The Professional Staff Congress is launching a major advertising campaign to get the word out about its continuing battle against "Pathways," the new general education curriculum at the City University of New York that critics say will diminish the value of a CUNY education.
The ads started to run in the New York Times a week ago, and will continue in the Legislative Gazette April 9 and 16.
PSC members Blanche Wiesen Cook, a distinguished professor of history at John Jay College, and Manfred Philipp, a professor of chemistry at Lehman College, are featured in the ads, which call on CUNY to "listen to the faculty" and "protect the quality of a CUNY education."
As the ads explain, the new core curriculum requires "less time in writing classes, reduced foreign language study, and less rigorous basic science classes without lab work."
Visit the Pathways campaign page to view the ads online.
"Pathways is wrong for our students and wrong for CUNY. It is a betrayal of CUNY's historic mission," said Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress. "That's why faculty are speaking out. And we will continue to speak out as long as it takes to restore educational quality at CUNY."
The CUNY administration claims the new plan will make it easier for students to transfer to a different college within the CUNY system. The PSC, backed by the University Faculty Senate and outraged students, says Pathways means a homogenized, one-size-fits-all approach to a college education, and the real intent is to speed up graduation rates.
The Professional Staff Congress/CUNY represents more than 25,000 faculty and professional staff at The City University of New York and the CUNY Research Foundation.