by Manfred Philipp

 

CUNY's ASAP program for community colleges gets plaudits for being an innovative program that can actually demonstrate significantly higher graduation rates for community college students. As reported in the New York Times, ASAP "nearly doubled the share of students graduating within three years (to 40 percent from 22 percent). ASAP also increased the share enrolling in a four-year college (to 25 percent from 17 percent) .."

ASAP spends more on advisement, it provides free textbooks and Metrocards. Since so many more ASAP students graduate and go on to a 4 year college, the result is a lower cost per graduate. ASAP shows that CUNY community colleges are spending so little that it hurts our graduation rates. ASAP shows that added money, spent wisely, would produce huge dividends. Conversely, the defunding of CUNY, visible in our increasing ranks of part-time faculty who are paid (at best) only an hour a week to advise students, has led to a massive failure of our students to graduate. Federal Department of Education statistics show that one CUNY college's 6 year graduation rate is as low as 11%. My college, Lehman, is given as 36%.

Who keeps up with ASAP?  Athletes!

ASAP is a CUNY community college program. Does CUNY have something like it for the 4-year colleges? Actually, yes it does, but it has gotten nearly no publicity, and has not been well-studied. CUNY's central Office of Student Affairs has presented data showing that at CUNY's 4 year colleges, student athletes have 6-year graduation rates that generally approach 63% when compared with other students who have rates just over 50%.

At my college, Lehman, the differential is most visible for men. Male students at Lehman are reported to have a 4-year graduation rate of 34%, while male student-athletes have a 4 year graduation rate of 51%. Student athletes are said to come in with academic records that are indistinguishable from other students. The difference is, student athletes get mentors, called coaches, that other students do not get.

Coaches call students when they miss class. Coaches take time to advise students. Coaches take the place of parents when things are tough.  Why are we not blowing our trumpet on successes like this? One reason is that such data need a scholarly workup. Success needs to be verified.

If the data can be verified, then CUNY may have found a way to finally fix its graduation rate problem. Give every student, athlete or not, access to some personal coaching, personal mentoring, just like in ASAP, just as we do for CUNY athletes.

That is….If we can get the funding….

Manfred Philipp is a Professor of Biochemistry, Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate Center, former University Faculty Senate Chair, 2006-2010 and current Executive Director of the CUNY Academy for the Sciences and Humanities