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Suggested Miscellaneous Lesson Possibilities for Social Sciences

Some Ways to Teach CUNY in Social Science (sociology, labor studies, political sociology etc.)

Gerald Meyer's article on Downsizing and Privatization might be relevant to some of these topics.

How do race, class, and gender inequities influence public higher education spending?
(I would recommend incorporating a race, class, gender analysis into each of the following topics as well.)

CUNY as a case study to demonstrate both work transfer (Nona Glazer) and the tiering of the labor force (reliance on part time, temporary workers without benefits or security): 

• Connect the changes in CUNY's faculty to broad cost cutting of late capitalism, management's attempt to reduce labor costs, and the techniques used to accomplish this goal since 1980.
• analyze the impact of conservative anti-tax, anti-government movement on public
  services, including education.
• Social change analyses of cities with NYC and higher education as a case study, including:

--Transformation of the economy and the labor force, demographic shift within cities and suburbs,  

--Changes in city and state income and expenditures and how they came about,

--Consequences for educational spending,

--Analysis of who has benefited or been hurt by these changes.

Political economy of state and city budget processes and their connection to:     

• The ascendency of conservative interests and ideas,
• The shrinking of the federal government,
• Undermining of the social contract,
• Rise in corporate power and its shaping of the political agenda.
• Influence of special interests through lobbying and campaign
  contributions?

How do NYC demographics and the upstate-downstate, urban-suburban-rural politics shape public funding? What factors produce state surpluses or deficits? How does a climate of fiscal austerity in government budgeting shape the public's concept of what's possible?

A public policy analysis of federal, state and local government support for higher education that:

--compares public support for public and private institutions through tax subsidies, research grants, student grants and loans.

--shows how federal deficits undermined social spending except for
criminal justice

--analyses how NYS' expanded commitment to criminal justice spending
undermined support for education and other public services (health, social
services).

Public policy analyses of alternative visions of CUNY: The PSC, that of CUNY's Administration, that of the Mayor\Board of Trustees

submitted by Eileen Moran, Queens College