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Q&A:
Since he arrived in the fall of 1999 as the chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY), Matthew Goldstein has overseen dramatic changes. Enrollment is at its highest level in more than three decades, and the university has worked to attract some of the city's smartest high school graduates by starting a special honors program. There is also a new Graduate School of Journalism, led by former Business Week Editor Stephen Shepard, which opened in fall 2006.
Goldstein sat down in his office on the Upper East Side recently to talk about the university he oversees—and what he characterized as its bright future. What follows is an edited conversation with Goldstein, who, as a former student, said he has CUNY "in my DNA."
City Hall: You've launched a number of new initiatives since you came here as chancellor in September 1999? Which are the most important?
Matthew Goldstein: I came in at a time when there was a major debate about whether senior colleges should be doing remediation at all. And we convinced the Board of Regents that we ought to get an amendment to our master plan to rid the remediation from the senior colleges.
There were four new operating units that I was interested in. One was the honors college, which is now called the Macaulay Honors College pursuant to a $30 million gift that we received about nine or ten months ago. The second was a School of Professional Studies, which is a nimble organization that deals with market conditions in ways that regular programs don't. And that has been very successful and that new school is taking the lead in online education for the university.
We just started a program in culture and communications and we'll be starting a new program in business administration. So we're very excited about that. The other one that I wanted to start was a Graduate School of Journalism.
CH: Our favorite.
MG: I recruited Steve Shepard to lead the school. We purchased the building that houses the school of journalism. And I must say—and I will say this very directly: we are competing with the top journalism schools for students. And when I think about the best, I'm thinking about Columbia, Northwestern, Missouri, Berkeley and NYU. And the students we're getting are applying to all of these as well. So that's exciting. And the last—so far it's the last—is a new Graduate School of Public Health.
CH: You have called the public honors college "the hallmark of my administration." How do you measure the success of that initiative?
MG: Well, in two ways. One, it was set up to attract some of the most promising scholars to this university, who used to come many years ago. Right now, we are getting about 10 students for each one that we accept. And they all have the credentials to get in. I'm told this year that the average SAT are about 1400 [out of 1600]. So these are students that probably had academic profiles that will allow them to get into some of the most elite institutions in the United States. So that's the good news.
CH: If you could wave your magic wand, in three to five years, what are some of the things you would like to see?
MG: Fundamentally, I would like for the marketplace, and I'll use marketplace in the broadest context—government, business—to acknowledge the importance of this university and make the kinds of investment that we have not seen at the level that I think are needed to take this university to the next plane.
If there is one fundamental thing that we need at this university, it is investment. It is investment to allow us to hire more faculty, the best faculty, to compete for the best faculty, to provide for the most modern equipment to attract the best graduate students that are very costly today, to help our scientists to equip their laboratories.
CH: Who were your role models growing up?
MG: Music and science have always been very important to me in my life. I was a musician at one point—not very good. I played alto sax. Not like Paul Desmond, but I tried. So music was important and the people who had a great influence on me from a distance were people like Leonard Bernstein, Mozart…and I also liked rock and roll and jazz.
CH: What is your favorite rock and roll group?
MG: Look, I'm an old guy. So the Rolling Stones, that's about the cusp. I do love the Rolling Stones. My younger son was coming in from Denver and I wanted to surprise him with tickets to the Rolling Stones. I really wanted to go. And I asked my secretary to find out if there were tickets available and she said, "Yes, if you want to spend about $1,000." I said forget it.
CH: You arrived during the Giuliani Administration. Do you think that Mayor Bloomberg shares your vision of this university?
MG: I think Mayor Bloomberg had been very responsive. And I think highly of him. I think he's been an extraordinary mayor. When I talk to him about the need for capital investment in this university and I sat with him and I said this is important for the following reasons, he acted very, very quickly and created a multi-year funding stream of several hundreds of millions of dollars for our community colleges.
When I spoke with him recently over breakfast over a need to try some innovative strategies for community colleges to get those students to graduate in a timely manner, he made an investment of $20 million in a pilot program. So Mike Bloomberg listens.
CH: What is your assessment of our new governor?
MG: I'm a big admirer of Eliot Spitzer. I've known him for a long time in lots of different capacities. The thing that I like most about him is that he is very direct. He does his homework. He looks at problems in a deep way and tells you what he's going to do and why he's going to do it and then does it.
He is the only governor in the history of this state where both his parents went to city colleges. One went to City and one went to Hunter. And don't underestimate the power of that. C