Cuts 10 profs as it girds for future
drop in graduation rates spurred the revamp.
“We’re finding many students transfer in here from community colleges or other colleges ... it used to be the adult-degree program but increasingly it’s students who probably were not college ready out of high school but are coming back sooner rather than later,” he said.
At the same time, many of those non-traditional students aren’t able to complete a fouryear degree, Di Lorenzo said.
In 2002, there were 1,848 students in McGhee with a 95% chance of graduating, he said.
“Today we have 778 students with a 60% chance of completing — and a lot of that has to do with academic preparedness,” he said.
Di Lorenzo insisted the university will continue to honor its commitment to the humanities even as it changes to the Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies.
The core classes in the twoyear associate programs will help prepare students academically while focusing on critical thinking, writing skills and other key elements of the traditional liberal arts foundation, he said.
For those who enroll in the two-year program, the cost per credit is $500. Once completed, students who want to do two more years to finish a traditional bachelors degree will pay the standard $1,900 a credit, he said.
“We are trying to create a pathway into higher education that’s more affordable and increases the chances of successful completion,” the dean said.
The abrupt dismissal of 10 well-respected professors at the end of the spring semester rattled many McGhee students, however.
Jimmy Krause, 35, a former union ironworker and ex-Marine who fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom, worried about what the changes would mean for him and other students, especially veterans, at the school.
“What happens to a working New Yorker who doesn’t need the extra preparation of the associate degree program?” asked Krause, who is studying law with an eye on a possible law degree.
“Where do they go now for a bachelors — another school?” he asked.
He also noted that NYU SPS has opened satellite campuses across the world.
“It seems to me they are expanding globally at a very rapid rate while reducing an opportunity for people here in New York,” he added.
Di Lorenzo confirmed that all new applicants with fewer than 60 credits will go to the associate program first — even those who don’t need the extra preparation.
Current students with fewer than 60 credits have the option to stay in the four-year program as it is now, or move into the associate program at the lower tuition and then re-enroll for a bachelor degree, the dean said.
Students like Krause, who have more than 60 credits, will continue forward without change, he added.
But some students were still worried about the loss of the 10 full-time faculty — and having them replaced with less-experienced adjuncts.
“I’m not a kid, I’m a working adult, I’ve been in combat, I will be really upset if I’m supposed to take classes from someone younger than me right out of school who is teaching me international relations from a book,” said Enea Gjoka, an ex-Marine who served in Afghanistan who now work as an IATSE Local 1 stagehand while getting a degree in international relations and history.
David Bloomfield, education professor at Brooklyn College and, said the changes were a reflection of new realities.
“This is an unfortunate adjustment to a new marketplace of both career orientation and high-school graduates who are not ready for college work,” Bloomfield said.
Despite NYU’s insistence that its liberal arts core wouldn’t suffer, Bloomfield saw it as “a continuing sign of the diminution of humanities in the academic constellation.”