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To safeguard research and scholarship while C.U.N.Y. is undergoing so strenuous a change, Bowker is working hard to recruit the outstanding students that draw outstanding professors. He seems to be succeeding; after all, C.U.N.Y. still charges no tuition in a day when college costs are soaring. And Bowker is particularly skilled at getting the necessary money. C.U.N.Y.'s budget (split between the state and city) is $327 million this year, and may hit $1 billion by 1975. Yet Bowker is confident that he can obtain these staggering sums during a period of severe financial pinches for most institutions because open admissions has generated a new base of political support for higher education.
Big Results, Big Mistakes. Thanks to C.U.N.Y.'s previous expansions, one-third of New York families include someone who either went to C.U.N.Y. or has a blood relative who did. Some alumni feel that open admissions is watering down the quality of their alma mater, but most are sympathetic. The city's unions have long demanded open college doors: their members have discovered that their children's high school diplomas are often passports to nowhere. Although blacks did most of the pushing, roughly 50% of C.U.N.Y.'s "high risk" freshmen are whites who had no chance before. In addition, many Catholics favor expanded admissions on grounds of pragmatism as well as social justice: Catholic campuses are running out of space for parochial school graduates. As a final boon for Bowker, the state's frugal rural and suburban legislators are impressed by his cost-effectiveness figures. Says one official: "It costs $2,000 a year to keep a ghetto kid in C.U.N.Y., compared with $12,000 to keep the same kid in jail."
Such arguments may be shaky. If the new high-risk students are really poor, they will need more than free tuition to stay in school. Unlike SEEK students, they get no stipends. C.U.N.Y. is providing some grants, but many must help their families by living at home and drawing welfare, or leave home and work. Study is tough under such conditions. Conversely, no one knows how many of the new freshmen are not truly poor but merely middle-class students with modest school records who would otherwise have paid to attend private institutions. Finally, critics contend that C.U.N.Y.'s new students are being "overeducated" for nonexistent jobs, and would do better at technical training institutes. Nonsense, says Bowker. The city's economy is rapidly shifting away from manufacturing jobs and he insists that it will need all the service workers and paraprofessionals that C.U.N.Y. can produce.
Whatever the outcome, Vice Chancellor Healy describes the drama well: "We're going to get more and bigger results and make more and bigger mistakes—because we're moving faster and farther than anyone else." Clearly, open admissions is a daring attempt to bridge the gap between the American dream of useful education for all and the widespread failure of high schools that were supposed to provide it. The experiment could challenge and invigorate colleges all over the U.S. It might also provide a case study in academic disaster. For the moment, the nation can only admire the fact that open admissions is being tried at all.