You know, I think I finally have it. I have finally discovered what is wrong with the CUNY (City University of New York) system, and it’s been right under our noses the entire time. For years, educators, politicians, and students have been agonizing over what’s going wrong with the public university system in New York City, and here I am, discovering it.

City College, one of the bigger CUNY schools, has been running ads in the subway for about a year now. They all have some immigrant on them who overcame tremendous adversity and language barriers to become an unbelievable student; the assumption being that the subway is only populated with immigrants anyway I guess.

In one of the ads, we see a picture of a young blonde woman. We learn that her name is Anastassiya Andrianova, and that she’s a brilliant student, speaks four languages, and is from the Ukraine. This is the whole first four lines. A history of her, and what classes she’s taking and how brilliant she is. Yawn. Triumph over adversity. I SO get it and it’s so been done already.

But the very next line reads as follows. Now, bear in mind, this is the first introduction to the school that appears in the entire ad:

For more than 150 years, City College has been a landmark of diversity, opportunity, and academic fire.

Huh!?

Think about that!

The school is there selling itself as a serious academic institution, and the first qualities it mentions are diversity, opportunity, and then, thirdly, academic fire? I think this represents a larger trend in academia, colleges to elementary schools, of being more proud of the makeup of your student body than their performance or the academic qualifications and accomplishments of the school.

Problem solved.