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Wayne State University's Board of Governors voted unanimously Wednesday to close the College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs -- a move that critics say symbolizes a national trend of universities disengaging from low-income students.

The University of Minnesota is expected later this week to vote to eliminate a college that helps non-traditional students. And other urban institutions, like Temple University and the University of Cincinnati, have recently raised admissions standards that were once quite welcoming to students in local areas.

At Wayne State, CULMA, as the urban college is known, had special advising and academic programs for minority students, first-generation students, those holding full-time jobs or those who dropped out of college years ago

Wayne State's provost, Nancy Barrett, has repeatedly assured faculty members that no jobs or academic programs will disappear as CULMA is subsumed into departments within the university. But many faculty members say that what will be lost is the interdisciplinary approach to educating non-traditional students that the college fostered. Jorge Chinea, director of the college’s Center for Chicano-Boricua Studies previously called CULMA a “beacon of light” for people in Detroit who might not otherwise pursue higher education.

“Now it’s a disembodied beacon of light,” he said. He likened CULMA to a lighthouse that helped non-traditional and minority students navigate toward a clear point of entry into higher education. “For many minorities, looking at a college like CULMA, it’s like, ‘Wow, the university reflects the interests of my community,’" Chinea said. With CULMA redistributed throughout the university, Chinea said that meeting specific needs of minority students will “be up to larger departments, and they may or may not do that.”

CULMA is not the only college serving minority students that is on the endangered list. In fact, some experts, citing the financial attractions to public institutions of courting traditional and elite students, say that the shuttering of CULMA is a sign of the times. On Friday, the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents is expected to vote to make a department out of General College, which helps students, often from low-income families, who do not meet the normal admissions requirements, catch up and move into the university. In continuing efforts to improve their status, Temple University and the University of Cincinnati recently put more difficult admissions requirements in place.

"They’re trying to attract better students and faculty,” said Ronald Ehrenberg, director of Cornell University's Higher Education Research Institute. “This improvement in status is the type of thing that brings in more external funds from donations and research funding. I think basically there is this dilemma, it is sort of quality versus access.”

Ehrenberg said that some institutions are saying that community college should be the starting spot for students who are not quite ready for the university, and that people can transfer from them.

“Some community colleges are good,” said Andre Furtado, assistant professor in CULMA’s Interdisciplinary Studies program. Furtado noted that Detroit is about 85 percent African American, yet the African American graduation rate is only about 12 percent. “[Community Colleges] don’t emphasize critical thinking like we do.... We need these students immersed in a place with research and diverse intellectual life.”

Barret cited the ability to save on administrative costs as a major reason for moving CULMA. The financial squeeze sweeping higher education seems to suggest that closing and restructurings will continue.

“State coffers are more constrained than they have been in the past,” said Jane Hannaway, director of the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute. “These institutions are facing stiffer budget constraints, and the question is: ‘Where do they allocate their efforts? It seems like they’re trying to focus on four-year students.”

Faculty members and staff at Minnesota’s General College fear that the university, which has the goal of becoming one of the world’s top three public research institutions, will bolster its status at the expense of service. “The indicators of quality outlined in U.S. News & World Report show that the quality of institutions has a lot to do with the perceived quality of the students they are recruiting,” said David Taylor, dean of the General College. “If you don’t admit these students, your profile measurably improves, and if these students are routed through community colleges and come back, they don’t count as incoming freshman.”

If the Board of Regents votes to change the General College, it will not disappear, but will become a department. Robert Jones, senior vice president for system administration, cited the college’s 30 percent graduation rate as unacceptable compared to the 57 percent of university at large. “This is about what’s best for the students,” he said. “We need bigger improvements. What we’re saying is: transfer it to an academic department. Get rid of extra advising overhead and let’s pour those savings back into academic support programs.”

Nathan Whittaker, academic adviser and General College alumnus, said that the students who need the college most will not see the university as a place that wants them when the General College becomes a department, and loses its admissions duties. Some of the students probably will be successful at community colleges and transfer in, he said, “but it’s dangerous to say, ‘Hey, that’s your place over there, and this place is for students whose families went through higher education.’”

The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday published an article on changes at Temple University that have made the student body “whiter, wealthier and more suburban than ever,” and has raised the average SAT score over 100 points since the mid-1990s.

The University of Cincinnati is instituting tougher standardized test and grade-point average requirements for admission, again in an attempt to admit students most likely to graduate. The new standards -- students must either be in the top 10 percent of their high school class; earn a 22 or higher on the ACT or a 1010 or higher on the SAT; or be in the top 75 percent of their high school class with a 20 ACT and a 2.5 GPA -- would have kept out perhaps as much as a sixth of the most recent incoming class, according to administrators.

Cincinnati did, however, establish the Center for Access and Transition, which currently has open admissions for about 800 students, and helps students who did not meet the normal requirements make a transition into the university. The center, however, will require a 2.0 GPA of all students under 21, beginning in 2006. That would have prevented about 80 students from enrolling in 2004-05. “That’s just to address the issue of motivation,” said Gregory Stewart, director of the center.

Wayne State's Furtado finds the developments -- nationally and at his university -- depressing. “We want a hockey team and an honors college,” said Furtado. “We’re giving up on social justice. You can’t have classes of 50 people and put somebody in who has been out of school for 20 years.”