Graduation rates at the City University of New York fell in fiscal 2026. The six-year graduation rate for CUNY associate-degree students dropped to 35.5 percent, from 36.5 percent a year earlier and 38.9 percent in fiscal 2022, and the rate for baccalaureate students fell to 56.6 percent, from 57.9 percent a year earlier and 62 percent in fiscal 2022. CUNY says the declines “are still affected by the COVID-19 pandemic disruption, and also reflect changes in the freshman class composition.”
The steepest drop was in CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, known as ASAP, a city-funded program that gives associate-degree students financial and other support and aims to graduate at least half of them within three years. ASAP’s three-year graduation rate fell to 34.5 percent in fiscal 2026, from 38.5 percent a year earlier and 44 percent in fiscal 2022.
Retention improved. The one-year retention rate for full-time first-time freshmen in associate programs rose to 68.7 percent in fiscal 2026, from 61.5 percent, and in baccalaureate programs to 85.4 percent, from 83.2 percent. Total enrollment rose 4 percent, to 246,503, and community college enrollment rose 7 percent, to 81,883. First-time freshman enrollment rose to 14,433 at the community colleges, from 13,167, and to 22,543 at the senior colleges, from 22,323.
A CUNY spokesman said the rate “remains higher than a decade ago despite the profound disruption that the freshmen who began in 2019 faced during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the New York Post reported. “We have seen an increase in retention rates in subsequent classes and continue to expand student supports to help students stay on track to graduate in six-years or less,” the spokesman said.
CUNY said that since the pandemic it has increased academic advising for freshmen, made it easier to transfer between two- and four-year colleges without losing credits, and used more data to flag struggling students earlier, and that the lower rates also reflect ASAP’s expansion from serving roughly 12 percent of associate-degree-seeking full-time freshmen to 40 percent over three years, the Post reported. CUNY says ASAP has more than doubled associate-degree completion rates for participating students.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a former CUNY trustee, told the Post that standards in the city’s public schools, where most CUNY students come from, had dropped. He also said CUNY had relaxed its own standards after they were raised during the tenures of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki.
The share of instruction delivered by full-time faculty fell at both the senior colleges, to 39.7 percent from 40.9 percent, and the community colleges, to 58.9 percent from 60.5 percent.
Featured image: Beyond My Ken via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
