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Testimony
to the
Board of Trustees of the City University of New York
June 16, 2003
Agenda
Item 4A, Proposed Tuition Increases,
Potential for Adverse Impact on Ethnolinguistic Minorities
Mary
O’Riordan, Ed.D., Assistant Professor
College English as a Second Language Program,
English Department
New York City College of Technology/CUNY
I’m
Mary O’Riordan and I’m an Assistant Professor of ESL at City
Tech. I address you
today because I think it important that you understand the degree to
which the tuition increases proposed for community colleges may
disproportionately affect ethnolinguistic minorities.
Please allow me a few minutes to go through some data (also
attached to my written testimony) which will substantiate this
concern.
The
US Census estimated number of New Yorkers who indicated that they
did not speak English “very well” grew from 1,361,746 in 1990 to
1,768,977 in 2000 and the estimated number of foreign-born increased
from 2,082,931 in 1990 to 2,871,032 in 2000.
This reflects for our City a 38% increase in foreign-born and
a 30% increase in language-minorities or, in other words, an
increase in the percentage of language-minorities from 20% in 1990
to 24% of the population in 2000 and an increase in the percentage
of foreign-born from 28% in 1990 to 40% of the population in 2000 (see
Table A).
As
the University’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
acknowledged in an attachment to the SED Spring 2002 Monitoring
Report, however, “the number of students enrolled in ESL courses
at CUNY has dropped substantially” (p. 68), from 3,437 in Fall
1999 to 2,235 in Fall 2001 (-20 %) (see Table
B). OIRA has
attributed the decline primarily to improving preparation in English
language skills. However,
this is unlikely given radical changes in enrollment at certain
colleges from one year to the next such as the decline at Lehman
College from 124 in Fall 1999 to 46 in Fall 2000 and to 24 in Fall
2001. In addition, it
is not true, as OIRA has asserted, that enrollment during this
period of time in the alternative CUNY Language Immersion Program
has increased (see Table C).
The numbers of students who are foreign-born and the numbers
of those who report that they are more comfortable in a language
other than English has also declined from 48% of foreign-born in
Fall 1998 to 45% in Fall 2001 and from 16% LOTE in Fall 1998 to 13%
in Fall 2001 (see Table D).
The
majority of those students left in the University attend community
colleges (68%). And
according to an OIRA overview of “Basic Skills and ESL at CUNY”,
at least in 1995 (the last time these data were collected for ESL
students) they were considerably poorer and more likely to have
children than other students enrolled in Associate Degree Programs (see
Table E). For
example, while only 36% of non-ESL students were financially
independent, most ESL students reported that they were supporting
themselves. ESL
students also reported income that was on the average 40% lower than
that for non-ESL students.
In
sum, as the number of New Yorkers who are foreign-born or more
comfortable in a language other than English has been increasing in
the City, their numbers have been decreasing at the University,
which appears to have become less accessible to them.
Because ethnolinguistic minorities are more likely to attend
community colleges, because on average their household income is
significantly below the average for students for whom English is a
primary language and because they are more likely to be financially
independent and supporting children, it is safe to predict that
tuition increases at the community colleges would exacerbate these
enrollment declines.
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