City University of New York
The City University of New York traces its origins to a letter published on the 15th of March 1847. Townsend Harris, then president of the city's Board of Education, argued for a school without class distinctions. "Open the doors to all," he wrote, "and let the children of the rich and the poor take their seats together." That vision would survive wars, political purges, and bankruptcy crises. Today CUNY is the largest urban university system in the United States. Its 26 campuses enroll more than 275,000 students, drawn from every borough and many countries. Thirteen of its alumni have won the Nobel Prize. Twenty-four have been named MacArthur Fellows. The questions at its center have never changed: can a city afford to educate everyone? And what happens when it tries to stop?
From 1825 to 1860, New York City's population surged from 166,000 to 814,000. That growth made it the third largest city in the Western world, and it brought waves of immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Free elementary schools existed for many, but higher education remained beyond the reach of working families. Harris and his supporters argued that the state's Literature Fund, a public budget for education, "ought to be apportioned on the principle of the greatest good to the greatest number." Two newspaper editors took his side: James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald and William Cullen Bryant of the Evening Post both backed the idea on their editorial pages. Horace Greeley, founder of the New-York Tribune, opposed using public funds for the school even though he supported its overall purpose.
The Free Academy received its charter from the New York State Legislature on the 7th of May 1847. Supporters called it "the first municipal institution for free higher education to appear on this globe." Construction began in November of that year. The school's first principal, Dr. Horace Webster, was a graduate of the United States Military Academy and a professor of mathematics. At the formal opening on the 21st of January 1849, Webster described what the institution was meant to prove: "The experiment is to be tried," he said, "whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated."
Richard Rodgers Bowker published the first issue of The City College Collegian in November 1866. The paper ran for only one year, but in that time it called for the formation of the first student-led academic senate in the nation. The school had already been renamed the College of the City of New York in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. Students who graduated had pushed for that change, feeling that the word "Academy" carried less prestige than "College" in the real world.
In 1870, just two decades after that opening ceremony, a second institution opened its doors. It was a school for women, founded by an Irish-born schoolmaster named Thomas Hunter.
Thomas Hunter opened his Female Normal and High School on the 14th of February 1870. The school occupied the third floor of a building at the southeast corner of Broadway and Fourth Street. Hunter was an Irish-born exiled republican who insisted on admitting students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds from the first day. He combined liberal arts, science, and education in a single curriculum.
In September 1873, the school moved to a Gothic revivalist building on Park Avenue. Hunter himself had designed it, placed between 68th and 69th Street. Under President George Samler Davis, who took office in 1908, the school was renamed Hunter College to honor its founder. Davis persuaded the Interborough Rapid Transit Company to complete the first section of the Lexington Avenue station at 68th Street. That connection made the college reachable for students traveling from distant parts of the city.
The push for a Brooklyn campus began as early as 1905, when Brooklyn Controller Edward M. Grout argued that the distance to existing schools made attendance "practically prohibitive" to residents of Brooklyn and Queens. City College opened a teacher extension program in Brooklyn in 1909 and an evening program by 1917. In April 1926, the Nicoll-Hearn Bill, signed by Governor Al Smith, created a Board of Higher Education for New York's public colleges. Moses J. Stroock was named the board's first chairman. The bill charged the board with building a school in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn College emerged in 1930 from the merger of city branch campuses. Its first president, William Boylan, selected an undeveloped site in Midwood at the proposal of architect Randolph Evans. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia broke ground on the new campus on the 2nd of October 1935. Franklin D. Roosevelt would later lay the last stone.
On the 25th of December 1936, Mayor LaGuardia agreed to establish a college in Queens. The following year, Queens College was created from the merger of existing City College and Hunter College branches in the borough. Its first president, Dr. Paul Klapper, had been the Dean of the School of Education at City College. In an interview published on the 26th of May 1937, Klapper described what he was building: "We must build not another college but a new college." He wanted it to become "a great cultural center for the Borough of Queens."
With City College, Hunter, Brooklyn College, and Queens College now in place, CUNY's campuses were about to become among the most politically charged educational spaces in America.
As historian Conor Tomas Reed writes, Jewish students from impoverished refugee families flocked to City College for a free education. Over time, Reed writes, they "turned the college into a hotbed of antifascism." In the same era, some Ivy League universities, including Yale and Columbia, placed harsh quotas on the number of Jewish students they admitted. City College earned a reputation as "the Harvard of the proletariat" and "a Citadel on a Hill," a home for radical argument among those shut out of elite institutions.
