Testimony of Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost Alexandra Logue, Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Peter Jordan, and Vice Chancellor for Community Colleges Eduardo Marti

On December 14, 2010, the New York State Assembly Committee on Higher Education held a hearing titled "From Access to Success: Closing the College Achievement Gap." Below is the testimony that was presented by Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost Alexandra W. Logue, Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Peter G. Jordan, and Vice Chancellor for Community Colleges Eduardo Marti.

New York State Assembly Committee on Higher Education

“From Access to Success: Closing the College Achievement Gap” - December 14, 2010

EVC LOGUE: 

Good morning, Chairwoman Glick and members of the Committee on Higher Education.  I am Lexa Logue, executive vice chancellor and university provost of The City University of New York.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about student retention, academic achievement, and degree completion.

I am pleased to be joined this morning by two CUNY colleagues who will speak to these issues from their many years of higher education experience.  Vice Chancellor for Community Colleges Eduardo Martí has served as president of several community colleges, totaling more than 25 years, most recently for CUNY’s Queensborough Community College.  He was also president of two SUNY community colleges, Corning Community College and Tompkins Cortland Community College. 

I am also joined by Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Peter Jordan, who has served in this capacity since September 2009.  Prior to that, since 2004, he served as vice president of enrollment management and student development at LaGuardia Community College, and he has held senior positions in enrollment, admissions, and student affairs at other institutions.  Interim Vice Chancellor Jordan oversees counseling, career services, child care, and student health, among other areas, as well as a variety of CUNY’s special programs, including SEEK, College Discovery, and the Black Male Initiative.

Let me begin by emphasizing that raising retention and graduation rates is of the highest priority at the University.  We are deeply invested in our students’ success—and that means graduating with a degree.  As Chancellor Goldstein has said many times, a degree matters.  Degree recipients earn more, have better health and better housing, and participate more in their communities. 

More and more students understand the importance of earning a college degree.  CUNY is experiencing record enrollments, serving 262,000 students, a 34 percent increase in just the past 10 years.  We are passionate about supporting each student’s educational aspirations and progress.  At the same time, we are challenged to achieve that goal while facing large budget cuts over the last three years.

Let me offer a snapshot of our current situation with regard to student success.  In CUNY’s baccalaureate programs, offered at our senior colleges, the average six-year graduation rate for fall 2009 was just over 47 percent.  Although still too low, this represents a significant increase of 16 percentage points over the last decade.  Nationally, the graduation rate for public, urban, four-year institutions is 53 percent.  The one-year retention rate for CUNY’s baccalaureate programs has also seen an increase over the last 10 years, from 80 percent to 85 percent.

These increases reflect the University’s focused work to raise standards across its baccalaureate programs.  At our senior colleges, where enrollment tops 171,000, students now enrolling are better prepared for college-level work.  Since 2002, SAT scores for CUNY first-time freshmen have increased by 94 points on average at our top-tier senior colleges.  The fall 2010 scores represent the third year in a row of annual increases for combined SAT math and critical reading, a key indicator that more talented students are choosing CUNY.  Leading this record of achievement is the Macaulay Honors College, where the average SAT score was 1373, an increase of 19 points over last year.

The situation at CUNY’s community colleges, which now serve more than 90,000 degree-seeking students, is quite different.  These students are usually less prepared than senior-college entrants for college-level work.  In fall 2010, about 74 percent of New York City public high school graduates who entered CUNY’s community colleges needed remediation in at least one subject.  

Currently, in our community-college associate programs, the system-wide three-year graduation rate is 13 percent.  This includes students who have earned a degree from any CUNY college within three years of entry.  Nationally, the three-year graduation rate for public, urban, two-year institutions is 16 percent. The most recent CUNY one-year retention rate is 68 percent.

As you know, there is variation in graduation rates among every student body.  In particular, both at CUNY and nationwide, students of color are less likely to graduate with a degree.  This performance gap is of great concern throughout higher education. CUNY is one of 24 systems nationwide participating in the Access to Success initiative.  Each participating system has set improvement targets in order to cut the college-going and graduation gaps for low-income and minority students in half by 2015.

CUNY also includes the goal of reducing performance gaps as part of its annual Performance Management Process, an evaluation system that measures campuses’ performance in meeting a number of educational goals.  CUNY presidents are held accountable for reducing performance gaps among students from under-represented groups.  More generally, increasing overall retention and graduation rates is one of the most important parts of CUNY’s annual Performance Management Process.  Nevertheless, retention and graduation rates have not increased at our community colleges over the past decade.

