The Case for Open Admissions: New Problems—New Hopes

Abstract

old proverb says that one thing you can be sure of while being spanked is that you are not sitting down. The City University of New York is used to being spanked in public by a host of public constituencies as well as by various private bodies whose self-interest is infrequently in doubt. The university's OpenAdmissions Program has been excuse for a set of spankings, some of them reassuringly contradictory. The New York Times headlines dropout rate, and Commentary is sure that standards are doomed. Some background may help explain heat that open admissions generates. In first quarter of this century parents negotiated their children's entrance into most prestigious colleges on basis of money, blood lines and influence. While these young people, when they graduated, certainly formed an aristocracy, no one presumed to call them an aristocracy of brains. History, however, was at work. Seats in classes, buildings that enclosed them and budgets that paid for them could not keep up with population. When demand rose beyond capacity, American colleges backed into objective testing and developed all repulsive apparatus by which admissions office is allowed to specify quality of college. Colleges found that their protective reaction was indeed exercise of high virtue, and pieties of meritocratic admissions were upon us. Essential humanity must have its play, however, and higher education allowed at least one safety valve to function. Merit could be variously defined: size, speed and dexterity were upon occasion as useful as brains. So athletic entry tunnel was dug and dignified. If injunction feed my sheep was ignored in practice, another, amuse my goats, was generously honored. The City University of New York (CUNY) was no exception to this process. In 1920s earthworks around gates of colleges that now make up what is called City University were not very high; but as pressure on urban institutions grew, so did defensive machinery in admissions office. By 1960s even community colleges, newest units in City University, demanded an 80 percent high school record for admission. Conscience so made counters of us all, and Harvard of proletariat had developed a comfortably shrewd eye for sorting and picking proles. In great tradition of Western literature, universities with all their works and pomp have been a source of fun. They were useful in training certain professionalsdoctors, lawyers and clergywho frequently were spoofed by writers of comedy. But no kingdom allowed its serious businessgovernment, war, commerce and landto depend on solemn qualifications granted by degrees and titles. No one could speak of the knowledge industry, and no sensible vintner or merchant looked to university to supply him with anything but headaches. If today's universities had as little to offer business of republic as they had 200 years ago, there would be little public pressure on them indeed. But two things have changed all that: credentialism has escalated far more wildly in America than in Europe, and universities have slavishly become screening bureaus for every corporate and government agency in nation. Not that anyone has established a logical nexus between a bachelor's degree in history and hosiery business, or training in anthropology or mathematics for work in beer, bagels or broadcasting. But sorting American universities do is a reality for most American youngsters, and there's nothing comic about its impact. In addition to keeping nation's culture, colleges also keep keys to its treasure chests. Thus pressure on students to get TIMOTHY S. HEALY is vice-chancellor for academic affairs of City University of New York.