Compulsory military training on campus was eliminated in 1926, the product of years of student organizing. Frederick B. Robinson, who served as City College president from 1927 to 1939, responded to political activism with suspensions, dismissals, and cooperation with the anti-Communist Rapp-Coudert Committee. That committee, formed in response to a 1935 Teachers Union election that brought Communists into greater influence, sought to purge faculty with alleged Communist affiliations. More than fifty professors were fired as a result: the largest political purge of faculty in American history. The committee was modeled on the House Un-American Activities Committee and would itself serve as a template for similar investigations.
On the 13th of April 1934, City College and Hunter College hosted the first National Student Strike Against War. The strike was organized by the Student League for Industrial Democracy and the National Student League. About 600 students gathered at the flagpole on City College's campus. They demanded the reinstatement of twenty-one students expelled for refusing to answer Dean Morton Gottschall's questions about an earlier protest. That earlier demonstration had targeted a visiting delegation of soldiers from fascist Italy on the 9th of October. On the 20th of November 1934, nearly 1,500 students gathered at the CCNY Quad. They burned a two-headed effigy of President Robinson and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. More than 2,000 City College students later voted to reinstate the expelled students.
At Brooklyn College, President Harry Gideonse, who served from 1939 to 1966, believed that academia had to provide moral and social guidance alongside intellectual training. In 1939, a faculty-student committee blocked Communist Party leader Earl Browder from speaking to the Karl Marx Society on campus. Republican representative J. Parnell Thomas claimed that roughly a quarter of Brooklyn College students sympathized with the Communist Party. He put the estimated figure for sympathetic professors at one in three.
The same protest energy that filled those courtyards in the 1930s would return in force three decades later. The next generation of activists had a different target in mind.
Albert H. Bowker was named CUNY chancellor in 1963. He found a university whose enrollment was overwhelmingly white at a time when New York City's neighborhoods were changing rapidly. Bowker pushed for a policy he called "open admissions." The idea was direct: every New York City high school graduate would be guaranteed a place at the university.
Two preparatory programs were created to bridge the gap. College Discovery launched in 1964 for community college students underprepared for college-level work. Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge, known as SEEK, followed in 1966. SEEK became, in the words of one account, "a nucleus for experimental study." It challenged inequalities entrenched in City College's admissions, curriculum, and its relationship to Harlem.
Calls for racial access grew louder across the city. In 1966 and 1967, those demands produced Medgar Evers College, established to serve communities in Brooklyn. Hostos Community College was forged through similar activism in 1968. York College opened in 1967 in Jamaica, Queens, the first senior college founded under the CUNY system.
In 1969, a coalition of Black and Puerto Rican students known as the Committee of Ten occupied City College. They issued five specific demands. The demands included a separate school of Black and Puerto Rican studies and a separate orientation program for minority freshmen. They also called for student control over SEEK staffing and for incoming classes to reflect the racial makeup of New York City's high schools. Mandatory courses in Black and Puerto Rican history for all education majors were also part of the list.
The Board of Higher Education voted to implement open admissions in the fall of 1970. The policy nearly doubled CUNY's student enrollment, rising to 35,000 from 20,000 the previous year. Black and Hispanic student enrollment increased threefold. Remedial education became a major part of what the university offered. Ethnic and Black Studies programs spread across many campuses, contributing to similar programs nationwide. The costs were visible quickly: two-thirds of students who enrolled in the early 1970s left within four years without graduating.
LaGuardia Community College was founded in 1970 in Long Island City, Queens, with a focus on cooperative education. It was among the last campuses established before CUNY's finances began to unravel.
In the fall of 1976, New York City's fiscal crisis ended something that had defined CUNY for over a century: free tuition. The federal government, the financial institutions that had helped rescue the city from bankruptcy, and New York State all applied pressure. Tuition was instituted at every CUNY college. To soften the blow, CUNY students were added to the state's need-based Tuition Assistance Program, originally created for students at private colleges. The federal Pell Grant program followed, providing the neediest students with a path to tuition-free education.
In 1981, Charles Halpern was hired to found a law school within CUNY. Halpern had been a founder of one of the nation's first public interest law firms. CUNY School of Law opened in 1983 as the CUNY Law School at Queens College, with a focus on public interest law. It remains the only publicly funded law school in New York City.
