Changing the Odds: Open Admissions and the Life Chances of the Disadvantaged

The open—admissions experiment at the City University of New York was the most ambitious effort ever made to promote equality of opportunity in American higher education. Initiated in 1970, during the heyday of the "great society," it defined college as a right for all who had completed high school, and it especially aimed to create educational opportunities for disadvantaged minority students. This book evaluates that controversial experiment.

Although critics predicted that the open—admiss...