[CBW_Exec] Fwd: response to "UC Admissions Changes Align withStateStrategic Higher Education Plan."

[Adams, Peter]

Great letter, Susan.  Unfortunately this seems to be a national trend.  Rebecca mentioned similar moves in California.  And, of course, CUNY relegated basic writing to its community colleges several years ago.  And I believe Florida and Michigan have done the same.  Anyone know?  Here in Maryland the trend is more subtle.  There is not legislation restricting basic writing to community colleges, but it is happening nevertheless.  As four-year schools raise their admissions standards, they reduce the number of basic writing courses they need.  At least in Cincinnati, there are still options at four-year schools for basic writers.  I fear the trend is to send them all to community colleges.

Does anyone know of a published study of this trend?  All I know is anecdotal.

Initially, I objected to this trend because it simply added to the stigma associated with community colleges.  But I am coming to see a second and more important negative outcome.  At community colleges, where we teach 15 credit loads each semester, there is little time for and almost no support for research and scholarship.  If basic writing increasingly shifts to community colleges, there will be less and less scholarship in this important area.  

Perhaps a partial solution would be for community colleges to start offering a number of "research positions" for which the faculty member would teach only 15 credits per year and would conduct research during the other half of their time.  
 

Peter

Peter Adams | Director of Accelerated Learning
Department of English
Community College Baltimore County
443•710•1852 | padams2 at ccbcmd.edu



-----Original Message-----
From: cbw_exec-bounces at tamu-commerce.edu on behalf of Rebecca Mlynarczyk
Sent: Fri 8/14/2009 11:04 AM
To: Conference of Basic Writing Executive Board
Subject: Re: [CBW_Exec] Fwd: response to "UC Admissions Changes Align withStateStrategic Higher Education Plan."
 
Dear Susan,
I just want to reinforce Hannah's and Deborah's positive responses to your
letter. It does a good job of exposing the underlying motivation of the UC
decision. Like Deborah, I hope the letter will reach a wider audience. As we
have heard recently on this list, something very similar is happening in
California and many other parts of the U.S.

Thanks for keeping us informed.

Rebecca

Rebecca Mlynarczyk
Professor of English, Kingsborough Community College & the Graduate Center,
CUNY
Co-Editor, *Journal of Basic Writing*

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 8:12 AM, Ashley, Hannah <HAshley at wcupa.edu> wrote:

> Susan--This is an understatement, but I just wanted to say how important it
> is that such a dramatic change not go unnoticed.  An impressive letter.
>
> Hannah
>
> Hannah Ashley, Ph. D.
> Associate Professor, Composition and Rhetoric Program, Department of
> English
> Director, Writing Zones 12.5 (www.wcupa.edu/writingzones)
> 551 Main Hall, West Chester University
> 610-738-0499, hashley at wcupa.edu
> "If you're not terrified when you are writing, you're writing about the
> wrong things."  --Dorothy Alison--
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: cbw_exec-bounces at tamu-commerce.edu on behalf of Susan Bernstein
> Sent: Thu 8/13/2009 2:53 PM
> To: Aaron M. Kerley; Amy Winans; Ann Green; Sonya Armstrong; Pip Brougham
> II; buzzmonkee; Shannon Carter; Pete Johnson; Barbara Gleason; deborah
> sanchez; Debbie Sternecky; Deborah Mutnick; Jennifer Kwon Dobbs; Conference
> of Basic Writing Executive Board; Mast, Eric (mastea); Paulson, Eric
> (paulsoe); Jonathan Alexander; Lalicker, William ; Rebecca Mlynarczyk;
> MPRaupach at aol.com; Holley, Michelle (holleyma); claudine.debray at uc.edu
> Subject: [CBW_Exec] Fwd: response to "UC Admissions Changes Align with
> StateStrategic Higher Education Plan."
>
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> As many of you know, the Center for Access and Transition, the University
> of Cincinnati Program where I taught from 2004-2007, will be eliminated as
> of summer 2010.  Following is the letter I sent to the University.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Susan Naomi Bernstein
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Susan Bernstein <susan.naomi at gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:33 PM
> Subject: response to "UC Admissions Changes Align with State Strategic
> Higher Education Plan."
> To: greg.hand at uc.edu
> Cc: susan.stringer at uc.edu, jean.griffin at uc.edu, lillian.santa-maria at uc.edu,
> marianne.kunnen-jones at uc.edu, letters at citybeat.com, tcallinan at enquirer.com,
> chief.newsrecord at gmail.com, newsrecordnews at gmail.com,
> opinion.newsrecord at gmail.com, letters at dispatch.com
>
>
>
> Greg Hand
> University of Cincinnati
> 2600 Clifton Ave
> Cincinnati OH 45221
> (0141) EDWARDS 2 3356
> Government Relations & University Communications
> Assoc Vice President
> University Spokesperson
> greg.hand at uc.edu
>
> Dear Mr. Hand,
>
> I write in response to your article of 8/7/09 "UC Admissions Changes Align
> with State Strategic Higher Education Plan."(1) The demise of the Center for
> Access and Transition (CAT), one of the most significant changes, is buried
> in paragraph five. This change is attributed to the state law that
> eliminates funding for developmental education programs at Ohio's major
> public universities.  Most of these taxpayer-funded universities are located
> in economically distressed urban and rural communities with struggling
> public K-12 school systems.   The article fails to mention this fact; the
> article also fails to mention that 37% of the students who began their
> education at the Center for Access and Transition in 2007-08 were
> African-American.(2)
>
> According to a Diversity Task Force report on Fall 2006 enrollments, the
> CAT was described as having a potentially positive impact on providing
> access to and increasing the enrollment of students of color.(3) However
> with the elimination of the CAT, that agenda seems to have effectively
> ended.  Instead, under-financed and educationally stigmatized institutions
> like Cincinnati State will carry a heavier load.  UC, which benefits from
> revenues from all tax-paying citizens of Cincinnati, will now bar access to
> students who would most benefit from its plentiful resources.
>
> In your article Caroline Miller, senior associate vice president for
> enrollment management, states that after five years, UC has made the
> following "discovery": "It appears strength of high school, living on
> campus, motivation/enthusiasm for college and UC and support from athletics
> are positive contributing factors."(4) I find it worrisome that it took UC
> five years to make a "discovery" that educational researchers have been
> studying for several decades.
>
> The findings of Attewell and Lavin's award-winning study(5), for instance,
> suggest that with sufficient time and support students who do not fit into
> Miller's description can in fact succeed in a four-year university
> environment and can improve their economic situation in ways that have
> lasting positive impacts on their children and grandchildren.  It is
> distressing that UC (and indeed Governor Strickland and the Ohio State
> Legislature) did not take this evidence into consideration when it made the
> decision to deny access to students who did not have the privilege of
> attending strong high schools.
>
>
> UC's decision to eliminate the Center for Access and Transition seems even
> more tragic in these times of great economic difficulty for the state of
> Ohio and the city of Cincinnati and the surrounding region.  In its early
> years, the CAT boasted higher enrollments and a robust sense of optimism. I
> know because I was a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor at the CAT
> from 2004 to 2007. I have studied the benefits of developmental education
> for more than twenty years; in 2008 I published an article about the CAT
> that documented the improvements made by students in a beginning
> developmental writing course over a short ten-week quarter time period.(6)
> In the early years of CAT, faculty had access to more support for research,
> with the caveat that our research would directly benefit CAT students.
>  However, by the spring of 2007, it was clear that CAT was on the chopping
> block.  Funding for vital student support services, including research
> support, has greatly diminished in the years since.  Research faculty,
> myself included, left the CAT when we understood that our students and our
> program were not a funding priority for UC.
> The "admissions changes" that you outline in your article have real life
> consequences for Cincinnati students and their families who cannot afford
> housing in districts with "strong" public schools and who do not have the
> funds for private education. I understand that UC must be accountable to
> legislators and other stakeholders in the state of Ohio and beyond. It
> seems, however, that we almost never are accountable to the students, and to
> the young people who we leave drowning in the wreck of access denied.
>
> Thank you for your kind consideration of my letter.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Susan Naomi Bernstein, PhD
>
> 75-23 113th St. #1J
> Forest Hills, NY 11375
> susan.naomi at gmail.com
>
> Notes
> 1.     Hand, Greg. "UC Admissions Changes Align with State Strategic Higher
> Education Plan." University of Cincinnati News. 7 August 2009.
> http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=10500
> 2.    University of Cincinnati Fact Book, Autumn 2008.
> http://www.uc.edu/institutionalresearch/report.htm
> 3.     Recruitment and Retention Subcommittee Task Force Diversity Task
> Force. http://www.uc.edu/diversitytaskforce/documents/appendix_I.pdf
> 4.     Hand, Greg. "UC Admissions Changes Align with State Strategic Higher
> Education Plan." University of Cincinnati News. 7 August 2009.
> http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=10500
> 5.     Paul Attewell, David E. Lavin, Thurston Domina, and Tania Levey.
> Passing the Torch:Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay off Across
> the Generations?    New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. Print.
> 6.     Bernstein, Susan Naomi. "Material Realities in the Basic Writing
> Classroom: Intersections of Discovery for Young Women Reading Persepolis 2."
> Journal of Basic Writing 27.1 (2008). 80-104. Print.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CBW_Exec mailing list
> CBW_Exec at tamu-commerce.edu
> http://mailman.tamu-commerce.edu/mailman/listinfo/cbw_exec
>
>


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