CUNY has taken a lead in asking fundamental questions about improving retention and graduation rates: Why is it that more students do not graduate?  And what can we do about it?  The reasons are many, and complex—as are the solutions, particularly at an institution as large and diverse as CUNY. 

We know that inadequate preparation, financial pressures, family obligations, work schedules, and even a lack of information are factors affecting many students’ persistence toward a degree.  At CUNY’s community colleges, for example, almost half of the students are first-generation college attendees.  About 46 percent of students report that their first language is not English.  Three-quarters come from families earning $40,000 or less.  And three out of five community-college students are women.  So the availability of focused advisement, language programs, financial aid, and child care, among other assistance, is critically important to students’ ability to pursue and attain a degree.

CUNY is addressing these needs in a number of ways, and Interim Vice Chancellor Jordan and Vice Chancellor Martí will discuss several of our initiatives.  As an example, let me mention the CUNY Language Immersion Program, or CLIP.  More than 40 percent of CUNY’s students are immigrants, often highly motivated and academically promising students.  Many enter the University with rudimentary English and need to build their academic English language skills.  In response, CLIP provides intensive English language instruction to over 3,500 students a year.  CLIP has been shown to raise students’ test scores, helping immigrant students enter CUNY with strengthened English language skills.  CLIP students pay a small out-of-pocket fee, enabling them to save their financial aid allocation for credit-bearing courses leading to graduation.

Of course, the availability of financial aid is also critical to students’ ability to complete their studies.  Many CUNY students qualify for the state’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) and for federal Pell Grants.  In 2008-09, about 67,000 CUNY students received a total of $178 million in TAP awards. Through the federal Pell Grant program, which students can access in addition to TAP funding, about 127,000 CUNY students received more than $490 million in grants in 2009-10. In addition, federal work-study awards, earned through part-time employment, are available to students.  In 2009-10, over 11,600 CUNY undergraduates received federal work-study awards. 

In addition, for some students, particularly those who work or serve as caregivers, online options can offer greater time and location flexibility.  CUNY is working to greatly increase the number of hybrid courses, a blended combination of classroom and online learning.  Research has shown enhanced learning outcomes for students who engage in blended learning, as compared with those whose coursework takes place either only face-to-face or only online. 

Another approach shown to increase student engagement and success is involving students in research opportunities.  Part of the mission of CUNY’s Decade of Science initiative is to foster greater student participation in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).  Starting in 2005, we have hired cutting-edge researchers, increased funding to doctoral students, and are building and upgrading science facilities, including a CUNY Advanced Science Research Center at City College.  We are encouraging undergraduates, particularly women and minorities, to study in the STEM fields and take advantage of hands-on learning experiences. Since 2005, CUNY has seen enrollments in these disciplines increase by more than 27 percent for women and more than 31 percent for underrepresented minorities.

Although many factors affect student performance, one essential reason for students’ lack of success in college is the disconnect between entering students’ skill levels and what is expected of them in college.  The large number of students entering our community colleges who need remediation indicates the scale of this problem.  One well-known researcher put it this way: “The academic intensity of the student’s high school curriculum still counts more than anything else…in providing momentum toward completing a bachelor’s degree.”  Success in college does not start the first day of your freshman year.  It starts long before that.  Last week’s reports of our country’s less-than-stellar results on the PISA tests—the Program for International Student Assessment—taken by 15-year-olds in math, reading, and science, demonstrate the need to prioritize academic standards and performance from the earliest grades.

That is why CUNY has for years been deeply engaged in joint initiatives with the NYC Department of Education (DOE).  What happens in the public schools invariably affects what happens at CUNY.  Our College Now program is the largest urban dual enrollment program in the country, involving all 17 CUNY colleges and more than 350 New York City public high schools.  In College Now, students take credit-bearing college courses while still in high school.  In 2009-10, there were 20,000 students taking one or more courses in this program. Several studies, including one conducted for the U.S. Office of Vocational and Adult Education, have found that College Now is associated with increased attendance and improved success as measured by freshman students’ grade point averages and credit accumulation.

