Talk:CUNY Graduate Center/Archives/2015

Deleting "Rankings"
I think the "rankings" section should be deleted from all articles about U.S. higher education. There is nothing special about what U.S. News and World Report thinks. Why is authority granted to the opinion of a private commercial magazine (one with an avowed political agenda) that has essentially turned itself into the "ranker" as part of its own branding? Why should this be superior to the rankings in Princeton Review or whatever else? Given how academics is full of politics and hyperbole, Wikipedia should not be in the business of promoting any such sources as exceptional authorities.

Furthermore, USNAWR is going to measure, among other things, how many people with a given degree get jobs within the present-day capitalist economy, or how well these jobs pay. One would hope this says little about whether one has actually learned, say, Sociology. In the social and human sciences, different and sometimes mutually exclusive paradigms may effectively mean that two programs are in separate universes and share nothing other than the name of the department.

Some numbers-crunching factory pumping out corporate-funded studies designed to help companies and governments better manage their human resources and outcast populations should not be compared to a genuinely theoretical social science department with an actual interest in understanding how the world works (whether or not this is considered to serve anyone's economic interest). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.14.107.184 (talk) 19:33, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Page moved. Seems fair enough. No objections and it the proposed name is used more than the current one in reliable sources. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 12:31, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

CUNY Graduate Center → The Graduate Center, CUNY – The Graduate Center, CUNY (instead of CUNY Graduate Center) is the common usage given the brand identity of the Graduate Center as part of CUNY. This is evident in the logo, in which the emphasis is put on The Graduate Center rather than CUNY. Additionally, The Graduate Center, CUNY name is on the official Facebook and YouTube pages. Km230 (talk) 19:14, 26 December 2013 (UTC)


 * No objection here. Dave Golland (talk) 18:24, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Principal Doctoral Granting
Adding the word "principal" was clearly a good faith edit to this page.

This current policy started, as I recall, in 2007. Prior to that, several doctoral programs were housed in senior colleges elsewhere in the system (e.g. CCNY for engineering, BC for the bench sciences) but the degrees were granted by the Grad Center. This change, as far as I know, simply added the name of these colleges, where applicable, to the doctoral diplomas. The name of the Graduate Center was still on the diplomas, and the doctoral degree-granting authority still resided in the Graduate Council of the Grad Center (subject to approval by the University Board of Trustees). Doctoral faculty on the campuses simultaneously hold membership in Grad Center programs, without which they would not be considered doctoral faculty.

I believe the motivation for this policy was to appease the feelings of some doctoral students who had completed programs housed on one of the campuses and perhaps felt no connection to the Grad Center's building. None could say they had [i]never[/i] been to the building because that is where the financial aid, registrar's, and bursar's office were located; my bet is that these students also held GC ID cards, which they would have needed to obtain at the building's ID office. And student government, which included students from these campus programs, engaged in outreach efforts to the campuses. But the emotional attachment was to the campus where the work took place, and perhaps these students worried that they'd be left out of campus commencement and alumni activities if their diplomas said only "Graduate Center." (Note to such students: alumni offices don't care what color your diploma is as long as your money is green. Also, consider giving to the GC!)

So as far as I can see, unless there have been subsequent changes, the campuses don't actually grant these degrees, so the change should be reverted, preferably by the user who made it, if convinced by my argument.

But who knows, I may be misremembering things, I may be unaware of other aspects of the policy change, and/or there may have been subsequent changes to the doctoral-granting system at CUNY.

Dave Golland (talk) 18:55, 27 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback re: adding "principal." "Principal" makes the description more accurate since without it, it would imply that the Graduate Center is the only doctoral-granting institution within the CUNY system. Examples of other CUNY colleges that grant doctoral degrees are the City College of New York through its Grove School of Engineering (Ph.D. Program in Engineering) and the College of Staten Island (Doctorate in Physical Therapy). Km230 (talk) 20:15, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome, but I don't think you got my point. Grove and CSI don't actually grant those degrees; they just house them (and since 2007 get their names on the diplomas in addition to the GC). You might say that these degrees are at the campuses but of the Graduate Center.. Dave Golland (talk) 04:01, 2 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Found this news item to help clarify that doctoral degrees aren't solely awarded by the Graduate Center within CUNY: Regents Authorize the Grove School of Engineering to Award PhD Degrees. Km230 (talk) 19:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

The cited article includes this sentence in the first paragraph: "In addition, the College will now award these degrees in four science disciplines jointly with the CUNY Graduate Center." So this article does not show that CCNY independently grants doctoral degrees. Only the grad center does that. All doctoral faculty at CCNY are jointly appointed to the grad center as consortial faculty, and all doctoral students there are graduate center students. Using the word "principal" implies that doctoral programs at the campuses are CUNY's secondary doctoral granting institutions, but that's not the case. They only award joint doctoral degrees, so all doctoral degrees still bear the name of the graduate center. Which makes the GC the only real doctorate-granting institution in CUNY (Unless there is other evidence to the contrary). Dave Golland (talk) 21:58, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I concur with Dave Golland, and move to strike "principal doctoral granting institution", as CUNY themselves makes it clear that the CUNY Graduate Center is the only doctoral granting institution in the CUNY system to do so, as of here- http://www.cuny.edu/about/colleges/gc.html, which states:

"Founded in 1961, the Graduate Center is CUNY's doctorate-granting institution and the only such publicly supported institution in New York City."

KM320, we need to remove the principal granting element as CUNY makes it clear that doctorates are only granted through one institution. WiiAlbanyGirl (talk) 11:04, 31 August 2014 (UTC)