Contact: Jay Hershenson: 646 664-9001 Michael Arena: 646 664-9300 Office of Communication & Marketing 205 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 www.cuny.edu/news Excellence, Affordability, Opportunity and the NYC Experience Ernst Pierre was 8 when he emigrated to New York from Haiti with his mother, younger brother and a few suitcases, living first in one bedroom as the family embarked on a new life. That s how we started here, Pierre says. I was always interested in housing because I didn t necessarily have it. Now Pierre (Queens College 14), aspires to be a real estate developer targeting areas that are blighted, to find a way to renew them and make them viable again. Inspired by professors, activities like student government and a CUNY Service Corps internship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Pierre who worked part-time, lived at home, received some college financial aid and has accepted a job as a residential property administrator with The Lefrak Organization exemplifies the CUNY Value. Academic quality, affordability, job-ready degrees, all offered in opportunity-rich New York City: That s the CUNY Value. This fall a record 274,000 degree-credit students are attending colleges throughout the five boroughs, choosing the University s signature combination of quality academics, affordable tuition, financial aid and vast array of extracurricular activities. Like their counterparts at leafier, more expensive colleges and universities, CUNY students study with award-winning professors, win prestigious national scholarships such as Fulbrights and National Science Foundation fellowships, write for college publications, soar in stage productions, compete on intercollegiate sports teams, and intern with nonprofits, according to The CUNY Value Plus, a University publication available at cuny.edu/value. CUNY s tuition beats that of most private and public institutions in the nation, making it possible for the majority of undergraduates including low-income and employed, veterans and CUNY scholarship recipients to cover their college costs without having to borrow for a quality education. Average in-state tuition and fees are $6,446 at CUNY s four-year colleges. With our affordable tuition, excellent instruction and deep commitment to providing the opportunities and supports necessary for student success, CUNY is an unbeatable value in higher education today, said Chancellor James Milliken. Our record enrollments this fall clearly show that students and families understand the CUNY Value. Seventy percent of full-time CUNY undergraduates attend tuition-free, thanks in part to full coverage by federal Pell grants and New York State Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) awards. Federal tuition tax credits, CUNY scholarships and an $800 City Council-funded merit scholarship New York City high school graduates with B or better averages, also help make a CUNY education tuition-free or close to it for even more students. As student debt nationwide tops $1.1 trillion and U.S. college graduates owe $28,400 on average,
eight in 10 CUNY students graduate without federal loans. Of those graduating with debt, almost half are transfer students who chose CUNY after attending more costly institutions, CUNY data show. CUNY s quality and affordability make the University a higher education destination for both its traditional New York City-resident applicant pool and for value-seeking students from outside the city. Three CUNY colleges Brooklyn, Queens and Baruch recently took the top three Best Bang for the Buck spots in Washington Monthly s 2014 college rankings. Rigorous and innovative academic programs and initiatives are available throughout the University, attracting increasing numbers of high-achieving students, according to University enrollment data. At the same time, CUNY is fulfilling its historic commitments, mandated by New York State Education Law, to provide broad college access, serve the needs of New York s diverse population, and remain responsive to its urban setting and maintain its close articulation between senior and community college units. CUNY s operation as an integrated system of colleges facilitating a high rate of transfer between schools, is another CUNY Value that well serves the city s diverse student population. Transfer students comprise two-thirds of students entering CUNY baccalaureate-granting colleges and a majority of graduates from those colleges, including the most highly selective. Most entering freshmen start at the community colleges, which provide instruction at a variety of academic levels. Transfer students add considerable diversity to CUNY s five highly selective colleges. During the 2012-13 academic year, the freshman class of those schools was 37.6 percent Asian, 36 percent white, 16.1 percent Hispanic and 10.2 percent black. However, students transferring into those colleges were 37.3 percent white, almost 3.7 percent Asian, 21 percent Hispanic and 17.6 percent black. During the five most recent years for which CUNY has graduation data, 2008-09 to 2012-13, Latino graduates of CUNY s highly selective colleges have increased by 21% and black graduates by 9%. The CUNY Value Plus details the many facets of CUNY Value from the academic benefits at all CUNY colleges to the exceptionally affordable tuition, student support and extracurriculars. The University continues to draw and nurture high achievers; in 2014 its students again won an impressive number of prestigious national awards and honors, including 22 Fulbright scholarships and 16 National Science Foundation Graduate Research fellowships. Everywhere I ve gone in the CUNY system I ve found people who really care, people who spend a lot of time looking over my work, said William Cheung (CUNY B.A., 14), a debater with a passion for German language and philosophy who won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to teach and research in Bavaria this year. CUNY offerings range from traditional liberal arts to Macaulay Honors College, from research with award-winning faculty mentors to successful initiatives to improve community-college students academic readiness and keep them on track to graduation. Accomplished faculty are integral to CUNY Value, bringing high achievement, real-world perspectives and hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants to the campuses, engaging students and enhancing the quality of a CUNY education, the CUNY Value report says. Fourteen professors won Fulbright Scholarships in 2014 to research, study, teach and consult abroad. On-campus offerings extend beyond the classroom. Like most colleges, CUNY s offer