CUNY has also developed freshman-year transition programs.  For example, the University Skills Immersion Program (USIP) provides tuition-free developmental courses at all 17 undergraduate campuses for prospective students or freshmen who have not passed a CUNY basic skills assessment in reading, writing, and/or mathematics. USIP enrollment has grown steadily since its inception in 1985, and summer 2009 and January 2010 enrollment reached nearly 21,000 students. Few programs are more critical to making access meaningful, because students must pass proficiency tests to advance to college-level classes. In a recent analysis, USIP was found to be associated with statistically significant and sizable benefits to undergraduates in terms of earning cumulative credits, reducing chances for dropping out, and increasing graduation rates. Additionally, an analysis of students who participated in both College Now and USIP highlights the potential impact of simultaneous innovations. Students who participated in both programs and entered CUNY in fall 2008 demonstrated greater first-semester GPAs, credits earned, and third-semester persistence than those who participated in only USIP or College Now alone.

The chancellors of CUNY and the DOE extended the systems’ partnership in December 2008 through the creation of a joint College Readiness and Success working group. This work grew into the Graduate NYC! College Readiness and Success Initiative, which recently received a significant grant from the Gates Foundation and the National League of Cities.  This funding will enable us to intensify our work to increase the numbers of DOE graduates prepared for college, and will therefore also increase retention and graduation rates at CUNY.  Our work with the DOE will focus on several key goals, including helping students avoid the need for remediation by taking “catch-up” courses in high school; increasing students’ understanding of what is required to begin college without remediation; increasing opportunities for students to participate in transitional programs; improving training for college advisors; and accelerating students’ progress toward college degree completion.

We are also poised to launch a new phase of our ongoing Graduate NYC! work to bring together senior leaders from around the city to address issues related to college readiness.  Cross-functional teams will focus specifically on high school preparation in math, reading, and writing; developing increased support for completing financial aid applications; and expanding our ability to track students from high school into college to pinpoint the most effective support mechanisms. 

These efforts are possible in large part because CUNY has created very effective databases to inform and evaluate its initiatives.  The CUNY Office of Institutional Research and Assessment maintains an Institutional Research Database (IRDB) that allows for tracking student progress throughout the CUNY system from application to graduation. The IRDB integrates data from all CUNY colleges, including detailed information on high school preparation, SAT and assessment tests, student transcripts, and data on enrollment, retention, financial aid received, and degrees conferred. CUNY routinely draws upon the IRDB to design, evaluate, and improve programs.

The IRDB is also a critical tool in CUNY’s participation in the current initiative to expand New York State’s data system to encompass P-20 longitudinal data, an initiative for which we are very grateful.  The P-20 data system will identify very early whether students are on track to succeed in school, will help teachers and school leaders improve instruction and school climate, and will identify best practices and models of excellence that can be replicated statewide.

In addition to giving attention to rigorously preparing students before college, CUNY has also focused on innovative practices that can increase retention and graduation rates for those entering the University.  A particularly promising initiative is ASAP, which stands for Accelerated Study in Associate Programs.  ASAP was created in partnership with the New York City Center for Economic Opportunity.  It began in 2007 with just over 1,000 skills-proficient students and is now under way at all six CUNY community colleges.

The program is designed to create clear pathways to degree completion.  We know that entering college can be confusing.  Many students may not have developed strong study habits or may have few experienced family members and friends to whom they can turn for counsel.  In addition, many students’ education is often competing for their time against their very real need to earn a living—to pay bills and to support and care for a family.  We knew that the ASAP initiative had to address these barriers and create clear pathways to degree completion.

To that end, ASAP students receive financial supports, such as tuition waivers for eligible students and free monthly Metrocards and use of textbooks.  In addition, ASAP students agree to attend full-time in order to immerse themselves in the academic material.  They are grouped together in cohorts to take small, coordinated classes (learning communities) in convenient scheduling blocks, in order to better concentrate their time, including any time they may spend working at jobs, develop a support network, and complete their assignments.  All of them receive comprehensive academic, advisement, and career development services. 

Our goal for ASAP is a three-year graduation rate of 50 percent.  And our first results are even better: 55 percent of the 2007 ASAP cohort graduated in three years.  A comparative group at CUNY—that is, students with the same academic profile as the ASAP students but who did not participate in ASAP—had a graduation rate of 24 percent in that same three-year time period.  So ASAP has been associated with a more than doubling of the graduation rate.

