The New York State Commission on Higher Education recommended to New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer this week a series of reforms and a compact to ensure that the state’s public higher education institutions are properly funded. These recommendations and the compact could significantly improve the education of students of color in New York, educators say.

“By ensuring that the pipeline of students from high school to community colleges, by ensuring that community college courses transfer to baccalaureate-granting colleges, by increasing the numbers of graduate assistantships, by strengthening the faculty by hiring 2,000 new lines, opportunities for students of color will expand,” says Dr. Eduardo Marti, president of Queensborough Community College and one of the members on the commission, the state could improve access to college for minority students. “We must be sure that students of color are aware of the opportunities and take advantage of them,” Marti adds.

The commission advised, in its preliminary report, that Educational Partnership Zones (EPZ) in high-need school districts be developed that would bring the resources of elementary, junior and high schools as well as colleges and universities together to improve student outcomes and the number of students going to college. It further resolved that a College Readiness Act be passed to ensure those high school graduates are prepared for college.

“Any efforts to help increase the preparedness of students will help students of color because they tend to disproportionately be represented in economically disadvantaged areas, where we have poor performing schools,” says Dr. Shirley Robinson Pippins, president of Suffolk County Community College in Long Island, New York. “So investments in these areas will make sure that students come to us and other institutions of higher learning better prepared, having to spend less time in college and less time in remedial or developmental courses.”

The commission recommended that the state provide ongoing (or increase the) support for educational-reentry programs for dropouts and programs for economically and academically disadvantaged students. And, it suggested the strengthening of transfer of academic credits between colleges through the State University of New York and City University of New York systems.