The City College of New York is a selective college with a meager 34% acceptance rate. However, City College still manages to have a 4 year graduation rate of under 10%. For a selective college, a 4 year graduation rate of under 10% is incredibly low. I have taught at CCNY and I know that the standards at CCNY are very low since I have felt lots of pressure to pass students. The pressure to pass poor students is so bad that I often have to curve their grades so that even if a student does nothing correctly on a test, that student will still end up with a 60 which is a passing grade. One would think that having low standards will make it easier for students to graduate, but I am perplexed at how few students graduate on time at CCNY even though CCNY pressures professors to pass very bad students.
Why are you asking a question you seem to have the answer to? Majority of the student to can’t afford to drop 40k at private universities and most of them work to pay their tuition. Therefore 4 year graduation rate is irrelevant. Also are you saying that CCNY is the only school where professors curve grades. Also does your solid review mean that Sophie Davis is filled with these students that don’t deserve to pass but they do?
The 2016 Valedictorian of City College is an engineering major that had his pick of MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley for graduate school. He is one of the smartest and hardworking people I know and aced every single class he ever took. He also took 5 years to graduate.
I point this out in order to illustrate how unfair and incorrect it is to attribute the low 4-year graduation rate of City College with student performance. While this is, of course, a factor–it is not the sole or most significant contributor to the “problem”. Let’s go through a partial list from the top of my head (I am a recent undergraduate alum of the college):
- Lack of funds for course offerings -- This one is plain and simple. Since CUNY is a public university, it cannot draw from huge endowments like many private colleges and must rely much on public funding. This funding is never supplied adequately to the proposed budget, and often meets cuts. The result is that the college is not able to offer sufficient space for general education classes that are required for most (or all) students to graduate. Recently, the arts and humanities departments have been slashed from funding and had to let go of many professors. When students get locked out of these classes, they may have to wait a whole year to gain access, as some are only offered once a year. If this class is a prerequisite for more of their classes in their major (which is often the case), then it delays their graduation by at least one year.
- Bureaucracy -- Many colleges face this issue. With so many moving parts, there is the necessary evil of bureaucracy. Unfortunately, due to the confusing nature of having to communicate between so many offices and departments (ex. School of Engineering, School of Arts and Sciences, Bursar's Office, Registrar's Office, Office of Study Abroad), many students can get caught in some paperwork snafu that causes them to get deregistered from their classes or some similar inconvenience. Notification does not occur quickly, and thus the student can become permanently locked out of their preferred classes until the next semester. -- This is what happened to the aforementioned valedictorian.
- For many of the students, college is not a race -- Particularly in a commuter school like City College, many students simply do not plan on graduating in four years. Many, many, students at City College don't have dear old mom and dad's money to pay for their education and living expenses so they have to work to support themselves while attending school. Particularly for pre-med and engineering students, the credit requirements are (in my opinion) absolutely bonkers for graduating in four years, and a very specific order of classes must be taken, which isn't always viable due to these factors (as well as their performance in classes). It's usually 18 credits per semester, minimum; that corresponds to at least 18-24 hours of coursework plus commuting plus completing required homework and long hours of studying in order to get good grades. This is not an easy thing to do, especially if you have other responsibilities besides school, so many people (sensibly) elect to take lower courseloads, resulting in a later graduation date.
During my time there, I have had a good number of professors who genuinely care about their students. I once had an adjunct math professor take time outside of his office hours to go over topics I had trouble understanding. Later on, after being denied the opportunity to register for an independent study with him, he still taught me and some friends Linear Algebra without earning a single dime.
I feel sorry for anyone who has you as a professor at City College if this is the attitude you take towards students rather than trying to understand their situations and struggles.