When Joseph S. Murphy became chancellor in 1982, CUNY was still the third-largest university in the United States, with over 180,000 students. Enrollment had dipped after tuition was introduced and continued to fall through the decade.
In 1995, Governor George Pataki proposed a $500 tuition increase and the elimination of SEEK and College Discovery. Faculty cancelled classes in protest. On the 23rd of March 1995, thousands of New York City public school and CUNY students marched to City Hall. Organizers called it the largest student demonstration since Vietnam. The state's final budget cut CUNY's funding by $102 million. To absorb the cut, the university raised tuition by a further $750 and offered a retirement incentive plan for faculty.
By June 1995, CUNY adopted a stricter admissions policy for its senior colleges. Students deemed unable to finish required remedial work by the end of their freshman year would not be admitted. Open admissions had effectively ended, a quarter-century after the Board of Higher Education voted it in.
A 1999 task force commissioned by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani described CUNY as "an institution adrift." It called for improved management and more consistent academic standards. Matthew Goldstein, a mathematician and City College graduate who had led Baruch College and briefly Adelphi University, was appointed chancellor. He raised admissions standards at the most selective four-year campuses and required students needing remediation to begin their studies at open-admissions community colleges.
Under Goldstein's direction, degree-credit enrollment grew to 220,727 in 2005 and 262,321 in 2010. The university added new schools and programs throughout that decade.
Fundraising at CUNY grew from $35 million in 2000 to more than $200 million by 2012. The university added more than 2,000 full-time faculty positions in the same period. By 2011, nearly six of ten full-time CUNY undergraduates qualified for a tuition-free education through state, federal, and CUNY financial aid programs.
The first CUNY Honors College launched in 2001. In 2006, it was renamed the William E. Macaulay Honors College, following a $30 million donation from William E. Macaulay and his wife Linda. Macaulay had graduated from the Baruch School of Business at City College in the class of 1966. The endowment funded full four-year tuition scholarships and research projects and study abroad programs. It also paid for a new building at 35 West 67th Street, which opened in April 2008. Eight senior colleges serve as home campuses for Macaulay students.
The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism opened in 2006, originally as the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. It is the only public graduate school of journalism in the northeastern United States. The mission was to expand diversity in newsrooms and provide affordable graduate journalism education in New York.
By autumn 2013, CUNY required all undergraduates to complete a common core curriculum. Faculty rejected it by a 92% margin in a no-confidence vote. The program was the subject of several lawsuits by students and faculty.
Chancellor Goldstein retired on the 1st of July 2013. He was replaced on the 1st of June 2014 by James Milliken. Milliken was then president of the University of Nebraska and a graduate of New York University School of Law. Milliken left at the end of the 2018 academic year for the University of Texas system. On the 13th of February 2019, the Board of Trustees voted to appoint Felix V. Matos Rodriguez, then president of Queens College, as chancellor. Matos Rodriguez became the first Latino and first minority educator to lead the university.
On the 19th of November 2024, the CUNY School of Medicine became the university's 26th campus. It had previously operated within the scope of City College of New York. On the 1st of July 2025, Governor Kathy Hochul signed a free community college program into law for SUNY and CUNY students. The program expanded the CUNY Reconnect initiative, which provided tuition-free associate degrees in high-demand fields. To qualify, New York residents needed to be between 25 and 55 years old with no prior degree.
Updated
Common questions
What is the City University of New York and how many campuses does it have?
CUNY is the public university system of New York City and the largest urban university system in the United States. It comprises 26 campuses including senior colleges, community colleges, and professional institutions, enrolling more than 275,000 students across all five New York City boroughs.
When was City College, CUNY's oldest campus, founded?
City College of New York was founded in 1847 as the Free Academy, the first free public institution of higher learning in the United States. Its formal opening took place on the 21st of January 1849, under its first principal, Dr. Horace Webster. CUNY as a unified system was formally established by New York State legislation in 1961, signed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
What was CUNY's open admissions policy and when did it begin?
CUNY implemented open admissions in the fall of 1970, guaranteeing every high school graduate in New York City a place at the university. The policy nearly doubled enrollment, from 20,000 to 35,000 students, and tripled Black and Hispanic student enrollment. It was effectively ended for four-year colleges in 1999 under Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.
When did CUNY end free tuition and why?
