The City University of New York (CUNY, spoken /ˈkjuːni/, KYOO-nee) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges, and seven professional institutions. In 1960, John R. Everett became the first chancellor of the Municipal College System of New York City, later known as the City University of New York (CUNY). CUNY, established by New York state legislation in 1961 and signed into law by Governor Nelson Rockefeller, was an amalgamation of existing institutions and a new graduate school.
The system was governed by the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York, created in 1926, and later renamed the board of trustees of the CUNY in 1979. The institutions merged into CUNY included the Free Academy (later City College of New York), the Female Normal and High School (later Hunter College), Brooklyn College, and Queens College. CUNY has historically provided accessible education, especially to those excluded or unable to afford private universities. The first community college in New York City was established in 1955 with shared funding between the state and the city, but unlike the senior colleges, community college students had to pay tuition.
The integration of CUNY's colleges into a single university system took place in 1961, under a chancellor and with state funding. The Graduate Center, serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution, was also established that year. In 1964, Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. extended the senior colleges' free tuition policy to community colleges. The 1960s saw student protests demanding more racial diversity and academic representation in CUNY, leading to the establishment of Medgar Evers College and the implementation of the Open Admissions policy in 1970. This policy dramatically increased student diversity but also introduced challenges like low retention rates. The 1976 fiscal crisis ended the free tuition policy, leading to the introduction of tuition fees for all CUNY colleges. The university enrolls more than 275,000 students and counts thirteen Nobel Prize winners and twenty-four MacArthur Fellows among its alumni.[8]
In 1960, John R. Everett became the first chancellor of the Municipal College System of the City of New York, later renamed CUNY, for a salary of $25,000 ($257,000 in current dollar terms).[9][10][11] CUNY was created in 1961,[12] by New York State legislation, signed into law by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The legislation integrated existing institutions and a new graduate school into a coordinated system of higher education for the city, under the control of the "Board of Higher Education of the City of New York", which had been created by New York State legislation in 1926. By 1979, the Board of Higher Education had become the "Board of Trustees of the CUNY".[13]
The institutions that were merged to create CUNY were:[13]
CUNY has served a diverse student body, especially those excluded from or unable to afford private universities. Its four-year colleges offered a high-quality, tuition-free education to the poor, the working class, and the immigrants of New York City who met the grade requirements for matriculated status. During the post-World War I era, when some Ivy League universities, such as Yale University, discriminated against Jews, many Jewish academics and intellectuals studied and taught at CUNY.[14] The City College of New York developed a reputation of being "the Harvard of the proletariat."[15]
As New York City's population and public college enrollment grew during the early 20th century and the city struggled for resources, the municipal colleges slowly began adopting selective tuition, also known as instructional fees, for a handful of courses and programs. During the Great Depression, with funding for public colleges severely constrained, limits were imposed on the size of the colleges' free Day Sessions, and tuition was imposed upon students deemed "competent" but not academically qualified for the day program. Most of these "limited matriculation" students enrolled in the Evening Sessions, and paid tuition.[16] Additionally, as the population of New York grew, CUNY was not able to accommodate the demand for higher education. Higher and higher requirements for admission were imposed; in 1965, a student seeking admission to CUNY needed an average grade of 92 or A−.[17] This helped to ensure that the student population of CUNY remained largely white and middle-class.[17]
Demand in the United States for higher education rapidly grew after World War II, and during the mid-1940s a movement began to create community colleges to provide accessible education and training. In New York City, however, the community college movement was constrained by many factors including "financial problems, narrow perceptions of responsibility, organizational weaknesses, adverse political factors, and other competing priorities."[18]
Community colleges would have drawn from the same city coffers that were funding the senior colleges, and city higher education officials were of the view that the state should finance them. It was not until 1955, under a shared-funding arrangement with New York State, that New York City established its first community college, on Staten Island. Unlike the day college students attending the city's public baccalaureate colleges for free, community college students had to pay tuition fees under the state-city funding formula. Community college students paid tuition fees for approximately 10 years.[18]
Over time, tuition fees for limited-matriculated students became an important source of system revenues. In fall 1957, for example, nearly 36,000 attended Hunter, Brooklyn, Queens and City Colleges for free, but another 24,000 paid tuition fees of up to $300 a year ($3,300 in current dollar terms).[19] Undergraduate tuition and other student fees in 1957 comprised 17 percent of the colleges' $46.8 million in revenues, about $7.74 million ($83,970,000 in current dollar terms).[20]
Three community colleges had been established by early 1961 when New York City's public colleges were codified by the state as a single university with a chancellor at the helm and an infusion of state funds. But the city's slowness in creating the community colleges as demand for college seats was intensifying and had resulted in mounting frustration, particularly on the part of minorities, that college opportunities were not available to them.
