As 2024 ends, I’m happy with a yr of nice progress for The Metropolis College of New York that has given us good purpose to really feel optimistic.
In 2024, our faculties welcomed extra college students and applied extra applications to assist information them to careers. It was a yr of record-breaking funding for the College’s analysis, and a yr of development with the enlargement of 1 college.
CUNY’s enrollment development – 3% for the second yr in a row – has solidified our rebound from the post-pandemic enrollment declines that impacted faculties nationwide and stored too many metropolis college students away from the remodeling energy of a faculty diploma.
And we’re not slowing down. This fall, greater than 55,000 New York highschool seniors applied to CUNY colleges throughout our four-week fee-waiver interval – a 62% improve over final yr’s inaugural charge waiver marketing campaign.
These college students view faculty as key to their pursuit of fulfilling careers, and we’re working onerous to ship on that promise. This yr, we aggressively broadened our capability to assist them get hold of paid internships, apprenticeships and full-time jobs. Our CUNY Spring Forward program grew by 60% because of funding from Governor Hochul. With Mayor Adams, we introduced an almost $12 million enlargement of the CUNY Inclusive Economy Initiative. With assist from the Robin Hood Basis, educational departments started incorporating career-infused degree maps to maintain college students on monitor to compete for jobs in fields aligned with their majors.
This yr additionally superior CUNY’s work for the general public good. We introduced the elevation of our Faculty of Drugs to a standalone CUNY establishment, increasing the varsity’s attain by including grasp’s, doctoral, post-graduate residency and different medical applications and strengthening the varsity’s mission of offering top quality well being care service to underserved communities.
In February, we opened the Nursing Schooling, Analysis and Observe Heart at Lehman Faculty, a 52,000-square-foot facility that tripled the varsity’s capability to coach nurses. CUNY graduates 1,800 nurses annually, almost half of the brand new nurses coming into the town’s workforce yearly.
It was additionally a banner yr for private and non-private funding that may assist advance CUNY’s instructional, analysis and public mission for years to return. Our greater than 10,000 researchers garnered $672 million in exterior funding within the final fiscal yr, an all-time document excessive for the College.
Apart from analysis funding, CUNY hit new highs for main items from our beneficiant philanthropic donors. The Simons Basis and Simons Basis Worldwide supplied a $75 million gift that may make CUNY a hub for computational science and synthetic intelligence and help our participation in Governor Hochul’s Empire AI challenge. And CUNY has raised $4.7 million from 5,200 donations by this month’s #CUNYTuesday marketing campaign, an all-time excessive for the annual day of giving and a rise of greater than 30% since 2022. There’s nonetheless time to provide and make an affect at cunytuesday.org.
CUNY additionally continued to develop this yr as one of many nation’s most numerous universities. We turned one of many first universities within the nation to add to its school calendar Lunar New 12 months, the Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and Diwali. CUNY faculties can have no lessons on these holidays beginning in 2025. The motion was championed by college students, who rightly argued that no one ought to face the burden of lacking a category to allow them to have fun a vacation or pageant that’s key to their heritage.
This yr was definitely not with out its challenges, and we all know we have now a number of work forward as a result of our ambitions to raised serve our 240,000 college students are excessive. However I do know the enduring willpower of the CUNY neighborhood will propel us ahead and into new heights in 2025.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The Metropolis College of New York (CUNY), the biggest city public college system in the US.