CUNY ended its free tuition policy in the fall of 1976 during New York City's fiscal crisis. The change came under pressure from the federal government, New York State, and the financial institutions involved in rescuing the city from bankruptcy. The free tuition policy had been in place since the founding of the Free Academy in 1847.
How many Nobel Prize winners are CUNY alumni?
CUNY alumni include 13 Nobel Prize winners and 24 MacArthur Fellows. CUNY graduates also include 2 U.S. secretaries of state, a Supreme Court justice, and several New York City mayors.
Who was the first Latino chancellor of CUNY?
Felix V. Matos Rodriguez became the first Latino and first minority educator to lead CUNY. The Board of Trustees voted to appoint him on the 13th of February 2019, and he assumed the post on the 1st of May 2019. He had previously served as president of Queens College.
All sources
143 references cited across the entry
- 1History of the BoardCity University of New York
- 2Fiscal 2026-2029 November PlanNew York City Council Finance Division — December 2025
- 9The College of the City of New York, a history, 1847-1947Rudy, Willis, 1920- et al. — New York, City College Press
- 10BookPopulation history of New York CityIra Rosenwaike — Syracuse, N.Y. Syracuse University Press — 1972
- 11BookThe establishment of the College of the city of New York as the Free academy in 1847Mario Emilio Cosenza — The Associate alumni of the College of the City of New York — 1925
- 13JournalAddresses Delivered Upon the Occasion of the Opening of the Free Academy, January 27, 1849.New York: Wm. C. Bryant & Co., Printers, 18 Nassau Street.1849. et al. — 1849-01-01
- 15BookLaws of the State of New York passed at the sessions of the Legislature in 1851.New York (State) — publisher not identified — 1851
- 23A College Grows in Brooklyn2015-09-15
- 27BookJoining the Club: A History of Jews at YaleDan A. Oren — Yale University Press — 1985
- 28BookLeveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College AdmissionsRobert K. Fullinwider — Rowman & Littlefield — 2004
- 29NewsOpinion CUNY Was Known as 'Proletarian Harvard'1992-09-25
- 30NewsHard Times for the Harvard of the MassesGary Weiss — November 21, 1994
- 31BookThe Splintering of the American Mind: Identity Politics, Inequality, and Community on Today's College CampusesWilliam Egginton — Bloomsbury Publishing USA — 2018-08-28
- 32BookThe American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915–1940David O. Levine — Cornell University Press — 2019-06-30
- 33NewsThe 176-Year ArgumentVivian Gornick — 2025-04-24
- 34BookArguing the world: the New York intellectuals in their own wordsFree Press — 2000
- 37The Dress Rehearsal for McCarthyismCarol Smith — 2011
- 3821 Students Expelled - Strike Robbie Out!The City College Libraries; New York, New York
- 40NewsNation's Students 'strike' for Hour in Protest on WarApril 14, 1934
- 43NewsCalls Brooklyn College Hotbed of Communism1938-07-31
- 47The People's College on the HillQueens College (New York, N.Y.)
- 50NewsTwo Reports Argue City's Need of Greatly Enlarged Program for Adults After War (Published 1944)Benjamin Fine — 1944-03-19
- 52BookThe Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970Sheila Gordon — PhD Dissertation, Columbia University — 1975
- 54BookCUNY's First Fifty Years: Triumphs and Ordeals of a People's UniversityAnthony G. Picciano et al. — Routledge — July 6, 2017
- 61BookRight versus privilege : the open-admissions experiment at the City University of New YorkDavid E. Lavin — New York : Free Press; London : Collier Macmillan — 1981
- 62JournalSEEK Program and College Discovery: A Brief HistorySeek Department
- 63JournalWhy the History of CUNY Matters: Using the CUNY Digital History Archive to Teach CUNY's PastStephen Brier — May 3, 2017
- 65News1,000 C.C.N.Y. Students Protest Division Plan for Baruch SchoolMarch 31, 1967
- 67NewsBrooklyn vs. Columbia: Failure of the Sit-In at One School Laid To Type of Student, Location and PolicyM.A. Farber — May 24, 1968