The results of the ASAP initiative thus far seem to indicate that intensifying a full range of support services and structures—financial aid, scheduling, advisement, class size, peer support, attendance time—has an extremely positive effect on retention and graduation.  The lessons that we are learning from the ASAP initiative are informing an even more ambitious CUNY project: the development of a new community college in Manhattan, expected to open in 2012.

Our work on the new community college is well under way and is focused on how we can re-imagine community-college education in order to improve students’ graduation rates and their career prospects.  This includes some significant departures from the traditional college structure—such as required pre-college information sessions, required full-time enrollment in the first year, a common first-year curriculum, college-wide learning communities, an Office of Partnerships to establish employer relationships, and a single, college-wide theme centered on sustaining a thriving New York City.  All of these components address our overall imperative: to engage students even before the first day of class, and every day after that, in order to help them achieve real proficiency—and a degree.

Our work on the new community college has garnered generous grants and sustained interest from the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.  Our founding president begins in January.  Dr. Scott Evenbeck is a professor of psychology and dean of University College at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, and a prominent expert on education assessment and initiatives to boost student success.  In addition, faculty members in several key disciplines and several staff have been hired. 

Clearly all of these CUNY initiatives are dependent on our having excellent data to guide our choices.  However, CUNY does not stop at just using data; we are generating data.  Not satisfied with the available research data, we are generating our own data of the most rigorous sort.  We are conducting several dozen studies using quasi-experimental and experimental designs in order to identify the factors that influence student success.  For example, at three of our colleges, in collaboration with the Ithaka organization, we are conducting a comparison of learning outcomes and cost of two versions of introductory statistics:  one taught online and the other face-to-face.  Students are being randomly assigned to one of the two versions so that the only difference between the students taking the two versions is the course modality.  In this way we can determine with a high degree of certainty the causal effects of course modality, something that even modern statistical techniques such as propensity score matching and regression discontinuity cannot do with nonexperimental data.  The results of our experiment on the teaching of statistics will inform how we should teach quantitative courses—how we can best make use of our resources to the benefit of our students and of our University.

I have only touched on the many initiatives, programs, and efforts CUNY is employing to help students succeed.  But I would be remiss if I did not state the obvious: they are all dependent on the availability of resources.  As resources continue to shrink, we are increasingly challenged to provide students with the academic programs and services that truly support their persistence toward a degree.  As CUNY’s chief academic officer, I can tell you that the work we are doing—whether partnering with the DOE, developing new interventions, or creating a new college—represents the very core of our educational mission.  That core must be protected. 

The University has sustained significant budget reductions over the past few years. At the senior colleges, funding has been reduced by $205 million over the past three years. At the community colleges, state per FTE aid has been reduced by $415 over the last two fiscal years, resulting in a loss of approximately $29 million to our community colleges.

In fiscal year 2010, the University spent over $45 million in programs and services such as SEEK, College Discovery, ASAP, academic advising, tutoring, freshman programs to help students make the adjustment to college, counseling, and other numerous academic and support activities that are all in place to assist students in achieving success. CUNY also spends approximately $12.5 million on collaborative programs with the NYC Department of Education and on English Language Immersion Programs to help prepare students for success in college before they even enroll.  Finally, CUNY spends over $30 million a year in providing remediation for students who enter CUNY but are not prepared for college-level work in all areas.

The University has submitted its 2011-2012 budget request to both the state and city. Our top priority continues to be full-time faculty. Student success depends on a talented and committed faculty. The University has created hundreds of new faculty positions over the last few years, but still finds itself struggling to keep up with the pace of enrollment growth. For CUNY to make progress toward its goal of building a full-time faculty large enough to teach 70 percent of instruction, it must further increase the pace of faculty hiring. Faculty renewal requires major investment each year because our student population has experienced record-breaking growth.

CUNY’s success is the state’s success.  The state depends on the educated workforce that CUNY provides.  Three years after graduating, 92 percent of our baccalaureate graduates are employed or continuing their education, and six months after graduating, 94 percent of our associate degree recipients are employed or continuing their education.  A nearly three-decade sampling of graduates found that 85 percent of CUNY graduates remained in New York State.  The University is a significant contributor to New York’s well-being, as demonstrated in the summary attached to my testimony, which indicates CUNY’s impact on the New York City labor market.

