It was more than just college. It was more than just an intellectual haven or a bastion of research or even just the bright center of the beating heart of what might have been for one glorious moment the center of human civilization itself:
It was free.
In the middle of the last century, students poured through the halls of the City College of New York. They were the children of immigrants and the working class of a great city. From every station of life, they came to receive what may have been the finest education in America — to study with Nobel laureates and scientists, teachers and scholars on a campus set in the middle of Manhattan. And they didn’t pay one penny of tuition.
In those days, the student body at CCNY was every bit the equal of today’s top schools. To be considered for study at the main campus, Hunter, or Queens or Brooklyn Colleges, prospective students had to have high minimum GPAs and excellent scores on the New York Board of Regents Examinations.
But with no stifling tuition costs or complicated financial aid packages that often result in still outrageous prices and debilitating debts for students and their families, CCNY enjoyed real diversity. Bright students from all backgrounds could afford to contribute to the intellectual community. And wealthy families couldn’t buy influence or push untalented students into the system with the force of their pocketbooks.
And students didn’t have to fear double-digit percent increases in tuition two months before matriculation.
As a result, the school — which relied on taxes and donations — fostered a vibrant social environment, filled with competing newspapers, active athletic programs and a now-famous strain of political activism.
There are still places that provide a decent education at a much lower cost than our “peer institutions,” but even such schools cost thousands of dollars a year to attend. And many current NU undergrads were forced to make a choice between scholarships that negated even these reduced costs and the community of intelligent, dedicated students they hoped to find on Chicago’s North Shore.
In our world, attending a “top school” is synonymous with paying through the nose. And many of the brightest and most talented students out there refuse to gamble their life savings on the chance that a top-flight education will pay off down the road. Those losses tax our community every day.
It is unrealistic to think that NU could ever become the egalitarian, tuition-free haven that CCNY was in its prime. This is not a public school, we don’t derive our finances from municipal taxes and we are in no position to limit admission to residents of a certain tax region, as City College once did to residents of New York City. Even CCNY has been forced by time, finance and the changing population of New York City to lower its academic standards and begin practicing open admissions.
But we can learn something from the model of excellence set decades ago: Students don’t have to spend money to be motivated. A school can care about its students even when they aren’t paying customers. And, most of all, there is more to be gained from creating an environment that encourages students of all social classes to attend than designing a tuition scheme that closely resembles that of a country club.
Sixty years ago my grandparents passed through the gates of CCNY and Hunter College. The educations they received, the diverse communities in which they studied and the low financial burden placed on their families made the success they would someday enjoy possible.
Maybe someday, another institution will stand up and commit itself to providing an affordable, top-flight education to a new generation of Americans and once again transform learning from a privilege for the rich into an asset for everyone.
Who knows? It could even be here.
