Open Admissions and Equal Access: A Study of Ethnic Groups in the City University of New York

In 1970 the City University of New York (CUNY) adopted a policy which guaranteed admission to every graduate of the city's high schools. Designed to increase the proportion of minority students in the university and to slow the reproduction of social inequality,CUNY's open-admissions policy has been criticized as a threat to academic standards and as an unnecessary expense during periods of economic scarcity. In this article, David Lavin,Richard Alba, and Richard Silberstein argue instead that there has been no definitive evidence of a decline in standards and that the policy has been successful in reducing educational inequality. Basing their conclusions on a detailed study of the first three classes admitted under this policy, the authors examine its effects on the university's ethnic composition and integration at various levels, and on the academic performance of different ethnic groups.