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Facing Budget Cuts, CUNY May Keep Distance Learning Through "Virtual" Fall Semester
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Sophia Chang
Published May 27, 2020
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By
Sophia Chang
Published May 27, 2020
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A version of the quintessential college classroom experience may return in some form to NYU and Columbia University this fall, as both schools have indicated they plan to offer that to their students.
But that’s looking unlikely for CUNY, which was already struggling with funding before the coronavirus pandemic hit New York City.
CUNY shifted to remote learning during New York's PAUSE and has not yet officially announced what shape the fall semester will take at its 25 campuses around the city.
“Summer courses will be online. A determination about the fall has not been made pending the evolution of the COVID-19 emergency and guidance from regulatory and accreditation bodies, including the U.S. Department of Education, New York State Education Department and Middle States Commission on Higher Education, as well as consultation with university stakeholders,” said CUNY spokesperson Frank Sobrino in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
But in guidance sent to faculty and staff last week, which was shared with Gothamist, CUNY officials appeared to acknowledge that remote learning will continue for their students.
“We must continue to use the time available to us to prepare for a primarily virtual Fall 2020 in which only a small fraction of courses and support services would be offered in-person subject to strict social distancing guidelines or a Fall 2020 that could start out with a mix of teaching modalities (as in the pre-COVID-19 era), but with a significantly higher proportion of hybrid and online courses that may or may not need to be converted back to distance education in the event of a resurgence of the virus,” José Luis Cruz, CUNY’s Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost, said in a May 19th email on guidance to faculty and staff.
CUNY's sprawling system, with 25 campuses serving more than 500,000 students, received $1.9 billion in state funding and $499.8 million in city funding last year, as well as $285.7 million in federal funding. The university, anticipating spending reductions totaling more than $10 billion statewide, began laying off adjunct professors and teachers this month.
It's a different story, however, for the city’s two largest private higher learning institutions, which have started outlining their fall semester plans. NYU announced in an email to undergraduates on May 19th that the school planned "to reconvene in person, with great care, in the fall (subject to government health directives), both in New York and at our Global sites." NYU’s plans also offer students a "Go Local" option that would allow them to attend an NYU campus or affiliate site closest to where they live. The university has three degree-granting sites—New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai, and 12 other teaching satellite locations spread across the globe.
Columbia University’s president said the school year will be adapted over three semesters as a way for students to be on campus safely: “By leveraging a longer period of time, we will be able to de-densify our campus so that all students may experience much, if not most, of their coursework in person over the arc of the three terms,” Lee Bollinger announced in a message on the school’s website. “While this is just the beginning of a University-wide effort to determine the specifics of the academic year, we now have the capacity to tap into the rich expertise and creativity of our University leaders and faculty to shape the substance and content of this one-time arrangement.”
More details would be forthcoming by July 1st, Bollinger said.
The difference in what CUNY and the private universities are planning to offer go beyond setting foot in a physical classroom -- the very foundations of the educational experience are dramatically different between remote and physical learning, one education expert said. These differences are compounded for lower-income students, which CUNY has historically served as a self-proclaimed “transformative engine of social mobility that is a critical component of the lifeblood of New York City.”
“This is a huge problem. And of course, again, we really don't know what's going to happen at any of these institutions yet,” said Sandy Baum, a senior fellow for the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute, in a phone interview on Tuesday. “The evidence about online learning is that it made it very clear that the students who suffer the most, who struggle with the online coursework, are low-income students without strong academic preparation. If you know how to learn already, then you can do your courses online. But if you don't, you're really going to struggle.”
Timothy Hunter, a graduating CUNY student who is also the school’s University Student Senate Chairperson and serves as the Student Trustee on the Board of Trustees, pointed out that many CUNY students already face issues of inequity even before the pandemic hit.
“Students at CUNY are three times more likely to run out of food due to money, or due to lack of income than they were before [the pandemic]," he said in a phone interview. “There are students that attend CUNY that are undocumented, that didn't get money from the CARES Act, that didn't get any other resources, that don't know what they're going to do tomorrow for food. And that's the inequity that we're facing here at CUNY, for sure.”
Hunter and the CUNY Rising Alliance have protested planned tuition hikes, noting that “42 percent of CUNY students live in households earning less than $20,000 per year. Even before this crisis, 14 percent of CUNY undergraduates experienced homelessness in a given year, half had trouble getting enough food to eat, and more than a third said a mental health issue interfered with school.”
While the pandemic is exacerbating class divides, CUNY students have long been treated as “second-class students” with state aid diminishing by the year, said John Huntington, a professor of entertainment technology at NYC College of Technology, in an email.
“An educational caste system has been in place for decades,” he said. “Through inaction by the state, CUNY was long ago sentenced to a slow death of a thousand cuts. CUNY students, the most dedicated and amazing people I've ever known, have, due to endless 'austerity' funding, endured crumbling facilities, too much instruction by overworked and underpaid adjuncts, ever increasing bureaucratic obstacles, and a lack of basic support.”
“In my classrooms I've had sewage floods more than once, leaky roofs, equipment destroyed by emergency repair work, you name it. And if you really want to see what the state thinks of CUNY students, just look in the crumbling bathrooms. Many days we didn't have soap. Our cleaning staff are great people but they've been cut so much there's only so much they could do,” Huntington added.
“When the emergency transition online happened, a colleague at NYU posted online about how smoothly the transition had gone. I literally LOL'd. CUNY is full of fantastic, dedicated people who do everything they can for the students (and I think the administration at my college is one of the best), but the university has been beaten down and demoralized by the state for a long, long time. This pandemic ripped the scab off this wound, and I don't even think we've seen the beginning of the worst of the unfolding funding disaster,” Huntington said.
Hunter, the CUNY student, pointed out that remote learning or not some things will remain the same at the school.
“Regardless, if we go back to classes in person or not, we're going to be going back to overcrowded classes,” he said. “That's a guarantee -- you know, classes where we're probably going to have a Zoom call, and there's going to be one professor and maybe 80 students on.”
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COVID-19
coronavirus
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columbia university
Sophia Chang
Sophia Chang is a former WNYC and Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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