Assault on City University

Public higher education is under attack, and nowhere is this more evident than at the City University of New York. Many of CUNY’s 213,000 students are poor. Most are minority and more than a few are on public assistance. The faculty is largely liberal and far more used to looking to government than to the private sector and the alumni for support. In the Gingrich-Pataki- Giuliani era, this leaves the university without many friends.

Few institutions have as distinguished a place in American intellectual history as the colleges of the City University. None have been as closely associated with traditions of working-class upward mobility. CUNY colleges have produced twelve Nobel laureates and more CEOs than any other university...