Chairwoman Glick and members of the committee, your ongoing support is, as always, very much appreciated, and we look forward to continuing to work in partnership with you to help every student succeed in earning a degree. 

I will now ask Interim Vice Chancellor Jordan to offer additional perspectives.

IVC JORDAN:

Good morning, Chairwoman Glick and members of the Committee on Higher Education. I am Peter Grant Jordan, interim vice chancellor for student affairs at The City University of New York (CUNY). I appreciate this opportunity to thank you personally for your ongoing support of the students, faculty and administrators of The City University of New York, and to share with you what CUNY is doing to address student retention, academic achievement and degree completion.

To begin, I want to discuss three CUNY opportunity programs that promote access to higher education and academic achievement for underrepresented groups. These programs include: SEEK and College Discovery, the CUNY Black Male Initiative (BMI), and CUNY LEADS. Each of these programs recruits and supports underrepresented students to ensure their academic achievement, persistence and graduation.  

SEEK/CD

The SEEK program, which, thanks to the Assembly’s efforts, was recently renamed in honor of the late Percy Sutton, operates on our 11 senior college campuses, and its companion, the College Discovery (CD) program, exists at our six community colleges. As you know, opportunity programs such as SEEK and CD were created in the mid-1960s to provide access to higher education for underrepresented groups, including low-income and minority students. Admission to these programs is based on two criteria—low family income and high school academic performance below the standards of the college to which the student applied. Across CUNY, SEEK enrollments currently stand at almost 9,000 students, and CD enrollments total nearly 3,000 students. Together, these figures represent a six percent increase over the 2009-10 academic year. 

At CUNY, the SEEK and CD programs boast a long history of employing best practices and providing a safety net for students during their undergraduate careers.  These programs focus on the kind of engagement that researchers have found contributes to student success, including academic support services, comprehensive counseling, and enhanced financial aid support. Each student is required to attend a pre-freshman summer program, enroll full-time, meet with counselors regularly, and to participate in tutoring and skills development workshops. SEEK and CD students often characterize these programs as a “home away from home,” where they are challenged and nurtured.

Let me share some of the student outcomes produced by the CUNY SEEK and CD programs.  SEEK and CD students consistently perform as well as regularly admitted students. Eighty percent of incoming SEEK freshmen earn GPAs of 2.0 or higher compared to 81 percent of other freshmen. Seventy percent of CD freshmen earn GPAs of 2.0 or higher compared to 68 percent of regularly admitted freshmen. The first-year retention rate for CD students is 10 percentage points higher (73 percent vs. 63 percent) than for other students, and almost level (80 percent vs. 81 percent) for SEEK freshmen. The closing of the retention gap in baccalaureate programs is particularly noteworthy as retention and graduation rates traditionally have been lower in SEEK.  SEEK graduation rates have increased by 19 percent since 1995.

These data indicate the value of our SEEK and CD programs in promoting access, fostering student success, and helping to close the academic achievement gap for underrepresented and low income students. At CUNY, we are grateful for the ongoing commitment that this committee and the Assembly have demonstrated on behalf of the SEEK program.

CUNY LEADS

Another important program, CUNY LEADS, which stands for CUNY Linking Employment, Academics, and Disability Services, addresses the needs of the University’s 9,000 students with disabilities. CUNY LEADS provides academic support, career development, and job placement services to improve student retention, graduation, and competitive employment.  In the same way that SEEK and CD serve as a “home away from home” for students, LEADS is a haven for students with disabilities. This program enrolls almost one-quarter of all of the postsecondary students with disabilities in New York State. CUNY LEADS’ individualized, holistic approach has resulted in unprecedented success for students who are generally regarded as an at-risk population.

At the end of the 2009-2010 academic year, 1,918 CUNY students with disabilities from 17 campuses were participating in the LEADS Program. This is a 32 percent increase in this academic year alone. Participants have an 86 percent retention rate and overwhelmingly intend to pursue advanced degrees, which will lead to even higher paid employment. Job-ready CUNY LEADS participants had a 71 percent employment rate compared to the 56 percent national employment rate for people with disabilities. These CUNY LEADS participants earned starting salaries that were 37 percent higher than comparable Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities (VESID) clients.

