How Can We Afford a Free CUNY

By Banner Staff on 02/11/2024 • ( Leave a comment )

by Petra Gregory

When CUNY started as the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1847 it was free. In fact, what would be CUNY would go on to remain free for the next 128 years despite a Civil War, two World Wars, The Great Depression, and the height of the Cold War as new schools were added to the system. This all changed when CUNY stopped being a white only school and started looking like the working-class NYC families it was actually meant to serve as tuition was imposed at CUNY in retaliation after the work of Black and Puerto Rican protesters to make their university look like their community.

This was not a history we are taught by our schools, I myself only learned about this history thanks to the amazing outreach done by my colleagues in Free CUNY. This was a collective of students fighting for a CUNY free of not just tuition but a free space where students were nourished in health and community, where our staff and faculty were free to live secure lives with livable wages, free from police, and free from contracts that abuse lands such as with orgs that profit off of prison labor and Palestinian occupation^[1]. This was a history we had to teach and educate ourselves on as we developed and grew as an organization and fought to keep CUNY’s struggles connected throughout covid, this is a fight that I have not given up on and neither should you. As such I hope by sharing this knowledge and perspective, we can continue this struggle till all are free.

A History of the Free City University of New York

From its very founding in 1847, CUNY by and large only served one population of the City of New York, its white population; though I could not find earlier demographic information 120 years later in 1967^[2] this was still largely the case with around 81.8% of students being white. It was time for a change at CUNY as students and community members, notably led by Black and Puerto Riccan students, took to the streets in protest and even occupied school buildings with 20 protesters being arrested at Brooklyn College^[7]. Their demand was to immediately implement open admissions at CUNY, a policy that would guarantee a seat somewhere in CUNY for every NYC high school graduate^[7]. They won with open admissions starting in the Fall of 1970^[7], changing CUNY and American higher education overnight.

Over the next 5 years CUNY’s racial makeup would change dramatically with a 74% white population in 1970 dropping to 51.6% in 1975, by 1978 the white population of CUNY would drop to below 50% making CUNY for the first time the majority BIPOC institution it remains to this day. As CUNY was finally on the track to providing true economic mobility for the BIPOC and working class populations of New Yorkers, for the first time in the university’s 128 year history, tuition was implemented.

The stated reason was the enrollment increase caused by open admissions. After all, in 1969, the year before open admissions, the student population was 135,626^[3]; in the last year of free tuition, 1975, our population was 223,738^[3]; a 64.9% increase over 6 years is not nothing. However it’s not so unreasonable that the powers that be could not have found a sustainable way to provide CUNY to the new student population as they had in the past. Remember: when the country was split in half during the Civil War, CUNY was free; as the USA was sending everything they had to fight in two World Wars, CUNY was free; during the greatest financial depression in our country’s history, CUNY was free; as those very college students were getting drafted to die on the front lines on imperialism in Vietnam; CUNY was free. It was only when the student population of CUNY started to reflect that of the diverse BIPOC, working class, and immigrant population that makes this city great; that all of a sudden the city and state no longer felt obligated to provide free college to populations that look like us. And as the city seeked a bailout from Washington D.C. they demanded CUNY charge tuition.

“Pitifully, [their demand] wasn’t even about the savings, they wanted New York to make a show of breaking social democracy, of ending benefits they saw as too good for the working class.” –Juvanie Piquant, Gotham Gazette^[8]

This wasn’t a small tuition supplement either, the $925^[9] a working class family would have needed to muster to send their children to just a semester of college is equivalent to nearly $5000 in today’s money. You can see in the table below, the end of the tuition free university caused an immediate and continual dropoff in the student population from 223,738^[3]in 1975 to 163,439^[6] in 1978; a drop off almost as large as the enrollment increase just 5 years prior. This historic wrong done to the working class families has yet to be resolved and continues on through every tuition increase.

“As the New York population continued to expand and diversify, elected officials were reluctant to raise taxes to fund the increased need for services. A free and well-funded CUNY had worked for white New Yorkers for more than a century, but all of a sudden, the cost of providing the very same education to Black and brown students was too great…The City wound up in negotiations with Washington D.C., seeking a bailout. Federal bureaucrats demanded, among other things, to see CUNY start charging tuition. Pitifully, it wasn’t even about the savings, they wanted New York to make a show of breaking social democracy, of ending benefits they saw as too good for the working class.” –Juvanie Piquant, Gotham Gazette^[8]

But Can We Afford a Free CUNY Now?

