The following message to social science faculty is from the PSC’s Steve London, who is calling on departments across the field to sign a petition against Pathways.  It reads:

As a fellow scholar in the social sciences, I ask you to sign this new worldwide petition calling for a moratorium on the implementation of Pathways if you have not done so already. To date nearly 4,500 faculty have signed the petition. Approximately 70% of the signatories are from other universities in the US and overseas. Our request is that you sign the petition and send it on to your academic colleagues across the country and around the world asking them to sign. (A sample email to forward is sent to you along with the thank you note after you sign.)

Throughout CUNY, most faculty have resisted the implementation of Pathways. We resist because Pathways represents a dilution of the quality of a CUNY education. Pathways reduces all courses in the Common Core to three hours, limiting classroom time for English Composition and Modern Languages and potentially eliminating science labs, and it makes it possible to satisfy the Flexible Core without taking a social science course. Thus this initiative represents a degraded definition of a liberal arts degree.  The knowledge, skills and methodology gained and practiced through the study of social sciences are crucial to general education, the liberal arts and fully functioning citizenship. Our students will suffer under Pathways, especially poor students and students of color who have graduated from overcrowded, under resourced high schools. All students should have the benefit of a quality education—not just the children of the elite who can afford to attend institutions where a real liberal arts education is still available.

The rationale offered by the Chancellery for the imposition of Pathways — the difficulty of transferring credits between CUNY colleges resulting in the accumulation of excess credits  —  has, to date, not been borne out by available data. We are left to conclude that the reason lies elsewhere, perhaps the desire to save money by diluting curriculum in order to move students to graduation more rapidly.

Despite almost universal faculty opposition to Pathways, CUNY’s Central Administration has continued to aggressively pursue its agenda through threats, intimidation and bypassing faculty governance. The UFS and PSC have called for a moratorium in the implementation of Pathways to more carefully consider the real solutions to those problems associated with transfer.  To participate in this kind of serious deliberation, it is necessary to call a halt to the threats and intimidation by management.

I urge you to sign the petition calling for a moratorium on Pathways and then circulate it to your colleagues. This is a watershed moment for public higher education. We know that many other institutions are also experiencing the same pressures. Please help us to take a next step in the resistance to Pathways by taking our struggle beyond CUNY.

Thank you,
Steve London
PSC Vice President