In 1964, as New York City's Board of Higher Education moved to take full responsibility for the community colleges, city officials extended the senior colleges' free tuition policy to them, a change that was included by Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. in his budget plans and took effect with the 1964–65 academic year.[21]
Calls for greater access to public higher education from the black and Puerto Rican communities in New York, especially in Brooklyn, led to the founding of "Community College Number 7," later Medgar Evers College, in 1966–1967.[17] In 1969, a group of black and Puerto Rican students occupied City College and demanded the racial integration of CUNY, which at the time had an overwhelmingly white student body.[18]
Students at some campuses became increasingly frustrated with the university's and Board of Higher Education's handling of university administration. At Baruch College in 1967, over a thousand students protested the plan to make the college an upper-division school limited to junior, senior, and graduate students.[22] At Brooklyn College in 1968, students attempted a sit-in to demand the admission of more black and Puerto Rican students and additional black studies curriculum.[23] Students at Hunter College also demanded a Black studies program.[24] Members of the SEEK program, which provided academic support for underprepared and underprivileged students, staged a building takeover at Queens College in 1969 to protest the decisions of the program's director, who would later be replaced by a black professor.[25][26] Puerto Rican students at Bronx Community College filed a report with the New York State Division of Human Rights in 1970, contending that the intellectual level of the college was inferior and discriminatory.[27] Hunter College was crippled for several days by a protest of 2,000 students who had a list of demands focusing on more student representation in college administration.[28] Across CUNY, students boycotted their campuses in 1970 to protest a rise in student fees and other issues, including the proposed (and later implemented) open admissions plan.[29]
Like many college campuses in 1970, CUNY faced a number of protests and demonstrations after the Kent State massacre and Cambodian Campaign. The Administrative Council of the City University of New York sent U.S. president Richard Nixon a telegram in 1970 stating, "No nation can long endure the alienation of the best of its young people."[30] Some colleges, including John Jay College of Criminal Justice, historically the "college for cops," held teach-ins in addition to student and faculty protests.[31]
In April 2024, CUNY students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Israel–Hamas war.[32][33] The student protestors demanded that CUNY divest from companies with ties to Israel and that CUNY officials cancel any upcoming trips to Israel and protect students involved in the demonstrations.[34]
Under pressure from community activists and CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker, the Board of Higher Education (BHE) approved an open admissions plan in 1966, but it was not scheduled to be fully implemented until 1975.[17] However, in 1969, students and faculty across CUNY participated in rallies, student strikes, and class boycotts demanding an end to CUNY's restrictive admissions policies. CUNY administrators and Mayor John Lindsay expressed support for these demands, and the BHE voted to implement the plan immediately in the fall of 1970.[17]
All high school graduates were guaranteed entrance to the university without having to fulfill traditional requirements such as exams or grades. The policy nearly doubled the number of students enrolled in the CUNY system to 35,000 (compared to 20,000 the year before). Black and Hispanic student enrollment increased threefold.[35] Remedial education, to supplement the training of under-prepared students, became a significant part of CUNY's offerings.[36] Additionally, ethnic and Black Studies programs and centers were instituted on many CUNY campuses, contributing to the growth of similar programs nationwide.[17]
However, retention of students in CUNY during this period was low; two-thirds of students enrolled in the early 1970s left within four years without graduating.[17]
In fall 1976, during New York City's fiscal crisis, the free tuition policy was discontinued under pressure from the federal government, the financial community that had a role in rescuing the city from bankruptcy, and New York State, which would take over the funding of CUNY's senior colleges.[37] Tuition, which had been in place in the State University of New York system since 1963, was instituted at all CUNY colleges.[38][39]
Meanwhile, CUNY students were added to the state's need-based Tuition Assistance Program (TAP), which had been created to help private colleges.[40] Full-time students who met the income eligibility criteria were permitted to receive TAP, ensuring for the first time that financial hardship would deprive no CUNY student of a college education.[40] Within a few years, the federal government would create its own need-based program, known as Pell Grants, providing the neediest students with a tuition-free college education. Joseph S. Murphy was Chancellor of the City University of New York from 1982 to 1990, when he resigned.[41] CUNY at the time was the third-largest university in the United States, with over 180,000 students.[42]
