The faculty at Queensborough Community College passed a strong resolution today rejecting Pathways and reaffirming their commitment to meaningful, quality education. The full text of the resolution follows below.
As faculty, we stand committed to affordable and quality public higher education. We are proud to be affiliated with CUNY, which has a long tradition of making a positive difference in the lives of students and communities by providing access to higher education, and we believe that CUNY students deserve the best education possible – one that can provide any and all students with a path to success.
In our academic judgment “Pathways” threatens the mission of the university with its apparent intended consequence of creating greater efficiency in progress to graduation at the expense of a broader and deeper learning. By focusing mainly on the metrics of graduation rates and time to degree, CUNY may well produce a greater number of underprepared and increasingly indebted graduates with diminished degrees, many of whom will be trapped within the CUNY system as many of the Common Core classes may not transfer outside of the CUNY system.
We reject and resent being intimidated into acceding to Pathways in dereliction of our professional and moral responsibilities. As faculty, we reject Pathways because of our commitment to students and to the vision of a CUNY degree as a bridge to real opportunity and social equality. We reject Pathways because it will improve superficial measurements of “success” while diminishing the quality of education for CUNY students and because it was neither the best way nor the only way to solve what problems there are in transfer. We reject Pathways because it has violated the principles of faculty governance and academic freedom
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