The CUNY LEADS program also offers a tremendous return on investment for New York State. A projected investment of $10,473 to develop and place a CUNY LEADS student in competitive employment saves New York State approximately $14,312 per year in disability benefits. Over the course of a 30-year work history, this represents a total savings of $418,222 in NYS disability benefits alone for each LEADS job placement. Further, a six-year investment of $12.4 million is projected to return more than $25 million to the state. This innovative support program is crucial to helping individuals with disabilities compete for jobs in the face of a staggering 44 percent unemployment rate and 80 percent jobless rate among New Yorkers with disabilities.

Unfortunately, the initial CUNY LEADS funding provided by the New York State legislature sunset on July 30, 2010. In spite of our best efforts, we were unable to get the support of the Assembly to continue funding for this program. Again, we appeal to you, Chairwoman Glick and members of the committee, to honor our budget request to renew funding for CUNY LEADS in the next fiscal year.   

CUNY BMI

Finally, through CUNY’s Black Male Initiative (BMI), the University and its colleges have been actively pursuing ways to increase and support the inclusion and educational success of under-represented groups in higher education, particularly Black and Latino men.  In 2004, Chancellor Goldstein charged a CUNY task force to examine the enrollment and retention of Black male students across CUNY. In fall 2005, the task force issued its report, and the CUNY BMI was established with major funding from the New York City Council, funding that has averaged $2.2 million over the last six years. In addition, our efforts have generated over $750,000 in foundation and corporate support from entities such as the Schott Foundation for Public Education, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation.

Today, this generous support allows the CUNY BMI to fund 27 projects across the University that enable our campuses to support academic tutoring and workshops, GED completion projects, structured mentoring, and targeted conferences, among other activities.  University-wide, the BMI Teacher as Leader Project (TALP) aims to increase the number of public-school teachers from under-represented groups, and another BMI partnership offers free summer SAT preparation classes for underserved students.  These projects engage over 1,000 enrolled CUNY students and reach over 5,000 prospective students each year.

Two CUNY BMI-supported GED projects, The Educational Ladders Initiative at Medgar Evers College and the CUNY Adult Literacy GED programs offer GED students structured mentoring and instruction. Last year, 306 students were served by the Medgar Evers College Educational Ladders Initiative, which reported GED pass rates of 90 percent and 76 percent for the first and second cycles, respectively.  In addition, the CUNY Adult Literacy GED Projects, in the Adult Learning Centers at Brooklyn College and Lehman College, served 370 students.

Since 2005, application, enrollment, retention and graduation rates for Black and Latino male students have seen a marked improvement. Of note, the number of first-time freshman applications from Black and Latino male students has increased by almost half. Overall enrollments have also increased by 15% for Black male students and 38% for Latinos. During this time, retention rates for Black and Latino male students have also shown some improvement. While six-year graduation rate data are not available for the same period, the trend in total degrees granted to Black and Latino male students at CUNY also shows improvement. The total number of degrees conferred to Black and Latino male students between the 2005-06 and 2008-09 academic years grew 3 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

In closing, Chairwoman Glick, I want to point out another general student service we provide to CUNY students that is crucial to their enrollment and success, and that could benefit from your support and the support of members of this committee. Child care is a vital component in ensuring the success of CUNY students while they are enrolled in college.  CUNY has 19 child care centers that currently serve almost 1,200 student-parents and enroll nearly 1,500 children ranging in ages from 2 to 12 years old.

The University’s goal is to make child care available to meet students’ individual needs, including services to children of various ages and service on weekends and evenings, if needed. Currently, all of CUNY’s senior and community colleges offer access to child care, including access for many single mothers who would not be able to attend college without affordable, quality child care. The fact is our students need more of these services than we can provide currently.  Unfortunately, our child-care programs received a $750,000 reduction in this year’s state budget.  This has had a terribly detrimental effect on our ability to meet our students’ child-care needs.

Clearly, Chairwoman Glick, significant work remains, not only to improve on student access and success at CUNY, but also to sustain the significant gains we have made as a university.  On behalf of CUNY students, especially those who are served by our SEEK, CUNY LEADS and child care programs, I want to express our gratitude to this committee for your timely and well-placed focus on the issue of access and student success in higher education. I assure you that we remain committed to improving outcomes for all our students. We encourage and ask for your ongoing support to ensure funding for the activities we know advance the best outcomes for our students. Thank you.

VC MARTI:

Good morning. My name is Eduardo Marti, and I serve The City University of New York as the vice chancellor for community colleges. It is my pleasure represent our six (soon to be seven) community colleges that, with over 1,200 faculty members, serve over 90,000 students.  

