The Campus, April 25, 1969

 

 

Committee on Higher Education, “”Meeting the Increased Demand for Education in New York State” (Herald Commission Report),”

The Population Bottleneck

The Heald Commission, under the leadership of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, released a report in 1960 titled “Meeting the Increased Demand for Education in New York State” that concluded that to meet 

Enrollment vs. Capacity from the Heald Commission Report

future demand for higher education access to college and training programs needed to be expanded dramatically. (1) Population increases due to the post-war baby boomer generation and increased number of skilled jobs had already begun to stretch the capacity of the SUNY college and need was projected to grow over the following decades.

In response to the findings and increased funding associated with the Heald Commission Report, the New York City Board of Higher Education commissioned “A Long-Range Plan for the City University of New York, 1961-1975” which outlined plans to loosen admissions standards called for the establishment of additional community and senior colleges to meet the demands of increased enrollment.(2) However ambitious the plan was, “what the university nor its 1962 Long-Range Plan had not yet begun to address was the fact that CUNY was beyond the reach of most of the city’s African American and Hispanic school children” (3)

A Racially Exclusive CUNY

The second wave of expansion came not because of the scarcity of seats but because of the demand for access to higher education for Black and Latinx students. When the CUNY System first establish in 1961, it was tuition free and overwhelmingly white. The first “accurate” census (conducted with the use of IBM computer cards) in 1967 showed that CUNY’s total student body that was 80.8% white, 10.1% Black and 2.9% Puerto Rican overall (4). These gaps widened even further isolated to matriculated (degree seeking) students. Almost half of the 10.1% Black and Puerto Rican students were non-matriculated, which meant they were not qualified for free tuition like degree seeking students.

Ethnic Survey for Fall 1967, Report of the Fall 1967 Ethnic Census, 1968

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states that “no person in the United States, on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, or the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance” (5). This law mandated that CUNY report the ethnic composition of their student body and take efforts to desegregate to continue to qualify for federal funding. Under this pressure, the New York City Board of Higher Education made a commitment in 1966 to guarantee open admissions to CUNY for all New York City high school students by 1975. To many this was not soon enough. Widespread student activism, including the occupation of City College in 1968, effectively pressured the Board to vote to implement open admissions in 1970 (6). 

As a result of the 1967 Census Report “CUNY was now forced to confront what had previously been easy to ignore: the ethnic and racial composition of their student body was not representative of the racial and ethnic makeup of the city’s secondary schools” (7) The report recommended the rapid expansion of opportunity programs such as SEEK and capacity by creating new institutions to serve black and Puerto Rican communities. This second wave of expansion included the establishment of York college in Jamaica Queens, Hostos Community College in the South Bronx and Community College No. 7 which would later become Medgar Evers College in the heart of Brooklyn.

  1. Committee on Higher Education, “”Meeting the Increased Demand for Education in New York State” (Herald Commission Report),” CUNY Digital History Archive, accessed April 1, 2021, Link

  2. City University of New York (1962) A Long-Range Plan for the City University of New York, 1961-1975 · (n.d.). CUNY Digital History Archive, accessed April 1, 2021 Link

  3. Parmet, R. (2011). Town and Gown : The Fight for Social Justice, Urban Rebirth, and Higher Education. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Link

  4. City University of New York, (1977)  Report of the Fall 1976 Undergraduate Ethnic Census  Link
  5. Civil Rights Act of 1964 § 7, 42 U.S.C. §2000e et seq (1964). p.4390

  6. Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. “Plan for New York City 1969 ” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1969. Link

  7. Tager, Florence, and Zala Highsmith-Taylor. (2008) Medgar Evers College: in Pursuit of a  Community’s Dream. New York: Caribbean Diaspora p.16