Crossing the Remedial Bridge: Political Economy, Contingent Labor, and Differentiation Strategies in Higher Education

Abstract

This essay analyzes the creation of a particular type of adult literacy education, the college preparation program, as part of the recent trend of structural readjustment of a large, public, urban university. This readjustment replicates a pattern of managerial response across the history of US higher education: that is, the need for institutions to differentiate that mission and respond efficiently to corporate needs and demographic shifts has often been conflated with the needs of greater numbers of students for access. Bridge programs, therefore, can legitimately be viewed as a response to the need of New York City's working-class students for greater access to higher education. However, they can also be viewed through the lens of managerial logic (like a business plan) intent on minimizing costs across the widest possible student base. In this case, the so-called CUNY crisis—and the accompanying efforts to jettison remediation and open admissions—which brought forth the need for bridge programs in the first place was self-made.