By 2011, nearly six of ten full-time undergraduates qualified for a tuition-free education at CUNY due in large measure to state, federal and CUNY financial aid programs.[43] CUNY's enrollment dipped after tuition was re-established, and there were further enrollment declines through the 1980s and into the 1990s.[44]
In 1995, CUNY suffered another fiscal crisis when Governor George Pataki proposed a drastic cut in state financing.[45] Faculty cancelled classes and students staged protests. By May, CUNY adopted deep cuts to college budgets and class offerings.[46] By June, to save money spent on remedial programs, CUNY adopted a stricter admissions policy for its senior colleges: students deemed unprepared for college would not be admitted, this a departure from the 1970 Open Admissions program.[47] That year's final state budget cut funding by $102 million, which CUNY absorbed by increasing tuition by $750 and offering a retirement incentive plan for faculty.
In 1999, a task force appointed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani issued a report that described CUNY as "an institution adrift" and called for an improved, more cohesive university structure and management, as well as more consistent academic standards. Following the report, Matthew Goldstein, a mathematician and City College graduate who had led CUNY's Baruch College and briefly, Adelphi University, was appointed chancellor. CUNY ended its policy of open admissions to its four-year colleges, raised its admissions standards at its most selective four-year colleges (Baruch, Brooklyn, City, Hunter and Queens), and required new enrollees who needed remediation to begin their studies at a CUNY open-admissions community college.[48]
CUNY's enrollment of degree-credit students reached 220,727 in 2005 and 262,321 in 2010 as the university broadened its academic offerings.[49] The university added more than 2,000 full-time faculty positions, opened new schools and programs, and expanded the university's fundraising efforts to help pay for them.[48] Fundraising increased from $35 million in 2000 to more than $200 million in 2012.[50]
By autumn 2013, all CUNY undergraduates were required to take an administration-dictated common core of courses which have been claimed to meet specific "learning outcomes" or standards. Since the courses are accepted university-wide, the administration claims it will be easier for students to transfer course credits between CUNY colleges. It also reduced the number of core courses some CUNY colleges had required, to a level below national norms, particularly in the sciences.[51][52] The program is the target of several lawsuits by students and faculty, and was the subject of a "no confidence" vote by the faculty, who rejected it by an overwhelming 92% margin.[53]
Chancellor Goldstein retired on July 1, 2013, and was replaced on June 1, 2014, by James Milliken, president of the University of Nebraska, and a graduate of the University of Nebraska and New York University School of Law.[54] Milliken retired at the end of the 2018 academic year and moved on to become the chancellor for the University of Texas system.[55][56]
In 2018, CUNY opened its 25th campus, the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, named after former president Joseph S. Murphy and combining some forms and functions of the Murphy Institute that were housed at the CUNY School of Professional Studies.[57]
On February 13, 2019, the board of trustees voted to appoint Queens College president Felix V. Matos Rodriguez as the chancellor of the City University of New York.[58] Matos became both the first Latino and minority educator to head the university. He assumed the post May 1.[59]
CUNY is the fourth-largest university system in the United States by enrollment, behind the California State University, State University of New York (SUNY), and University of California systems. More than 271,000-degree-credit students, continuing, and professional education students are enrolled at campuses located in all five New York City boroughs.[60]
The university has one of the most diverse student bodies in the United States, with students hailing from around the world, although most students live in New York City. The black, white and Hispanic undergraduate populations each comprise more than a quarter of the student body, and Asian undergraduates make up 18 percent. Fifty-eight percent are female, and 28 percent are 25 or older.[61] In the 2017–2018 award year, 144,380 CUNY students received the Federal Pell Grant.[62]
Founded in 1997 by immigration lawyer Allan Wernick, CUNY Citizenship Now! is an immigration assistance organization that provides free and confidential immigration law services to help individuals and families on their path to U.S. citizenship.[63][64] In 2021, CUNY launched a College Immigrant Ambassador Program in partnership with the New York City Department of Education.[65][66]
Black: Senior Colleges; Red: Graduate and Professional Schools; Yellow: Community Colleges.The forerunner of today's City University of New York was governed by the Board of Education of New York City. Members of the Board of Education, chaired by the president of the board, served as ex officio trustees. For the next four decades, the board members continued to serve as ex officio trustees of the College of the City of New York and the city's other municipal college, the Normal College of the City of New York.
