Michael Fabricant is a professor at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
In this article, he calls on the gubernatorial candidates in New York to pay attention to the state’s neglect of the City University of New York, which has historically been a very important path for low-income students to enter the middle class.
He writes:
”Fixing the subway will be a major election issue this year, and rightly so. The subway is a lifeline allowing people of all income levels to get around and enables New York to be a vibrant, world-class city.
“But another economic lifeline might not get the same attention in a race that will set the agenda for the next four years. The colleges of the City University of New York, many of which lead national rankings in terms of moving low-income students into the middle class, play a similar role.
“Yet the state budget, which includes $800 million for a subway “action plan” (half-funded by the city), shortchanged CUNY—which has seen per-student state investment in its senior colleges fall by 18% since 2008, accounting for inflation….
“Because of its success in moving students up the income ladder, CUNY is perhaps the most powerful anti-poverty public agency in NYC—educating nearly 70% of the city’s high school graduates. About 60% of students have family incomes under $30,000…
”CUNY has seen its labor force transformed over the past 25 years. The university relies on underpaid adjunct faculty hired on a course-by-course basis to teach most of its classes. They fill the gap left by a shortage of 4,000 full-time instructors. Adjunct faculty are able and gifted. That said, their ability to mentor or meet with students outside the classroom is limited by their need to run from campus to campus to cobble together a meager living. This impedes student retention and graduation. Only 18% of community college students receive their degrees within three years and only 55% of senior college students receive their degrees within six….
“New York City has the greatest income and wealth inequality in the nation. As long as politicians in Albany accept the assumption that the city’s wealthy should not pay their fair share to sustain and enhance basic services and infrastructure, CUNY and the MTA will continue to decline.”
Which candidate will reverse the harmful policies of the past decade?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Some years ago I was privileged to hear Frank McCourt, esteemed teacher and author of ‘Angela’s Ashes,’ speak at a teacher conference. He recounted his story of poverty in Ireland and opportunity upon arriving in New York. He was a poor immigrant with nothing to his name. He used the public libraries and attended CUNY, which was free, to gain an education. The citizens of New York made an excellent investment in a man that served the young people of the city as an English teacher for decades and who was also a remarkable writer. What I remember most about his talk was his belief that public libraries and education are the most democratizing influences in our country. That message has stayed with me. We must keep the ladder of opportunity available to young people if we want them to be self sufficient. Escalating, crushing students loans are a form of oppression. Otherwise, we are no better than a banana republic where the rich live in wall villas, and the poor are disposable and riot.
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I heard Elizabeth Warren speak a few days ago, and she said that student debt (owed to the federal government) is now $1.3 Trillion dollars. This hurts not only students, who will be in debt for years, but the whole economy, because they can’t buy cars, can’t buy a house, can’t do many other things because they are saddled with debt.
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Frank McCourt was great, if only he and Molly Ivins were still alive. Frank’s brother, Malachi McCourt is still alive at age 86.
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Breaking news NYC subways are not broken . CUNY on the other hand has seen its faculty devastated . Of course the same tactics that were used against higher education and education in general are now being used in the assault against the workers of the MTA and those who do work for the MTA . It is not an accident . I will repeat the quote that I posted yesterday as that it got no response .
With the deals that college professors have now, you can’t hope to make improvements to the State University systems in a fiscally responsible way,
Back to the MTA portraying it as broken allows the forces with other motives to achieve those motives . Memes get repeated that may have little foundation in fact. Those that repeat them do not realize the damage their lack of research and verification does .Or perhaps they do and do not care as they are not the target of the assault.
To show that I am an equal opportunity critic . The Governor is creating an illusion of crisis for political purpose . Where is Naomi Klein when you need her.
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Phew, I was concerned that there was a lot of money we needed to raise for infrastructure spending. Glad to hear that’s not the case.
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I am not saying that NY does not need infrastructure work . I love infrastructure work !!!.
But the MTA is not in shambles, in the 70s the MTA was in shambles . Then Jimmy Carter arranged for Mass Transit to be eligible for for Highway trust fund money . Since around 1980 almost every line has received complete signal power and communications upgrades. And are now on round 2 or 3 .
