SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL POLICY AS SOCIAL UTILITY AND SOCIAL MOBILITY: A CASE STUDY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The purpose of this case study is to examine a particular phenomenon occurring in higher education in order to inform and hopefully influence the academy and the larger community to an approach or direction that might better benefit society. Thus, the experience of black student participation in higher education was examined from an historical perspective in general, and in City University in particular. The historical evidence showed that there were too many barriers indigenous to the higher education community to admit disadvantaged students in general and black students in particular in the past. But, the democratic, open access and mass education experience, especially City University's open admissions period, suggests that democracy is better served by their admission.;Finally, this case study, in my view, makes a statement to American society that mass education can and does work if the academic community becomes concerned, committed and advances education in a professional manner whereby the student is never blamed and the faculty, as a standard bearers, stretch students to their highest levels of potential.;Moreover, it is important to note and examine how social pressure can become the vital force that can support policies that change institutions...even The Academy which perhaps along with The Church in American Society, are the institutions most resistant to change. To what extent these policies effect change is still an important question, especially if such policies can be translated into social utility and social mobility. Indeed, because of new and different admission policies, disadvantaged students, minorities, (black students) have new means of competing successfully in the mainstream and can provide a better quality of life for themselves and their offspring.