Enrollment at the City University of New York climbed by 3% this fall, the second straight year of growth after pandemic-era declines thrust the city’s public university system into financial chaos.
The increase was largely driven by more students registering for CUNY community colleges, the division hardest hit by COVID-19. Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez planned to announce the data at the State of the University address Wednesday at City Tech in downtown Brooklyn, with the gains totaling almost 15,000 more students over the past two years.
“The increase in student enrollment demonstrates that the past year, often eventful and challenging, has also been a time of progress,” Matos Rodríguez said in a statement ahead of his speech.
In recent months, CUNY faced state and federal antisemitism probes while making headlines after the arrests of 170 pro-Palestinian protesters on its Harlem campus, City College. Tensions escalated again last month as contract negotiations stalled and unionized faculty and staff blocked the entrance of John Jay College. Dozens of members of CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress were detained.
Despite the challenges, the public university system continued on a trajectory that started the previous school year. This year’s community college enrollment jumped 6%, while the number of new students registering at graduate schools increased for the first time in four years, according to CUNY data.
But CUNY still has a long way to go to restore enrollment, which remains down more than 10% from prepandemic levels. Officials cited those losses for past rounds of spending cuts and a hiring freeze. At its height, the cash-strapped university system’s structural deficit reached $234 million in fiscal year 2022.
“While there is still work to do,” Matos Rodríguez added, “I’ve never been more confident in CUNY and our ability to deliver on our core mission of providing a first-rate education to every New Yorker, regardless of means or background.”