Two good reads I found to be relevant on costs and performance.
https://splinternews.com/how-the-mta-got-so-broke-1795903465
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/11/15949284/new-york-subway-crisis
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If you love infrastructure work, I think the narrative of “the subways are in shambles” is the better one to stick to. That’s my plan.
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FLERP!
Well perhaps you can see the parallel to “our schools are failing” . How does that play out . Oh I remember now, its those union teachers who are standing in the way of poor and minority students success. Portraying schools as failing did not lead to more funding. It led to less and became an excuse for privatization . Oh gee what is Trumps infrastructure plan. By the way Cuomo’s infrastructure plans have been a kinder gentler version of the Public Private Partnerships the Republicans so love. Don’t tell NYCPSP , I am not a Cuomo fan.
But the two links I posted are well worth the read. One thoroughly describes the reasons for the cost over runs . The other explains the delays . Which are not really delays but caused by a conscious decision to slow down trains after a 1995 accident . The accident was caused by Human error but the solution involved spacing trains further apart. Slowing them down .
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To clear up any confusion: there are no failing schools. Period. Stop.
There are leaders who fail to take responsibility for the schools in their domain.
Period. Stop.
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dianeravitch
I think that is exactly my point, notice the quotation marks around the statement.”Our schools are failing ” As a NY resident you might like the link on how the MTA got so broke .He lays it at the feet of politicians who under fund the MTA and then demand shiny objects to show off to constituents.
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Joel,
I have looked and I cannot find the entire quote from the Cynthia Nixon statement which is being characterized as evidence that she is “anti-union”.
You seem to keep wanting us to believe that the statement alone tells us that Nixon is far more anti-union than all the nasty comments Andrew Cuomo has specifically said about the “lazy” union teachers. You seem to be trying to push the native that Nixon is far more anti-union than Cuomo — who is working to single-handedly undermine public schools by making the lazy union teachers the scapegoat and forcing public schools to become test prep factories.
I thinking looking closely at ALL union contracts is not anti-union.
Didn’t Nixon also mention that perhaps NY shouldn’t be using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the film industry?
Being anti-union means you smear unions and enact policies designed to break them and use the savings to pay the CEOs who fund your campaign.
Looking carefully at the costs of getting things done — include union contracts — while making sure it is not about rewarding rich CEOs with the savings from exploiting low-wage non-unionized workers — is not being anti-union.
Cuomo is anti-union. He bashes the union teachers for the sole purpose of rewarding his richest friends and using taxpayer dollars to subsidize their anti-union, pro-Betsy DeVos charters.
Cynthia Nixon is not. So why present her as such? Because you want the anti-union Cuomo to defeat her?
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The Working Families Party would not have endorsed Cynthia Nixon if she was anti-union.
Let that go.
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I agree with you, Diane!
I am addressing the right wing’s new favorite meme — that Cynthia Nixon is anti-union so we should vote for the ‘pro-union’ Andrew Cuomo.
I can’t think of anything more absurd and more untruthful than that statement. If Cuomo can’t win on the issues, then lying about his opponent is the right wing’s very old tactic.
I think it’s called demonizing your opponent by convincing voters that the flaws of your own candidate are actually found 1000 times worse in his opponent! And when you have a very flawed and corrupt right wing candidate, you have to make your opponent look really really bad to destroy him.
It worked very well with Hillary and Trump. It worked very well with Al Gore and George W. Bush. It worked very well with John Kerry and George W. Bush.
And anyone who believed that Trump and George W. Bush were far more honest and upright than the 3 liars and sell-outs Gore, Clinton and Kerry will fall for believing that Cuomo cares more about working people and is more pro-union than Nixon.
There were obviously plenty of fools who believed Trump and GW Bush were more honest than the 3 supposedly corrupt and dishonest Democrats they beat. Blatant lying — when you have the help of very deep pockets — works. Let’s hope there are fewer fools than in 2016 and 2000 and 2004.
