Open admissions -- allowing any student to enter without meeting minimum test-score qualifications -- has been touted as a way to make up for racism and educational failure in the public schools. But in one city where it has been tried, it has actually made the public schools worse.

For example, the City College of New York was harder to gain admission to and graduate from than any other undergraduate institution in America, and produced the most Nobel laureates --until the advent of open admissions in 1970. Open admissions decreed that every public high school graduate in New York City had the right to attend one of the city's colleges -- for free.

Now the City University of New York (CUNY) system is little more than a $4 billion per year welfare program, says CUNY teacher and graduate Robert Berman.

• Sixty-eight percent of CUNY four-year students require remedial classes because they cannot pass 11th-grade level tests in reading, writing and mathematics.

• At the city's two-year community colleges, 86 percent don't pass the test.

• Only 1.3 percent of community-college students graduate with associate degrees in two years, and fewer than 9 percent of four-year-college students earn bachelor's degrees in four years.

• CUNY education school graduates pass the state teacher-certification exam at a rate of 62 percent, the lowest in the state, and at City College of New York and the Afrocentric Medgar Evers College, the rate is only 40 percent.

These poorly performing college students have had a big impact on the public schools: over 80 percent of New York City's public school teachers are CUNY graduates -- including some who flunked the certification test but have been hired anyway.

One hopeful sign, says Berman, is that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has called for eliminating open admissions and privatizing all community-college remedial programs.

Source: Robert Berman, "Up From CUNY," Weekly Standard, March 9, 1998.