CUNY Pathways Project Questioned
On Thursday, January 12, responding to complaints received from faculty leaders at the City University of New York, the AAUP sent a letter (.pdf) to the CUNY chancellor and board chair setting forth the Association’s concerns relating to the adoption by the administration and governing board of the “Pathways to Degree Completion” initiative. The Pathways program has established a new systemwide framework for the transfer of credits between and among the university’s nineteen undergraduate colleges and mandates fundamental changes in the university’s general education requirements. Members of the faculty have complained that the process the administration has followed in effecting these changes, accomplished by an administration-appointed Task Force and its associated committees, contravened longstanding university policies and practices for dealing with curricular matters and bypassed the well-established governance role of elected faculty bodies at various levels throughout the university. Faculty members have also called into question the academic and educational soundness of the Pathways Initiative and raised concerns about the potential academic freedom implications of the changes mandated under the Pathways process.