The short answer is yes, absolutely, we have in the past and through smart policy implementations can do so again. In the New Deal for CUNY $50 Billion in tax revenue is proposed to fully fund a free CUNY alongside other essential services, “if this sounds like a lot, it is only because we’ve just survived 46 years of racist austerity.” –Juvanie Piquant, Gotham Gazette^[8]

Let’s put that number, $50 billion, into a bit more of a perspective. Sure, it sounds like a lot to you or me, certainly much, much more than any man should ever need or have a right to own. The wealthiest man in NYC, Michael Bloomberg, makes almost twice that with a NetWorth of $94.5 Billion^[10]. One man elected to serve this city as its mayor for 11 years could meet the New Deal’s demands entirely out of his own pocket and still make much, much more than any man should ever need or have a right to own (we even “let” Mike serve an extra term by abolishing term limits and immediately reinstating them). From now on I will be, and encourage you to, refer to the amount of money needed to make CUNY free as “half a Bloomberg”, since I believe it puts the price needed in a much more useful context.

Let’s expand our scope beyond one man though, after all the State of New York is one of the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful states in the union. In fact, if we look at the State of New York as a body with the resources of its own country it would rank as the 9th wealthiest country in the world just by GDP^[11][12] or the 6th by GDP per capita^[11][13]. Remember that $50 billion, half a Bloomberg, number? Well as a country New York State would have a GDP of 2,168 billions of dollars, about 23 Bloomberg!
How are we stacking up against the rest of the world? Well despite living in the 3rd wealthiest State in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we are unable to find the money to do what a total of 39 other, less wealthy, countries have been able to do; provide a free college program^[14] for its people to prosper. Of the countries that offer free college only 4 have a higher GDP^[11][12][14] and a whopping 2 have a higher GDP per capita^[11][13][14] than New York State. The lowest ranked country by GDP^[12] with free college^[14] is Fiji at rank 148 with a GDP of $4.9 billion (about one 20th of a Bloomberg). The lowest ranked country by GDP per capita^[13] with free college^[14] is Lebanon^[17] who would be ranked 146 with a GDP per capita of only $4,136.

Now I know that the GDP is not the only metric to measure a peoples’ economic status and standard of living; one number can only ever tell so much of the story. Rather I hope, by illustrating as clearly as possible the obscene wealth gap between us the vast areas of the world who all seem to have this whole free college thing working pretty well with much less resources afforded to them, we can see that this is not a question of IF we are able to but a question of WHY not.

The Fight for Free CUNY Continues

It’s not hard to see that the powers that be do not care enough about the BIPOC working class families of NYC to provide this life changing service. That this obscene wealth is not made in spite of, but because of, the exploitation of the working class who would otherwise be empowered to be the change in their community that CUNY can provide. CUNY should not be kneecapped year after year but celebrated and cherished for the change it can bring to these families, but that change scares those in power who need a poor and easily exploitable group of workers to work their amazon warehouses and drive the vehicles of capital.

CUNY will not be made free by flowery articles or making friends in Albany, like open admissions before it, this fight can only be won in the streets. Only by working in solidarity with the rest of the working class of our global class struggle can we be the change CUNY has prepared us to be

Resources

[1] Free CUNY Demands

[2-6] For these studies outdated, controversial, and offensive terms for Black, Hispanic, and Asian students were in use for various studies; it is important to remind ourselves that these terms were not ok then and are not ok now:

[2] 1967: CUNY Data Book 1967-1968 [pgs 38-55] (does not include data for pre-registration students)

[3] 1969-75: CUNY Data Book 1975-1976 [pgs 121-133]

[4] 1976: CUNY Data Book 1976-1977 [pgs 103-114]:

[5] 1977: CUNY Data Book 1977-1978 [pgs. 106-124] (does not include Hunter college)

[6] 1978: CUNY Data Book 1978-1979 [pgs 101-125]

[7] 1961-1969 The Creation of CUNY – Open Admissions; a History of the Fight for Oppen Admissions at CUNY

[8] Imposing Tuition at CUNY was Systemic Racism. This Year, We Can Fix It; Gotham Gazette article by former USS Chair and CUNY Board of Trustee member Juvanie Piquant

[9] CUNY Tuition; the cost of a CUNY tuition up until 2010

[10] See the richest billionaires in New York and how much they’re worth

[11] GDP by State

[12] GDP by Country

[13] GDP per Capita