This yr, once we introduced that Hostos Neighborhood Faculty will open a brand new heart for its life sciences and allied well being applications within the historic Bronx Basic Publish Workplace constructing, it was a vivid image of CUNY’s trajectory over the previous yr.
The enlargement is only one instance of the story of 2025 at CUNY, a yr outlined by progress and innovation to fulfill the evolving wants of our college students and metropolis.
In 2025, CUNY enrollment grew for the third straight yr. The rise — 4% this fall, contributing to a three-year improve of about 21,000 college students — displays the influence of our increasing partnership with New York Metropolis Public Colleges in addition to the launch of Governor Hochul’s free group faculty initiative, which has bolstered our CUNY Reconnect program for grownup learners returning to varsity.
Going Locations
We matched that momentum with main investments in our campuses and college students. We unveiled CUNY Past, the nation’s most bold plan to embed profession studying into each scholar’s educational journey and guarantee they graduate not solely with a level, however able to launch careers. At Lehman Faculty, a historic $50 million reward from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott will assist convey this imaginative and prescient to life
by increasing pathways to high-demand fields.
As well as, we continued our work to construct trade partnerships that assist college students get jobs. Practically 10,000 CUNY college students have now been employed by the town’s largest private-sector employers by means of our five-year collaboration with the New York Jobs CEO Council.
Our college students continued to encourage us. College students like Stephanie Pacheco of Borough of Manhattan Neighborhood Faculty, the 2024-25 Nationwide Youth Poet Laureate, who honored us with a poem that captured the spirit of our College:
“Dear CUNY, I don’t know of any other school that runs its city like you That paints its town with its face like you Everywhere I turn, every building is a student Every train car is a classroom”
That spirit is sustained by the college and employees who open doorways for our college students day-after-day of the yr. Workers like Charlotte Henson-Butler, a 1978 graduate of Hunter Faculty who has guided generations of CUNY college students as a employees member in admissions for 44 years. Even now, she says, CUNY graduates acknowledge her on the road and thank her for serving to them obtain their desires. “It brings tears to my eyes to see how successful they have been,” she says.
Stephanie and Charlotte remind us that CUNY’s influence is constructed particular person by particular person, reaching far past our campuses, increasing alternative and connecting communities throughout the town.
This yr, that connection grew to become extra seen in one other approach when the MTA renamed certainly one of the town’s authentic subway stations as 23 St–Baruch Faculty. It’s the seventh station to be named for a CUNY faculty and a reminder of how deeply CUNY is woven into the material of New York Metropolis and its neighborhoods. I prefer to say that CUNY is as important to our metropolis because the subway system — we each take New Yorkers the place they wish to go.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The Metropolis College of New York (CUNY), the most important city public college system in the USA.
