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In the light of its unusual history, C.U.N.Y. could have been expected to cope with this phenomenon better than almost any urban university in the country. The original City College of New York—then known as the Free Academy—was founded in 1847 to let "the children of the rich and the poor take their seats together and know of no distinction save that of industry, good conduct and intellect." "City" fulfilled its charter by schooling waves of immigrant youths, especially Jews, who were barred by many private colleges of the time. From the 1920s on, the "proletarian Harvard" produced more students who went on to doctorates than any other U.S. college, to say nothing of alumni as diverse as Zero Mostel, Bernard Malamud and Jonas Salk plus the current managing editor of the New York Times and the chief judge of New York State's highest court.
Then came the crunch of meritocracy: besieged by more and more applicants, City kept raising the cutoff point for admission—from a high school grade average of 72% in 1920 to 85% in 1960. But now the city's newly arrived minorities were black, poor, lacking academic tradition and doing so disastrously in high school that college seemed impossible. Eight years ago, only 2% of C.U.N.Y. freshmen were nonwhite.
Meaningless Diplomas. Often this pattern has little to do with abilities or ambitions. Convinced that most slum kids are doomed to failure, some New York teachers tend to guarantee it. Instead of being encouraged to take academic courses aimed at college, such students are commonly shunted into low-level programs that lead to vocational and "general" diplomas. Standards can be scandalous: one girl got a B in English for pasting together a scrapbook of pictures to illustrate the meanings of words. The kids—and their potential employers—know that a general diploma is virtually meaningless. Substantial numbers of New York's black high school students drop out before graduating; students from poor families wind up nearly three years behind the average in reading. Educational failure contributes to other problems: roughly 8% of New York's wage earners have incomes at or near poverty levels, and one in eight New Yorkers is on welfare.
The have-nots are often painfully aware of statistics showing that a college degree is worth roughly $4,000 a year more in earning power than a high school diploma. To compound their anger, the city's changing population patterns have surrounded some of C.U.N.Y.'s 18 campuses with increasingly resentful black neighborhoods. A year and a half ago, black students made the City College campus the focal point of their rage. They demanded that more blacks be admitted to the predominantly white enclave on a hilltop above Harlem. Weeks of turmoil, which included the burning of an auditorium, pressured President Buell Gallagher into resigning.