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dianeravitch
By the way the WFP could have demanded that Nixon issue a full apology, which would have included meeting with those union leaders to discuss their concerns. . Of course that would not only look bad, it would have done little good. Cuomo has been courting some of those Unions since 2010 . It would have been far better not to launch her campaign with an error. If the MTA was a real concern perhaps she could have met with all parties in advance to find out what their issues were . In which case the more conservative of those Unions would have still supported Cuomo but in a lukewarm manner. Because they full well know where his money comes from. They know the slippery slope they are walking. They were not blind to the attacks during his first term on Public Workers. Even as they were happy to take the infrastructure work he put forward.
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Obviously the Working Families Party decided that Cynthia is a true progressive, unlike Cuomo, who acts progressive only in election years, then returns to his true self.
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From politico
“With the deals that [unions] have now, you can’t hope to make improvements to the trains in a fiscally responsible way,”
What deals are they . I would love to know . 60 million in the bank and she feels the need to talk about workers making sacrifices.
Tell that to an electrician who has not worked more than 40 weeks a year since 2001 . Tell that to the guys I handed layoff slips to knowing they were going to lose homes and families. In the heart of the recession, men were out of work for 52 weeks then slotted in for a few weeks to not lose their health bennifits. . Construction wages were always higher than would be justified precisely because was once seasonal work and is still cyclical . T
But I am no fan of Cuomo and will enjoy him getting a good challenge from the left . Last week it was voting rights for parolees . By next month it could be NYS Universal Healthcare . He may even come around on education one day . Strange thing about transnational politicians .
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Transactional love the edit button.
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Joel,
Why is [unions] in brackets?
That’s why I would like to read the entire quote, in the context of which it was made, which means the entire transcript of what the question was that Nixon was answering, and what was the entire paragraph that includes the sentence that is the sum total of this rabid “anti-union” bent that Nixon is accused of.
Pulling these kinds of [quotes] out of context and making a sweeping judgement in which someone fighting for progressive things is now more anti-union than the one of the very few Democrats in America who intentionally works to elect Republicans to the Senate and if those Republicans don’t win enough seats, nudges a few Democrats to caucus with them (no doubt in exchange for lavish money from the right wing billionaire donors who also fund Cuomo’s campaign). We are talking about Cuomo — this is the guy who gratuitously undermines de Blasio for the sole reason that gratuitously undermining this progressive Mayor makes the right wing happy. This is the guy who hates de Blasio because de Blasio was trying to elect MORE Democrats to Albany and Cuomo didn’t want them! And this is after de Blasio spent years being conciliatory toward Cuomo even after being attacked by him “for the good of the party”.
I mean, Hillary didn’t do even half this stuff and – despite holding your nose and voting for her — you described her in terms that made her seem like the second coming of a more right wing Richard Nixon. Meanwhile you are over the top kind to Cuomo.
If anyone deserves that characterization it is Andrew Cuomo! I’d rather have a democrat working to elect other democrats — even if they are conservative — than to elect other Republicans because he wants to position himself as a centrist and his billionaire funders love it.
It is far past time for Cuomo to be soundly defeated by a progressive.
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NYC public school parent
You must mean the Andrew Cuomo who twisted Unions arms to endorse Hillary in the primary.
The context was made in the background of NYCs building trades unions fighting for their very existence, against an assault by greedy developers who are building luxury towers. . With the same type of right wing assault that was made against teachers in this city and across the country.
But you are making the comical assertion that you should be the one to decide the meaning of her statements . I on the other hand and what would seem the entire leadership of the Union movement in the State, must have a disability and are not capable of interpreting her two remarks in the context they were given in. I do not think she is anti union. But in my opinion she is not ready for prime time. How about she moves to Queens and runs for State Senate against an IDC Democrat in my old Senate District.
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Why would I care whether Andrew Cuomo twisted arms to endorse Hillary? I don’t. I voted for Bernie in the primary and I don’t think any arms should have “twisted” to vote for either PRIMARY candidate. I don’t think anyone’s arms should be twisted to vote for Cynthia Nixon! I think they should vote for Nixon because Cuomo has sold out progressives over and over again and thinking he won’t again is truly absurd. I think they should vote for Nixon against the Democrat who actually works AGAINST other Democrats winning so that they control the Senate!
I didn’t say I wanted to be the “one to decide”. I asked for the entire statement in context!!