In 1900, the New York State Legislature created separate boards of trustees for the College of the City of New York and the Normal College, which became Hunter College in 1914. In 1926, the legislature established the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York, which assumed supervision of both municipal colleges.
In 1961, the New York State Legislature established the City University of New York, uniting what had become seven municipal colleges at the time: the City College of New York, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, Queens College, Staten Island Community College, Bronx Community College and Queensborough Community College. In 1979, the CUNY Financing and Governance Act was adopted by the State and the Board of Higher Education became the City University of New York board of trustees.
Today, the City University is governed by the board of trustees composed of 17 members, ten of whom are appointed by the governor of New York "with the advice and consent of the senate," and five by the mayor of New York City "with the advice and consent of the senate." The final two trustees are ex officio members. One is the chair of the university's student senate, and the other is non-voting and is the chair of the university's faculty senate. Both the mayoral and gubernatorial appointments to the CUNY Board are required to include at least one resident of each of New York City's five boroughs. Trustees serve seven-year terms, which are renewable for another seven years. The chancellor is elected by the board of trustees, and is the "chief educational and administrative officer" of the City University.
The administrative offices are in Midtown Manhattan.[68]
CUNY employs 6,700 full-time faculty members and over 10,000 adjunct faculty members.[69][70] Faculty and staff are represented by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), a labor union and chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.[71]
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CUNY has a unified public safety department, the City University of New York Public Safety Department, with branches at each of the 26 CUNY campuses.[78] The New York City Police Department is the primary policing and investigation agency within the New York City as per the NYC Charter, which includes all CUNY campuses and facilities.
The Public Safety Department came under heavy criticism from student groups, after several students protesting tuition increases tried to occupy the lobby of the Baruch College. The occupiers were forcibly removed from the area and several were arrested on November 21, 2011.[79]
In recent years, there have been a number of antisemitic incidents on CUNY campuses, including:
CUNY has taken steps to address antisemitism on its campuses. In 2020, the university created a task force to combat antisemitism. The task force has developed a number of initiatives, including training for faculty and staff on how to identify and address antisemitism.[85]
In June 2024, the United States Department of Education concluded that CUNY has failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination following the October 7 attacks. CUNY's Hunter College also faced scrutiny for incidents dating back to 2021. In response, Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez stated that CUNY is dedicated to maintaining a discrimination-free and hate-free environment, and that new measures will ensure consistent and transparent investigation and resolution of complaints.[83]
CUNY also has a broadcast TV service, CUNY TV (channel 75 on Spectrum, digital HD broadcast channel 25.3), which airs telecourses, classic and foreign films, magazine shows, and panel discussions in foreign languages.
The City University Film Festival is CUNY's official film festival. The festival was founded in 2009.
CUNY graduates include 13 Nobel laureates, 2 Fields Medalists, 2 U.S. Secretaries of State, a Supreme Court Justice, several New York City mayors, members of Congress, state legislators, scientists, artists, and Olympians.[61][86]
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