- 68NewsNegro Students Press Demands: Ask Stony Brook and Hunter for Black-Studies ProgramFebruary 8, 1969
- 69NewsCity U. Examines College Dispute: Advisory Unit Weighs SEEK Protests at QueensWill Lissner — January 11, 1969
- 70NewsNegro Chosen Head of SEEK Program at Queens CollegeSeptember 4, 1969
- 72NewsStudents Protest College TeachingFebruary 25, 1970
- 73NewsDisruption at Hunter Is Ended After 200 Policemen Are CalledJoseph P. Fried — April 3, 1970
- 74NewsCity U. Boycotted by Students Protesting Proposed Fee RiseLacey Fosburgh — April 30, 1970
- 75JournalOpen Admissions and Remedial Education at CUNYRobert K. Fullinwider — 1999
- 76BookOpen Admissions and Remediation: A Case Study of Policymaking by the City University of New York BoardDuitch Suri — PhD Dissertation, The City University of New York — 2010
- 77NewsProtests on Cambodia and Kent State Are Joined by Many Local SchoolsJoseph Lelyveld — May 6, 1970
- 78NewsJohn Jay College Gets Protests Too: Activity Unusual at School Attended by PolicemenPaul L. Montgomery — May 10, 1970
- 79JournalWhen Tuition at CUNY Was Free, Sort of, CUNY MattersOctober 2011
- 80NewsThe Accidental Giant of Higher EducationPeter Applebome — July 23, 2010
- 83JournalCreating a New Law SchoolCharles Halpern — 2000-07-01
- 84JournalCreating a New Law SchoolCharles R. Halpern — 2000-07-01
- 85JournalInfinity in a Grain of Sand: The World of Law and Lawyers as Portrayed in the Clinical Teaching Implicit in the Law School CurriculumHoward Lesnick — 1990-01-01
- 86CUNY Law School Will Move To Long Island City - Queens Gazetteohtadmin — 2009-10-21
- 88Mission
- 89BookIn Memoriam: Joseph S. MurphyCambridge University Press — February 13, 1999
- 90Reynolds May Go From Cal State to Top Job at CUNYJune 1, 1990
- 92NewsCUNY Professors, Fearing Worst, Rush Out Their Resumes: With a financial emergency declared, many on the CUNY faculties could goWilliam Honan — February 28, 1995
- 96NewsCUNY Campuses Prepare to Reduce Faculty and ClassesDennis Hevesi — May 14, 1995
- 97NewsCUNY Adopts Stricter Policy on AdmissionsCharisse Jones — June 27, 1995
- 98NewsLongtime CUNY Chancellor to Step Down After Pushing Higher StandardsAriel Kaminer — April 13, 2013
- 100CUNY ValueThe City University of New York
- 102CUNY Mater Plan 2012 – 2016The City University of New York
- 103CUNY Pathways initiativeThe City University of New York
- 104Pathways Open, New ChoicesThe City University of New York
- 105Pathways No ConfidenceProfessional Staff Congress-CUNY
- 106Nationally Prominent Higher Education Leader James B. Milliken Appointed Chancellor of The City University of New YorkThe City University of New York
- 108James B. Milliken BiographyUniversity of Texas System
- 109CUNY appoints first Latino, and minority, chancellorMadina Touré
- 111NewsStudent Protests Spread to CUNY Where Many Identify with the Marginalized GazansGrace Russo Bullaro — April 26, 2024
- 112NewsCity College students form 3rd major campus encampment to demand divestment from IsraelBrittany Kriegstein — April 25, 2024
- 114Macaulay Honors College: The Ultimate Application GuideMarch 31, 2025
- 115NewsWilliam E. Macaulay, Booster of Tuition-Free Education, Dies at 74August 15, 2024
- 119About UsNewmark J-School
- 120CUNY Launches Journalism School2005-03-07
- 121History
- 126Investing in Our Future, The City University of New York's Master Plan 2012–2016The City University of New York
- 131About Us PSC CUNYSeptember 23, 2015
- 133Roy DeCarava, Artistic Chronicler of Harlem Life – Winter 2010 – CUNYCity University of New York — Winter 2010
- 134Aaron J. GoodelmanSAAM — Smithsonian American Art Museum
- 138NewsCUNY Students Protesting Tuition Increase Clash With PoliceAlice Speri et al. — November 21, 2011
- 140CUNY admin allegedly said there were 'too many Jews' on his staffFebruary 27, 2017
- 144NewsU of Michigan, CUNY agree to make changes following federal antisemitism investigationsJackie Hajdenberg — 2024-06-18
- 145College Now
- 147CUNY Film Festival2020-05-16
- 148Examples of Distinguished CUNY Alumni's Commitment to FreedomThe City University of New York