuss-
es, e.g., differential costs of training an
engineer vs. an historian . . . reports sent to
college presidents, governors throughout the
country...
Education of Federal Government. National
Center for Educational Statistics of the
Office of Education will distribute informa-
tion to 2nyone who happens to have a
computer terminal.

Robert H. Hayes & Associates, Inc., Man-
agement Consultants to Educational Insti-
tutions

A Chicago-based consulting firm, one of a
growing number. Their reports generally
justify gross budget reductions on the
grounds, e.g:, that “significant staff reduc-
tion is. possible at most schools without

. touching the basic excellence of the institu-

tion.”.... perhaps best known for their
answer to the question, “Must colleges pay
competitive salary rates?” “We think not.
First, employees are not that motivated by
money. Second, they do not expect it. And,
third, on a cost-effectiveness basis, colleges
will get very little for their money by.increas-
ing salaries to reflect competitive salary
conditions.”

information. kept in Office -of ©

119

Q LJ Society for College and University Planning

National organization composed’ of: about
1250 university and college presidents and
other administrators involved in long-range
planning, as well as government agencies
and private consulting firms... : sponsors
_Meetings, lectures, workshops on higher
education. Maintains placement and con-
sultant services. Does study and research
projects in higher education planning’... .
concerned about continued state support for

- private as well as public colleges...Urges

private colleges to coordinate programs with
public colleges . . . held conference on the.
theme: “Academic Planning With Faculty
Without New Dollars.” -

(Task Force on Coordination, Governance,

cation ,

Created by the Education Commission of the
States, and headed by the executive vice
president of the North Carolina Agribusiness
Council . . . has called for the establishment
of one central agency in .each ‘state to
coordinate all forms of postsecondary edu-
cation, to be in charge of disbursement of
federal and state funds, and to conduct
post-audits to ensure program objectives
had been achieved. Also wants federal legis-

and the Structure of Postsecondary Edu-

“lation of guidelines for post-secondary

education.

MELTING Pots, iS THAT
© THE Boro 6&t BURNT
THE SUME ALWAYS



120

421

Going Farther: Some Suggested Reading

FOR MORE ON HIGHER EDUCATION:

David N. Smith’s Who Rules the Universities (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), is the best single book
we know of on American higher education under capitalism.

SOME INTRODUCTIONS TO HOW THE SYSTEM REALLY WORKS:

Studs Terkel. Working: People talk about what they do and how they feel about what they do. New York:
Pantheon> 1974.
Andrew Levigon. The Working Class Majority. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1974.
G. William Domhoff. Who Rules America? New York: Prentice Hall, 1967.
. The Higher Circles. New York: Prentice Hall, 1970.
Juliett Mitchell. Woman’s Estate. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
Ernest Mandel. An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory. New York: Pathfinder, 1973.
Richard C. Edwards, Michael Reich and. Thomas E. Weisskopf, eds. The Capitalist System. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972.
Andre Gorz. Socialism and Revolution. New York: Anchor, 1973.
_ Michael Tanzer. The Sick Society. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1971.
Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais. Labor’s Untold Story. New York: Cameron, 1955.
Richard Parker. The Myth of the Middle Class: Notes on Affluence and Equality. New York: Harper, 1972.
Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy. Introduction to Socialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968.
“The Food Packet,” “The Energy Packet,” and other up-to-date analyses of the current crisis can be obtained:
from the Union of Radical Political Economics (URPE), Political Education and Action Office, 133 West
14th Street, NY, NY 10011. (691-5722). .

FOR STILL DEEPER DIGGING:

Paul Baran and Paul M. Sweezy. Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968. :

David Mermelstein. Economics: Mainstream Readings and Radical Critiques. New York: Random House,
1970.

James O’Connor. The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973.

Paul M. Sweezy. The Theory of Capitalist Development. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968.

Robin Blackburn, ed. Ideology in Social Science. New York: Vintage, 1972.

Ernest Mandel. Marxist Economic Theory. New York, Monthly Review Press, 1969. .

~Howard Selsam, David Goldway, and Harry Martel, eds. Dynamics of Social Change: A Reader in Marxist. .
Social Science. New York: International, 1970. Lo -

Sheila Rowbotham. Women, Resistance and Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1972.

Harry Braverman. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1974.

Joyce Kolko. America and the Crisis of World Capitalism. Boston: Beacon, 1974.

- Philip M. Stern. The Rape of the Taxpayer. New York; Vintage, 1974.

SOME GOLDEN OLDIES:

Marx. Wage-Labour and Capital. (A short pamphlet.) New York: International Publishers, 1933.

Marx. Capital. New York: International, 1967.

Engels. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. New York: International, 1972. .

Rosa Luxemburg..The Russian Revolution & Leninism or Marxism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1961. :



Lenin. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalsim: A Popular Sutline. New York: International, 1970.
Tse-t . Selected Readings. Peking: Foreign Languages, oo ;

Nikolai Bukharin and E. Preobazhensky. The ABC of Communism. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969.

Trotsky. History of the Russian Revolution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957.

s

SOME JOURNALS AND NEWSPAPERS TO SUPPLEMENT AND/OR COUNTERACT
THE TIMES AND THE NEWS AND THE TUBE: :

et Journal is a splendid source of information on what's really going on as it is addressed to

the rultag class itself and tells it like it is far more.than does the New York Times. The Daily News, though

written in straightforward English, obscures the truth even more, precisely because it is aimed at working
people. Other capitalist organs like Fortune, Barron’s,.and Forbes are well worth examining. — lude: Month!

Socialist journals, weeklies, and papers that help make sense out of current events inc! ue . on ¥
Review, Liberation, City Star, UR (University Review), and The Guardian. Special mention shoul! | be mat le oO

the columns by Nicholas Von Hoffman in the New York Post—they are gems of penetrating analysis, written in

’ punchy and often funny language. cr !

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—___——_- Personnel Management in Higher Education. 1972. .
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424

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In addition to these books, articles, and i
; 1 , pamphlets, Newtniks ransacked past and present i
Higher Education and Oneness. The most useful, in addition to the New York Times Ore the Chfoasce
7 @ Magazine (both of which have bad politics but useful i fc i ‘a i
Teacher (the AFT paper, much of which is useless exce| i an produces py rece
n ; t for the outstanding column id )
M. Nielsen), the PSC Clarion, the CUNY Courier, The Vor j : mUSeneta) ana
; sen), : , Voice (a new journal LY
University Faculty senate er aetter: Newt also reads all of ths campus Towspance, Student Senate), and the
ity University itself published many of our sources. We pored over the Minute: i
| : Ss and P.
the BHE for Geoades rah i recently they were an invaluable source for the Oral Report of tho chen ee of
i— —¢ ines of revealing information). We also perused back files of t ,
Baie by the Chairman of the Board of Higher Education, the various Master Plans, the Ghareetone
ore get Requests, Reports of the Construction Fund, special organs like Federal Notes: News from the CUNY
4 ice of Federal Relations, local organs like the Faculty/Staff Newsletter of Queens College, and, of course
e various colleges’ catalogs. Many of these materials may be found at the City College Archives or at the

central City Universit ives. i i i i i i
read sity Archives. The Office of University Relations is a good place to begin gathering



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