Chicago City Wire

Although City Colleges of Chicago is often held up by Mayor Rahm Emanuel as an exemplar of a successfully reformed municipal college system, a recent investigation by the Better Government Association (BGA) published with Crain’s Chicago Business indicates otherwise.

“City Colleges has watered down its curriculum, violated its own rules on what constitutes a degree, changed the way it counts statistics and bestowed thousands of degrees — sometimes in multiples to the same person — to current and former students who in many cases neither requested nor wanted them, the investigation found," a Nov. 1 BGA article stated. 

The motivation may be a reform effort Emanuel continued from the previous administration when he assumed office in 2011, according to an April 25, 2011 Chicago Tribune story. The Tribune reported that the newly elected mayor had shuffled the leadership of the seven-college system as part of plans to boost the number of students transferring to four-year institutions to earn bachelor’s degrees.

Emanuel was also pushing to adjust the training offered by City Colleges of Chicago to better align with employers’ needs for skilled trade workers, Governing.com reported in March 2014. Even then, critics quoted in the article said the emphasis on producing transfer students or students earning certifications for skilled positions had weakened the college.

College administrators contacted regarding the latest investigation’s findings deny the allegations, blaming discrepancies on clerical errors or differing state standards.

Still, the study alleges Emanuel has painted a deceptively optimistic picture of the City Colleges system’s success by using one metric to combine the number of degrees granted each year with the number of students completing a program’s requirements within three years, the BGA report explains.

The attempt to make the colleges appear more successful has led to a number of practices questioned by the BGA report. For example, graduate Marquetta Martin was unaware she had received an associate’s degree in general studies a year after earning her intended Associate of Arts. The discrepancy was uncovered via a Freedom of Information Act request made during the BGA investigation.

“I never got that degree,” an incredulous Martin told the BGA. “All I got was an AA … nobody ever called me. Nobody ever said anything to me. All I have is an AA framed on my wall, I swear.”

Once the discrepancy was brought to the attention of college officials, however, the BGA says Martin received her additional diploma.

Basically, the BGA study found that the college awarded extra degrees to students who had perhaps earned a single degree. In addition, some students received degrees years after taking classes that didn’t fulfill the official degree requirements.

Some students contacted for the BGA report had long ago ended their collegiate careers, such as Iaponira Barbosa-Lewand, whose 1994 Associate of Arts was suddenly augmented by a 2015 degree in general studies.

“I had no idea,” she told the BGA. “I got an associate of arts degree there in 1994, with honors, but nothing since.”

The BGA report says Emanuel continues to tout his reforms by pointing to the rise in City Colleges’ graduation rate, a number that has apparently been inflated by issuing erroneous degrees or by counting those who complete coursework with degree-earners. Last year, that number was 5,010 degrees, up 10 percent since the mayor took office.

Meanwhile, enrollment at City Colleges has dropped 35 percent since Emanuel became mayor six years ago, the BGA report states.

Jennifer Alexander, president of the City Colleges faculty council, told the BGA, “they have manipulated data to score political points on the  backs of our students.”