First, permit me to express my deep gratitude and respect for all of your support over the years. You have always been a friend of higher education in our state and of CUNY in particular. You have always supported the community colleges. Now, in these difficult economic times, we need your help more than ever.  Community colleges are economic engines that through education and training put New Yorkers to work. As you are well aware, an investment in these colleges is an investment in the future of our state.

My testimony today is focused on the emphasis that CUNY is placing on access, community college retention, academic achievement and degree completion. 

To begin, an overall comment: Access has been preserved at CUNY.  Even as our enrollment has surged, the quality of our educational services has been maintained.  Nevertheless, as Executive Vice Chancellor Logue indicated, we are not satisfied with our low graduation rates. These rates suggest that a great deal of attention must be placed on factors that may impact the retention and graduation rates, and we are giving these matters that necessary attention.

In addition to the various initiatives that you have already heard about, the University is looking carefully at the many programs that have yielded success at the community colleges. We recognize that the open admissions environment requires us to provide extraordinary academic and student support services. To that end, we seek to scale up aspects of successful programs to benefit all students.

Let us begin with remedial education. Although it is necessary to preserve access to higher education for those who are underprepared, remediation must be improved. Imagine, for a moment, a student who has struggled academically and finally graduates from a New York State high school. Imagine that upon entrance to a community college, this student discovers that he or she does not, in fact, possess the skills necessary to take college-level courses.  Similarly, imagine a student who tries hard to complete remedial requirements only to find that he or she has not yet managed to fulfill them. Imagine this same student in his or her life outside the classroom, facing financial difficulties and family problems.  It is no wonder that so many students take so long to complete their college degrees, and, indeed, that so many never finish at all. In many ways, those who emerge from the remedial experience on the other side are academic heroes. They are resilient ones. We owe these students all of the support that is necessary to ensure their success.

In the area of remediation, the data are clear:  the greater the intervention, the greater the success. For example, students who participated in an immersion program last summer improved their scores on the basic skills reading test by 12.8 points, on arithmetic by 18.3 points, and on algebra by 19.3 points. The University is looking for ways to ensure that many more, if not all, students who need remedial courses take these courses in summer immersion or, at the very least, as early and intensively as possible during their first and second semesters.   

Many programs are successful, but I will begin with one that is dear to my heart because it began while I was president of Queensborough: our Freshman Academies, which Chairwoman Glick may recall from her visit to the campus.  This program has increased the fall-to-fall retention rate of our students from 65.8 percent in 2006 to 71.4 percent in 2010.

Here is how the program works: Freshmen are accepted through one of six academies. Similar to the ASAP initiative, we rely on additional student managers, called freshman coordinators, to work with the 1,500 full-time freshmen. Unfortunately, we have not had sufficient funding to require participation by all part-time students, although they are welcome to participate.  

We provide five high-impact activities: learning communities, service-learning, e-portfolios, capstone courses and writing-intensive courses. We mandate a two-day freshman orientation and a course that introduces students to college life. The result: improved engagement across the board as measured by the Community College Survey of Student Engagement and improved retention as measured by our Performance Management Program.

Every community college in CUNY is looking at how to improve retention and graduation rates. For example, Kingsborough Community College is a national leader in the use of learning communities. Significantly, Kingsborough has increased retention rates by over five percent in three years. Learning-community models vary, but at a minimum, they support entering students by employing block scheduling. Kingsborough developed the first and most comprehensive model, and Queensborough has used it in the Freshman Academies.

Kingsborough has expanded its model to launch a freshman learning community specifically for English-language learners and a career-focused community for second-semester students. Both Kingsborough and Queensborough have been the subjects of a random-assignment evaluation study by the prominent MDRC research organization. Indeed, the research demonstrated that students in learning communities consider themselves to be more integrated and engaged than those in a control group. Students in learning communities attempted and passed more courses, earned more credits during their first semester, and were more likely to take and pass required reading and writing skills-assessment examinations.

With funding from a federal FIPSE grant, Kingsborough also launched a comprehensive set of institutional changes that restructured the student experience from intake to completion. Beyond the implementation of learning communities for all first-year students, elements include changes in registration procedures, student services coordinated with faculty and other parts of the college, and other interventions. Results have been impressive thus far, as Kingsborough’s six-year graduation rate has risen from 24.9 percent for the cohort entering in 1999 to 34.5 percent for the 2003 entering cohort. Kingsborough has now become a national leader, not only by implementing such an institutional shift, but also by sharing its approach with colleges across the country.