intercollegiate sports 199 teams as well as a seemingly infinite array of student publications, clubs and performance opportunities. CUNY Value also includes the convenience and experience of learning on modernized campuses, some providing dormitories, located throughout the five boroughs and reachable by public transportation. Since 2000, the Invest in CUNY campaign has raised $2.8 billion in private donations, 20 percent of which funds scholarships throughout the University. Along with that traditional support, the University also recognizes that many of its students are economically vulnerable. Its historic mission to educate the whole people includes extending emergency and other help through CUNY college branches of Single Stop USA, a provider of services and benefits, and through the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation Emergency Grant Fund which has given $11 million to help more than 5,000 CUNY students stay in school in the face of hardships like job loss and eviction. The backdrop of New York City, the nation s intellectual, financial and creative center, is key to the CUNY Value. From Off-Broadway to the Federal Reserve, to national nonprofits and Wall Street, year-round choices abound to intern, volunteer, serve and work creating lifelong professional relationships, the CUNY Value report notes. For example, the new, innovative CUNY Service Corps has placed hundreds of students in paid internships with city nonprofits and government agencies, leading to real-world career experience before graduation into the job market. Ernst Pierre, who grew up on Long Island, transferred into Queens College from Nassau Community College. The majority of my friends and peers went away to college, he says. For Pierre, though, It seemed like the city opened its arms up and had opportunities. At Queens, Pierre, who had worked in real estate, got involved in student government, which opened my eyes. He also joined the college s economics and business club, Haitian Student Association and Queens College Model U.N. He also had internships including the one at the Navy Yard, where he helped analyze parking conditions at the waterfront industrial park. Now, he says, I m interested in real estate development developing communities and making them more sustainable. His CUNY experience prepared him for the world, Pierre says, and I had the benefit of not paying a million dollars for my degree. Living with his family, he worked in a group home and in real estate referrals to pay his college costs, with some financial aid as he neared graduation. I owe zero dollars, he says. The CUNY Value Plus report contains data from The College Board, the National Center for Education Statistics and The City University of New York. The new publication, videos and other information are available at cuny.edu/value.
When Tuition at CUNY Was Free, Sort of CUNY was for many years associated with free tuition, so much so that people still refer to a mythical time, not so long ago, when everybody attending New York City s public colleges did so without paying a dime. The reality, however, is more complicated. A free education for students regardless of their background or financial means underpinned the original Free Academy and declared higher education an important societal investment when it was established in Manhattan in 1847. Back then, a class typically averaged about 100 or so students. But starting in the early 20th century, as enrollments grew, many accomplished students opened their wallets to study in the city s halls of public higher education. In 1909, two years after moving to more spacious accommodations in Harlem, City College expanded its offerings to include a separate evening baccalaureate program. Over time, the system s night schools of general studies expanded throughout the city and served tens of thousands of nonmatriculants. These students paid for their courses. Tuition, known then as instructional fees, was uniform for all nonmatriculants, who paid regardless of their financial circumstances. Financial aid for needy students was non-existent. Many hoped that one day their grades would permit transfer to the more prestigious and free day schools. Others attended at night because they needed to work during the day. For many low-income students in this pre-financial aid era, tuition was a hardship. In fall 1957, for example, nearly 36,000 attended Hunter, Brooklyn, Queens and City Colleges for free, but another 24,000 paid tuition of up to $300 a year the equivalent of $2,539.35 today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics online inflation calculator. In 1957, the colleges had $46.8 million in revenues; 17 percent -- some $7.74 million (a figure equivalent to $65.5 million today) -- was from undergraduate tuition and student fees. Even with tuition, a public higher education was an extraordinary value. While students at what became CUNY paid $300, New York University, for example, raised its tuition to $900 that year. Free tuition for day students lasted through much of the last century until 1970, when the University continued on back
continued from front dropped all tuition charges and accepted any student with a high school diploma. The move ushered in a brief period of free tuition for all undergraduate students that would not survive the economic realities. In fall 1976, amid the turmoil of a dire city fiscal crisis, the free-tuition policy was discontinued under pressure from the federal government, the state, and the financial community critical to rescuing New York City from bankruptcy. As part of the transition, New York State took over funding of CUNY s senior colleges and tuition was instituted at all CUNY colleges. CUNY students were added to the state s need-based Tuition Assistance Program, or TAP, which had been created during the early 1970s to help private colleges. 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. 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. Pell and TAP awards for CUNY students reached $838 million $573 million in Pell and $265 million in TAP during the 2013-2014 academic year. In 2014 these programs helped to provide a tuition-free education for seven out of 10 CUNY undergraduates; since 1976 they have helped hundreds of thousands of CUNY students attend college tuition-free. Combined with CUNY s bedrock policies of academic excellence and affordable tuition, they continue to make the University one of the nation s most outstanding higher education values, in keeping with the mission of service and access that can be traced to its founding. There are some who remain wistful for the return of traditional free tuition for all, despite CUNY s evolution, financing structure and state-funded status along with SUNY, which has always charged tuition. At stake today, however, is the challenge of providing a quality education and student support services on an unprecedented scale, to 274,000 degree-seeking students and at least 260,000 adult and continuingeducation enrollments. These 21st-century realities require year-round fundraising and resource acquisition, to provide facilities and instrumentation, services and programs of a complexity far beyond days of old, when teaching on line meant talking to students queued up during class registration. CUNY s tuition history has tracked with the economic realities of fulfilling the University s historic mission the principle of a free or low-cost quality public higher education that has connected many generations of immigrant New Yorkers and their children, those not born into wealth, to the ladder to social, economic and educational success.