Chancellor Matthew Goldstein
at the Helm of CUNY
by Joan Baum, Ph.D.
On maps of old, dangerous or unknown
territory suspected of harboring sea monsters was marked
hic sunt dracones. Only those skilled enough to navigate
the treacherous waters survived. In June 1999, Benno Schmidt,
then Chairman of the Mayor’s
Advisory task Force on CUNY, reported that The City University
of New York was “An Institution Adrift.” Three
months later, in the wake of the Schmidt blueprint for reform,
Dr. Matthew Goldstein was appointed Chancellor. Now, four years
later, with Dr. Schmidt having just been named Chairman of
the CUNY Board of Trustees, Chancellor Goldstein can state
that he has not only negotiated passage through some rough
political and financial seas but that he has found secure mooring
for the 20 colleges and graduate and professional schools that
make up the nation’s most diverse public institution
of higher education. With rigor, commitment, and wide support
from all constituencies, and without compromising CUNY’s
mission as an urban university, the Chancellor has tightened
admissions and assessment criteria and turned a loose federation
of often competing colleges into a unified three-tiered system
of flagship programs that could serve as models for other public
universities intent on piloting a similar course.
The turnaround is quite an accomplishment,
considering that barely four years ago CUNY was said to be
listing dangerously: enrollment and retention were imperiled,
experienced faculty were retiring, and the press seemed unrelenting
in its criticism. Now Chancellor Goldstein points to the
success of initiatives that have helped CUNY “stay the course.” Enrollments
went up 10.5 % and the average SAT scores of those entering
the selective senior colleges shot up 80 points. In an address
this past January at the Harvard Club on “fiscal challenges
and new opportunities” at CUNY, the Chancellor reminded
his audience that some years ago he had warned that “unless
CUNY started to raise the bridge instead of lowering the river,
our students would never learn how to swim.” He is obviously
pleased that “the bridge is going up” and that
students as well as faculty and administration “are much
stronger swimmers than we were, much better able to handle
the uncertain tides of a rapidly changing world.” A new
assessment program “turned [the university] inside out,” and
the new tier structure, with its commitment to articulation
between the two- and four-year colleges, as well as the introduction
of an executive compensation/management performance system
are helping sustain a new “meritocracy.”
Confident about what Chairman Schmidt
calls CUNY’s “revitalization,” the
Chancellor is contemplating new ports of call, such as Governors
Island, which he envisions as a site for an international think
tank that would bring together prestigious CUNY faculty and
leading scientists at neighboring institutions to do cutting-edge
research on issues critical to the city and the surrounding
region. The Chancellor also talks about a Journalism School,
a School of Professional Studies (in conjunction with the Economic
Development Corporation), more university-wide interdisciplinary
programs, further collaboration with the New York City Department
of Education, and continued enhancement up and down the line
of “liberal learning.” It’s obvious that
the Chancellor has more in mind than staying the course — he
also intends to steer into unchartered waters.
Instinctively he draws his phrases
and imagery not from nautical lore, however, but mathematical
statistics, the field in which he earned a B.A. at The City
College and a doctorate at the University of Connecticut,
and in which he has published widely. A former president
of Baruch College, of the CUNY Research Foundation, and of
Adelphi University, Chancellor Goldstein talks of “large variance,” data and “new
managerial systems.” While his background in both mathematics
and higher education administration would seem to have prepared
him for the fundraising campaigns and academic program reviews
he faces continually, he says that heading up CUNY has been “the
biggest challenge” he has ever faced. Other large universities
don’t have the university’s extraordinary diversity,
its vast number of low-income and immigrant students (“only
in America”) and its increasing number of those who could
have gone on to ivy league schools but who chose CUNY instead,
some of whom, perhaps were attracted to the new university-wide
Honors College. With 325 participants, out of 2,500 applicants,
the Honors College, now in its third year, is expected to grow
to 1,400-1,600. The Chancellor beams. Other successes ripple
out for him, the Teacher Education programs, now reflected
in the over 90% pass rate on certification exams, the CUNY-high
schools partnerships, and the Teaching Fellows, which originated
at CUNY in joint sponsorship with High Schools Chancellor Joel
Klein. “No other university system is so closely linked
with public high schools.”
“We’re serious,” the Chancellor says more
than once about the university, which doesn’t mean, of
course, that the Chancellor always is. Playful, full of anecdotes
(“let me illustrate that point with a story”) and
obviously enjoying his role at the helm, a company man, he
nonetheless refers to himself as a “maverick.” He
is also a lover of opera and art and an appreciator of intellectual
quality. He likes “to be around very smart people helping
to solve very complex problems,” and the “extraordinary
faculty” at CUNY deliver. He doesn’t just mean
the Nobelists who make the news, or even the research-oriented
professors who teach at the Graduate School, where one third
of the Ph.D programs are ranked nationally. He means teachers
on all the campuses. Despite budget reductions this year, he
has managed to hire 450 new full-timers.
The hour is late, the day cold and
rainy, but he’s off
in a minute to attend a poetry jam in The Bowery. “Chancellors
have to bang heads,” he says, but they also need to listen
quietly to new ideas. Vessels cannot always beat into the wind.
Sometimes they reach their destinations best by simply yielding
to the currents.#