Turning to LaGuardia Community College, we see that in addition to outstanding programs designed to enhance retention rates, the college has become a national leader in the use of Electronic Student Portfolio (ePortfolio), engaging more than 38,000 students since 2005. Evaluation data have shown that students in ePortfolio-enriched courses are more likely than their peers to be highly engaged in learning and more likely to pass their courses and earn a higher GPA. The second-semester retention rate for all students in ePortfolio-intensive courses in spring 2009 was 78.3, nearly six percentage points higher than the college-wide rate. From 2008 to 2010, LaGuardia trained 30 colleges in the New York City area to launch ePortfolio programs. Two new grants announced in September 2010, totaling $4.4 million, will expand LaGuardia’s leadership in this area nationally. 

Another area in which CUNY’s community colleges are focusing their efforts to improve retention involves academic advisement. Here, I am speaking primarily of Borough of Manhattan (BMCC), Hostos Community College, and Bronx Community College (BCC).

Funded by a $2.4 million grant under the Title V initiative, BMCC launched a program to support liberal arts majors by training faculty members in advisement. The program has shown early success in increasing retention rates by 6 percent to 14 percent (depending on the cohort).

Hostos has enhanced advisement and tutoring through the college’s Math Lab Hour, E-Tutoring, and the Virtual Hostos Academic Learning Center, and by providing tutoring in the winter intersession and during the summer. In 2009-10, Hostos provided over 30,000 tutorial sessions.

Bronx Community College has developed a series of electronic tools and communication systems that include: (1) an information-driven advisement management program, with every student assigned to an advisor who has access to updates on daily attendance, course performance, and basic skills progress; (2) an electronic contact management program, with e-alerts automatically sent to students and advisors regarding at-risk signals such as absences and low mid-term grades; and (3) a course section auditor, which identifies and alerts students who have erroneously registered for courses without the appropriate pre-requisite skills and/or courses. During the first year that the e-advisement tools were implemented for the entire student population, BCC’s one-year retention rate for first-time, full-time students increased from 61 percent to 65 percent, a gain that was sustained the next year.

As all of these innovations suggest, CUNY has made strides in integrating technology to improve student success. The CUNY Office of Policy Research has developed sophisticated models of risk factors, drawing on the University’s rich data resources.  Several CUNY community colleges have implemented Early Alert Systems to identify students encountering academic difficulty in their course work and quickly refer them to support services. In an initiative focused on STEM majors, Queensborough Community College won a $250,000 IBM grant to develop early alert software, with a pilot project to be completed this semester that holds great promise for scale up at Queensborough and other colleges.

I would be remiss if I did not highlight the importance of CUNY’s faculty to our students’ success. Tenure-track faculty at CUNY’s community colleges must hold a Ph.D. for appointment as Assistant Professor. Increasingly, these faculty are engaged in pedagogical research as well as in discipline-based scholarship. This year, CUNY’s vice chancellor for research is offering seed funding for projects focusing on pedagogical research at the community colleges. The resulting work, which will hopefully attract even larger external grants, will enhance the essential efforts to re-imagine community college teaching and learning.

In closing, I wish to emphasize the tremendous opportunity that this University offers. Some have said that New York City is a port of entry into the American way of life. If that is so, CUNY is a launching pad into full citizenship, a citizenship based on good communication skills, historical context, critical thinking; in short, an education. We provide entry into a University that offers a pathway from the Open Admissions community college to the Ph.D. We welcome students from where they are, and take them to where they want to go. I am reminded, again, how proud I am to see how many elected officials are alumni of our great University.

It is clear that innovative practices are under way at CUNY.  Chancellor Goldstein and his administration are committed to providing the best public education possible to all New Yorkers. While our presidents are succeeding in garnering federal and private assistance to meet the needs of our colleges, it is important that this committee and this legislature stand with us to ensure that we maintain the high quality of education at our public universities.  Academic and student support are expensive, but they are an imperative to maintain access and quality. Therefore, we appeal to you to help restore the cuts that the University has sustained to basic aid and the cuts to TAP, and to ensure full funding of our ever-increasing enrollment. Please help us help our students. Thank you very much.

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