The City University of New York (CUNY) is one of our nation’s leading public universities in urban settings. The school serves more than 485,000 students at its 23 institutions and colleges in the City of New York. The University’s 23 institutions include 11 senior colleges, 6 community colleges, the CUNY William Macaulay Honors College, the Graduate School & University Center, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, the CUNY School of Law, the CUNY School of Professional Studies, and the CUNY School of Public Health.
CUNY’s 165-year-old history is one of responsiveness to public needs, civic inspiration, and an unshakable commitment to one idea: Top-notch higher education must be accessible, available, and affordable for everyone. From its establishment in 1847 as the Free Academy to its existence today as New York City’s 23-campus public institution of higher learning, CUNY has hewed to its mission as it has evolved to meet the diverse needs of an ever-changing city.
“Open the doors to all…. Let the children of the rich and the poor take their seats together and know of no distinction save that of industry, good conduct, and intellect,” declared Townsend Harris, president of the city’s Board of Education, upon his founding of the Free Academy in a single building at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street in Manhattan. His bold idea: to offer free education to the children of immigrants and poorer city residents based on academic worth, not wealth.
It was the mid-19th century – the start of the Second Industrial Revolution – and the plan to prepare New Yorkers, native or newly arrived, for work and the professions was seen as a necessity. The plan was ratified through a statewide referendum.
The Academy offered both vocational training and a traditional university curriculum. It proved a success. Enrollment increased, as did the Academy’s reputation. In 1866, the school got a new name: The College of the City of New York, and during the 1890s, a plot of land in Harlem, between 138th and 140th Streets, was selected for its campus. But the college never entirely left its downtown roots. In 1919, the School of Business & Civic Administration opened in the building that formerly housed the Free Academy. In 1958, it was renamed for CCNY alumnus and financier Bernard Baruch.
In 1870, building upon the Academy’s principles, the Normal College of the City of New York was established as a free college for women. Open to all, regardless of race, religion or ethnic background, its primary function was to train city teachers. Guided by its first president, Irish immigrant Thomas Hunter, the Normal College offered rigorous academics, and by 1920 boasted the highest enrollment of any publicly-funded U.S. women’s college. Its growth prompted a move from an East Fourth Street armory into a distinctive, neo-Gothic structure on Park Avenue between 68th and 69th Streets, part of which still stands today.
Renamed Hunter College in 1914, the Manhattan campus has quadrupled in size with an expansion of its educational boundaries and enrollment. In Hunter’s early years, the New York State Legislature approved the establishment of a high school and elementary school. Like its namesake college, Hunter College High School has produced scores of notable alumni, including Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
In the early 20th century, CCNY and Hunter reached into the city’s outer boroughs.
Their Brooklyn campuses merged in 1930 and Brooklyn College was formed, the third institution to branch out from the original Free Academy, and it acquired a campus in Flatbush distinguished by Georgian-style buildings. The Queens branches merged in 1937 to found Queens College, to serve the borough’s burgeoning population. It is located in Flushing, in a collection of red-roofed mission-style buildings that had housed delinquent boys. Today, Queens’s “urban-suburban” campus covers 77 acres.
In the post-WW I era, when Ivy League universities discriminated against Jews, many Jewish academics and intellectuals taught and studied at New York’s public colleges. The CCNY of the 1930s was also a place where the political movements of the day, particularly leftist ones, were hotly debated, giving rise to a number of noted 20th-century intellectuals.
The ’30s saw further expansion. Hunter-in-Bronx was opening in four buildings, constructed by the state Works Progress Administration, near the Jerome Park Reservoir. In its first decade, it served women that took their first 2 years of studies at Hunter. During WW II, the U.S. Navy was using the campus for training the “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES); after the war, it provided temporary quarters for the newly formed United Nations organization.
Post-World War II, the GI Bill fueled an enrollment boom at the public colleges, and further expansion and transformation. New York City College of Technology opened in 1946. CCNY began admitting women during the 1950s; in 1951 all-female Hunter-in-the-Bronx opened to men and introduced a four-year curriculum. Three two-year community colleges opened: Staten Island Community College in 1955, Bronx Community College in 1957 and Queensborough in 1957.
Students who were admitted into degree programs attended tuition-free. Others who attended as part-time, nonmatriculated students paid tuition as did students seeking masters’ degrees. In 1960, 91,000 students were enrolled in the city’s public four-year colleges – City, Hunter, Brooklyn and Queens – and in the three community colleges. That year, a committee of the city’s Board of Higher Education, which oversaw the colleges, proposed they be reorganized into a new, public university that would have Ph.D.-granting authority. The recommendation followed expansion moves by the State University of New York, which had been established in 1948.
In 1961, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller signed the bill that reformulated the College of the City of New York into the City University of New York, a tuition-free public institution uniting the seven colleges and giving the new University authority to offer doctoral programs. Dr. John R. Everett, a highly regarded educator and former philosophy professor, was selected as its first Chancellor. Dr. Mina Rees, a noted mathematician and Hunter’s Dean of Faculty, was named Dean of Graduate Studies for the Graduate Center.
As the city’s population and demand for affordable higher education soared, CUNY expanded. John Jay College of Criminal Justice was founded in 1964 and York College in 1966. In 1968 Hunter-in-the Bronx was renamed Lehman College after four-time Gov. Herbert H. Lehman and established as a separate CUNY school. Medgar Evers College, named for the slain civil rights leader, was founded in 1970, and in 1976 the four-year College of Staten Island resulted from the merger of Richmond and Staten Island Community colleges.
New community colleges opened: Borough of Manhattan and Kingsborough in 1963, LaGuardia in 1968, and Hostos in 1970.
The 1960s were pivotal. As entry to CUNY’s colleges became more competitive, protestors agitated for more access for minority students. Following demands for change, the University established “open admissions,” which offered free education to any city resident with a high school diploma or equivalency degree; many thousands of students surged into CUNY schools during the 1970s.
Then came the New York City fiscal crisis, and another change in 1975: CUNY began charging tuition, albeit a fraction of that at other private and public colleges.
Throughout the next decade, enrollment dipped, in part due to a perception that CUNY’s academic quality had declined. In 1999, a mayoral task force chaired by Benno Schmidt – later chairperson of the Board of Trustees – proposed an overhaul to reverse the downward trend.
The University, led by a new chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, amended its open admissions policy. Open admissions and remedial classes for students needing them would be offered at the community colleges. Students would meet grade or exam criteria to gain admissions to the four-year senior colleges.
These and other critical changes pressed by Chancellor Goldstein – including a focus on science, the creation of new professional schools, and an innovative University funding strategy – have revitalized CUNY. Its 23 institutions now include Macaulay Honors College, CUNY Law School, CUNY School of Journalism and the CUNY School of Public Health. State-of-the-art research facilities, recruitment of accomplished full-time faculty, and plans for a new community college are also driving the renaissance.
Today, CUNY attracts record numbers of students, including high academic achievers and winners of prestigious Rhodes, Truman, and Goldwater scholarships. Federal and state aid covers education costs for the neediest students, while tuition increases have traditionally been small. The University has embarked on fundraising and other steps to cope with strained resources. As in its earliest days, CUNY meets New York City’s needs, educating for in-demand professions and turning out a prepared workforce.
Despite the challenges, the University remains committed to academic quality at an affordable price. Fulfilling its earliest promise, led with passion and commitment, CUNY continues to evolve to meet the educational needs of a remarkably diverse student body and city.