University Systems Aim To Cut Achievement Gaps

Amid mounting concern that America's higher education system is losing its competitive edge, the city and state universities of New York yesterday joined a group of 19 public universities in a national initiative to cut in half the achievement gaps for low-income and minority students by 2015.

The national gaps between minority students and white students enrolling and graduating from college are wider than they were 30 years ago, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Education. About 41% of black and Latino freshman finish college, compared with 59% of white students and 64% of Asian freshmen.

Students from high-income families are eight times as likely to earn a college degree as students from low-income families.

The participating universities have committed to issuing public reports on their progress annually, and for the first time will begin calculating and releasing graduation rates for low-income students.

One proposal to boost minority college enrollment floated yesterday was a progression scholarship program, under which a student who completes his freshman year would receive a 10% discount in tuition the following year. If he progressed again in his sophomore year, he would receive a 30% discount for his junior year, and then a 75% discount for his senior year if he continued to advance.

CUNY officials said yesterday the New York system was ahead of the curve. "Other universities are catching up to where we are," a vice chancellor at CUNY, Selma Botman, said in an interview. CUNY launched its Campaign for Student Success, a program that boosts the remedial training in associate degree programs in order to retain minority students, two years ago.

Some education experts said they were skeptical about the goals outlined in the new initiative.

"It's a commendable objective if we believe that going to college is a more likely path to the American dream than not going to college," a leading opponent of affirmative action, Ward Connerly, said in an interview. "The reality is that there are some obstacles, like getting more black kids to complete high school."

Mr. Connerly, an African American fellow at the American Civil Rights Institute, said a college degree is overrated. "It all begins with this notion that everyone has to go to college, rather than saying we want people to lead productive lives," Mr. Connerly said. "I hear that we can't participate in the global environment unless we increase college going, but if you're the owner of a roofing firm, you don't need college graduates. What they're doing is have to bring in illegal immigrants."

A senior research fellow at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Gary Scott, said the new initiative was futile because American colleges and universities are failing their students.

"Insofar as students gain a minimal amount of knowledge, there is little reason to attend college other than for professors to certify the knowledge that students had when they arrived," Mr. Scott said in an e-mail message.