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Readers' Forum Rowley-Rotunno

some instructors that open enrollment students are naturally of poorer quality and thus high performance cannot be expected of them. This is especially true in community colleges, which have traditionally had an inferiority complex in respect to the four-year colleges. It is also to the community colleges that the students with the lowest high school records are admitted. It is these students, too, who usually have the most need for remedial work. Instead of fatalism and lowered expectation, more positive, motivational, and imaginative teaching is required to encourage the best from all students. Otherwise, in the long run, not only the students but the whole University will be short-changed. 
Correct placement may also be a factor here. For example, the high performance student who is incorrectly placed in a community college may not be harmed, because he can always transfer. However, the student who is placed in a four-year college and cannot handle the work may become a drop-out. Careful placement, sound remedial services and inspired counseling and teaching are a necessary triumvirate, if the program is to succeed.
From a long range point of view, however, the up-grading of skills, knowledges, and attitudes, should not have to wait until the college level. Basically, the whole educational system must be revamped, starting from nursery school, to meet the needs of those who may be educationally handicapped because of poverty and prejudice. Beginning with the Early Childhood level through high school, meaningful and imaginative programs and teaching must build skills, knowledge, and attitudes as a solid foundation for higher education. If this is realized, the ghetto child will then enter college on an equal footing, negating the need for lengthy remedial services. 

finances
Then, too, there is the concrete issue of finances. In this period of austerity budgets and economic crises, the very reality of open admissions is threatened. The public must be aroused and their consciousness alerted to the necessity of supporting this innovative program. Public pressure must negate the disinterest of a largely conservative New York State legislature, which provides part of the funds, and which has shown little empathy for the needs of minority groups, or the poor in general. 
In addition, there is the personal problem of the average open admissions student. As stated before, previously most CUNY students were white middle class who lived at home. Going to a tuition-

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