Editing City University of New York (section)

===Accessible education===
CUNY has served a diverse student body, especially those excluded from or unable to afford private universities. Its four-year colleges offered a high-quality, [[Free education|tuition-free education]] to the poor, the [[working class]], and the [[Demographics of New York City|immigrants of New York City]] who met the grade requirements for matriculated status. During the post-[[World War I]] era, when some [[Ivy League]] universities, such as [[Yale University|Yale]] and [[Columbia University|Columbia]], discriminated against Jews, many Jewish academics and intellectuals studied and taught at CUNY.<ref>{{cite book|last=Oren|first=Dan A.|title=Joining the Club: A History of Jews at Yale|url=https://archive.org/details/joiningclubhist00oren|url-access=registration|year=1985|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=9780300033304}}</ref> The City College of New York developed a reputation of being "the [[Harvard University|Harvard]] of the proletariat."<ref>{{cite book |last=Fullinwider |first=Robert K. |title=Leveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College Admissions |author2=[[Judith Lichtenberg]] |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2004}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=1992-09-25 |title=Opinion {{!}} CUNY Was Known as 'Proletarian Harvard' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/25/opinion/l-cuny-was-known-as-proletarian-harvard-991892.html |access-date=2025-03-29 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Weiss |first=Gary |date=November 21, 1994 |title=Hard Times for the Harvard of the Masses |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1994-11-20/hard-times-for-the-harvard-of-the-masses |work=Bloomberg}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Egginton |first=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-zeWDwAAQBAJ&dq=the+%22Harvard+of+the+proletariat%22&pg=PA9 |title=The Splintering of the American Mind: Identity Politics, Inequality, and Community on Today's College Campuses |date=2018-08-28 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-1-63557-133-2 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Levine |first=David O. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TmjxDwAAQBAJ&dq=the+%22Harvard+of+the+proletariat%22&pg=PA85 |title=The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915–1940 |date=2019-06-30 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-1-5017-4415-0 |language=en}}</ref> 

As New York City's population and public college enrollment grew during the early 20th century and the city struggled for resources, the municipal colleges slowly began adopting selective tuition, also known as instructional fees, for a handful of courses and programs. During the [[Great Depression]], with funding for public colleges severely constrained, limits were imposed on the size of the colleges' free Day Sessions, and tuition was imposed upon students deemed "competent" but not academically qualified for the day program. Most of these "limited matriculation" students enrolled in the Evening Sessions, and paid tuition.<ref>{{cite book|last=Neumann|first=Florence Margaret|title=Access to Free Public Higher Education in New York City: 1847–1961|year=1984|publisher=PhD Dissertation, Graduate Faculty in Sociology, The City University of New York}}</ref> Additionally, as the population of New York grew, CUNY was not able to accommodate the demand for higher education. Higher and higher requirements for admission were imposed; in 1965, a student seeking admission to CUNY needed an average grade of 92 or A−.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Brier|first=Stephen|date=May 3, 2017|title=Why the History of CUNY Matters: Using the CUNY Digital History Archive to Teach CUNY's Past|url=http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/radicalteacher/article/download/357/273|journal=Radical Teacher|language=en|volume=108|issue=1|pages=28–35|doi=10.5195/rt.2017.357|issn=1941-0832|doi-access=free}}</ref> This helped to ensure that the student population of CUNY remained largely white and middle-class.<ref name=":0" />

Demand in the United States for higher education rapidly grew after [[World War II]], and during the mid-1940s a movement began to create [[community college]]s to provide accessible education and training. In New York City, however, the community college movement was constrained by many factors including "financial problems, narrow perceptions of responsibility, organizational weaknesses, adverse political factors, and other competing priorities."<ref name="Gordon 1975"/>

Community colleges would have drawn from the same city coffers that were funding the senior colleges, and city higher education officials were of the view that the state should finance them. It was not until 1955, under a shared-funding arrangement with New York State, that New York City established its first community college, on [[Staten Island]]. Unlike the day college students attending the city's public baccalaureate colleges for free, community college students had to pay tuition fees under the state-city funding formula. Community college students paid tuition fees for approximately 10 years.<ref name="Gordon 1975"/>

Over time, tuition fees for limited-matriculated students became an important source of system revenues. In fall 1957, for example, nearly 36,000 attended Hunter, Brooklyn, Queens and City Colleges for free, but another 24,000 paid tuition fees of up to $300 a year (${{formatnum:{{Inflation|US|300|1957|r=-2}}}} in current dollar terms).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm|title=CPI Inflation Calculator|website=www.bls.gov|accessdate=February 25, 2024}}</ref> Undergraduate tuition and other student fees in 1957 comprised 17 percent of the colleges' $46.8 million in revenues, about $7.74 million (${{formatnum:{{Inflation|US|7740000|1957|r=-4}}}} in current dollar terms).<ref>{{citation |last=Board of Higher Education of the City of New York|title=Report of the Chairman|year=1959|issue=1957–1959|pages=86–87}}</ref>

Three community colleges had been established by early 1961 when New York City's public colleges were codified by the state as a single university with a chancellor at the helm and an infusion of state funds. But the city's slowness in creating the community colleges as demand for college seats was intensifying and had resulted in mounting frustration, particularly on the part of minorities, that college opportunities were not available to them.

In 1964, as New York City's Board of Higher Education moved to take full responsibility for the community colleges, city officials extended the senior colleges' free tuition policy to them, a change that was included by Mayor [[Robert F. Wagner Jr.]] in his budget plans and took effect with the 1964–65 academic year.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Board of Higher Education of the City of New York|title=Board of Higher Education Minutes of Proceedings|date= April 20, 1964}}</ref>

Calls for greater access to public higher education from the [[African Americans in New York City|black]] and [[Puerto Ricans in New York City|Puerto Rican]] communities in New York, especially in Brooklyn, led to the founding of "Community College Number 7," later Medgar Evers College, in 1966–1967.<ref name=":0" /> In 1969, a group of black and Puerto Rican students occupied City College and demanded the [[racial integration]] of CUNY, which at the time had an overwhelmingly [[white people|white]] student body.<ref name="Gordon 1975">{{cite book|last=Gordon|first=Sheila|title=The Transformation of the City University of New York, 1945–1970|year=1975|publisher=PhD Dissertation, Columbia University|location=New York}}</ref>