Recently, the administration of the City University of New York proposed a series of academic changes to the school, grouping these changes together under the name “Pathways.” The system would make it easier for students to transfer between CUNY schools, and it would have looser graduation requirements. This proposal and the faculty opposition to it are the focus of an article in the May-June issue of Academe.

Sandi Cooper, a professor in the CUNY system who has been closely involved with the system’s faculty senate, writes about the Pathways proposal and how problems with the board of trustees led directly to this controversial plan. In some ways, the proposal (or something similar) is the result of years of slow acquisition of power by the trustees, and away from academic schools, departments, and professors. In one example of misplaced institutional priorities, the president of the student government is given a voting seat on the board of trustees, but the president of the faculty sits on the board without a vote.

Of course, the whole story is just one case study of one specific board; the new issue of Academe features several articles on the topic of faculty boards. Click here to read Sandi Cooper’s article, “The Road to Pathways,” and click here to see the whole issue.