Citywide budget cuts threaten to put the brakes on a CUNY program credited with lifting graduation rates, particularly among students of color, while saving taxpayer money as well.
The Accelerate, Complete and Engage program was started in 2015 with the support of the poverty-fighting nonprofit Robin Hood Foundation and provides Metrocards, textbook stipends, and academic and career advising for CUNY’s mostly lower-income, non-white students. The program showed early success in boosting the university’s four-year graduation rates and received a nearly $10 million funding boost from the city last year, which helped aid 1,740 students.
But now future city funding for the initiative is up in the air, clouded by citywide budget cuts that would slash CUNY’s budget by over $68 million next fiscal year, or 6.6% compared to the last budget approved by City Council. University officials, who have been looking to expand the program to aid more students, have said no city funding has been allocated for ACE, and they’ve put a hold on rehiring instructors.
CUNY didn’t respond to a request for comment on how ACE will adapt if the city doesn’t fund the program in the coming year, but spokesperson Joseph Tirella said, “We look forward to engaging with our funding partners in the state and the city during budget season.”
He added: “We are also continuing to build on private-public partnerships that are paramount to keeping CUNY strong.”
The City Council and Mayor Eric Adams are in the process of finalizing the details of the budget before the beginning of the next fiscal year on July 1. Asked about the proposed CUNY cuts, the Adams administration has pointed to forecasts of a multibillion-dollar deficit and the need to close that gap.
“While every agency has been asked to tighten its belt in the current fiscal year in response to fiscal and economic conditions — including more than $4 billion in migrant costs by next year, the expiration of labor contracts that went unresolved for years, and skyrocketing health care costs — we will review their needs through the budget process,” Ivette Davila-Richards, deputy press secretary for the mayor’s office, said in a statement.
If there’s no continuing support for the program, there’s no continuing support for students who are already in the program.
The budget uncertainty comes as New York City's government has focused new attention on equity issues, including building pathways to educational and economic opportunities. City voters in November overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative making racial justice a priority for city government. Backers of CUNY’s ACE program say the initiative advances that same aim.
University leaders and the inequality-focused think tank Center for an Urban Future want to expand ACE, which serves just a few thousand students – 3% of full-time bachelor’s students at CUNY’s senior colleges, according to a new Center for Urban Future analysis.
The nation’s largest urban public university, CUNY serves more than 250,000 degree and non-degree-seeking students across its dozens of colleges. Most of its students are local public school graduates of color, and nearly half are from families earning under $20,000.
Though CUNY is credited as one of the city’s and nation’s leading engines of economic mobility, the average time to complete a bachelor’s degree has crept up over time and graduation rates remain relatively low, with just a third of first-time students receiving their bachelor's degree after four years and a little over half receiving their degree after six years.
Proponents of the ACE program argue that it helps students earn an increasingly vital key to the middle class – especially in New York City – and reduce stark racial disparities in college degree attainment and who’s employed in the city’s well-paying jobs.
ACE’s success
The four-year graduation rate for ACE students in bachelor’s degree-earning programs at one CUNY college was 59% in a recent evaluation by the university studying a sample of over 2,000 students across enrollment years. That rate was 17.5% higher than a comparison group of students who didn’t participate in ACE and double the university’s current average.
The gains were more pronounced for Black and Hispanic participants, who had graduation rates some 20% higher than nonparticipating Black and Hispanic students in a comparison group, according to the evaluation. And those rates were similar to those for white participants, suggesting the program closed or narrowed certain racial gaps in college attainment, according to the researchers.
And while ACE costs the university about $4,200 a student per year on top of tuition, it helps more students graduate on time, saving an average of $17,000 per graduate, according to the Center for an Urban Future's analysis. It replicates a similar CUNY program for two-year degree students, Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, which has a graduation rate twice the university’s average. It has expanded to serve 25,000 students per year.
“We’re losing more money because we’re not investing in this program,” said Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, who chairs the Council's higher education committee, in a preliminary budget hearing. He later added in an interview that the cuts are a result of “look[ing] at our city agencies, our education system, our CUNY system, as a spreadsheet instead of an investment.”
A job in the wings
Seema Ramdat, a senior at CUNY’s John Jay College, received a passing grade in algebra and is slated to earn a bachelor’s degree in June. Soon afterward, she'll start a data analyst job at the U.S. attorney’s office.
The 21-year-old South Richmond Hill native said she wouldn’t have achieved those wins were it not for ACE.
“Without the ACE program, I would’ve not graduated,” she said.
After graduation, Ramdat will start a data analyst job at the U.S. attorney’s office.
Ramdat said she is the first U.S.-born child of formerly undocumented Guyanese parents. They have depended on her, Ramdat said, to give them “that American dream,” including attending college.
But she said no one in her inner circle had gone through the college application process, or actually finished. Her older sister – who was also undocumented and the only person she knew closely who went to college – dropped out a few months before completing her associate’s degree because she couldn’t afford the cost.
“I know college is something that exists out there,” Ramdat said of her mindset in high school. She added: “It’s something that I can do. But will I be able to do it?”
Value of a degree
In New York City and nationwide, earning a bachelor’s degree is a pathway to success.
In an analysis of millions of job postings by the Burning Glass Institute, which used data from a labor market analytics firm now known as Lightcast, 44% of job postings required a bachelor's degree. Meanwhile, 61% of job postings in New York City last year required a bachelor’s degree, according to a new Center for Urban Future analysis of data from Lightcast.
The national wage gap between those with and without college degrees has reached a record high of $22,000, according to data released last year by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That gap in New York City last year was nearly $37,000, according to Center for an Urban Future's analysis of job postings data. Jobs requiring bachelor’s degrees offered a median starting salary of $79,800, nearly double the $42,900 for jobs requiring just a high school diploma.
About 40% of New Yorkers have college degrees, but that number is fractured on racial lines. Just 22% of Latino, 28% of Black, and 45% of Asian New Yorkers hold a bachelor’s degree, compared to 62% of white residents, according to Census data analyzed by the Center for an Urban Future.
The program’s future
The Center for an Urban Future argues that the city and state should increase funding of the program by $117.6 million annually to boost participation among CUNY full-time bachelor’s degree students to 30%. That would help 9,400 more students earn bachelor’s degrees over the next decade, increasing their lifetime earnings by $10.3 billion, according to the report.
“This is a fundamental issue for racial equity in New York,” said Eli Dvorkin, the Center for an Urban Future's editorial and policy director. “Scaling up this program could be one of the most effective things that city and state leaders do.”
Private donations for ACE aren’t in jeopardy, but without city funding for ACE, the future of the program’s expansion remains unclear. CUNY could use general funding from the city to assist the program, but a spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment if the university would do so.
“If there’s no continuing support for the program, there’s no continuing support for students who are already in the program,” said Wendy Hensel, CUNY’s executive vice chancellor and city provost, at a City Council higher education budget hearing.
This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the Robin Hood Foundation.