OMG How does asking to hear the entire statement in context so that I can see whether or not it has been taken out of context mean that “I get to decide”!???
You have to be kidding! What is so scary about directing me to some video or transcript so I can see the entire statement in context?
It’s as if I asked to see Hillary’s speech about deplorables instead of just accepting that Hillary said “Trump voters are deplorable” and someone said “how dare you ask to see the entire context of what she said! She said the people who vote for Trump are all deplorable and that’s that and how dare you want to “decide fore yourself” what she meant. And it turns out that she actually made an incredibly moving and apt description of why some people who had been abandoned by the Democrats were voting for Trump and how she wanted to do something for them and that they were NOT deplorable! And she was DISTINGUISHING them from the OTHER people drawn to Trump because he IS offering them the deplorable racism that they want.
You know full well that the context is the ENTIRETY of what she said and how it was framed.
And for you to claim that Andrew Cuomo’s specific undermining of the teachers union and nasty things he has said about teachers is fine, but express faux outrage at what Cynthia Nixon said, then obviously, you would insist the context doesn’t matter.
What was the “context” when Cuomo talked about lazy teachers, forced NYC taxpayers to foot the bill for charters to hire non-union teachers, and now has his hand-picked charter board saying that those non-union teachers don’t even need licenses?
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^^^By the way, since Cuomo would be fighting to elect the IDC Democrats that caucus with the Republicans, it’s ironic to see you suggest that Nixon move there to try to stop your beloved Cuomo’s plans to make sure any Dems who win will caucus with the Republicans in Albany.
“My guy who is so ready for prime time will be using the resources of the right wing billionaires who own him to elect more IDC Dems who are his very favorites because they will caucus with the Republicans. So I want my guy to win but why don’t you have your guy run against one of the Dems who caucus with the Republicans that my guy will be fighting for?!!!”
Talk about ridiculous logic.
Cuomo is corrupt through and through. It astonishes me that you could bash Hillary for doing about 1/10th of what Cuomo does to INTENTIONALLY undermine every single progressive idea. Cuomo is the real deal when it comes to co-opted and corrupt Democrats who have abandoned every single progressive idea. It is unbelievable that you don’t even see it.
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NYCPSP,
It’s time to let go of the 2016election.
Time to stop criticizing Bernie.
It is over.
Move on.
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“How about she moves to Queens and runs for State Senate against an IDC Democrat in my old Senate District.”
Agree wholeheartedly. I’d even be fine with running for Congress, given her recognizability & ability to fund a campaign.
Great to have a progressive with visibility onboard, but build some experience in the system. Activist actors jumping into politics at the state govrship level has not always worked so well. Sometimes they even take their half-baked ideas straight to the Presidency.
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Diane,
The only reason I am bringing up 2016 is that I am seeing Cynthia Nixon getting some of the same treatment that Hillary Clinton did.
I don’t mean the issues are the exactly the same. I mean that critics are trying to destroy Cynthia Nixon with dishonest propaganda in which fragments of sentences taken out of context are used to mislead the public. In the case of Cynthia Nixon, we are supposed to believe that Nixon is rabidly “anti-union” (more anti-union than Cuomo) because of a single out of context comment.
I am asking the readers of your blog to talk about Cynthia Nixon the exact same way that Bernie Sanders talks about Andrew Cuomo.
Bernie talks only of policy differences he has with Cuomo and never attacks Cuomo’s character nor uses innuendo to imply there is anything wrong with Cuomo’s character. On the contrary, Bernie talks about the great things that Cuomo does that Bernie likes.
That is how Cynthia Nixon should be treated, too.
And I believe that those who forget history are bound to repeat it. Do we really want to see Nixon defeated by the dishonest meme that Nixon is the anti-union candidate and Cuomo is the pro-union one?
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Don’t ask me how that happened
Strange how almost everyone in the Union movement was coming after her for those remarks . But I guess they don’t know as much as the working families party their creation , that would not exist except for their funding. What the Unions were asking was for WFP to not create a 3rd party distraction and elect a Republican , in a State that has elected Giuliani and Bloomberg to the City of NY for 5 terms and Pataki for 3 terms from 94 till 2006. As for the community activists guess who funds them as well.
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