CUNY’s enrollment dropped by more than 5% this fall amid the pandemic and fiscal crisis, with community colleges taking the brunt of the losses, officials said Thursday.
The enrollment dip translated to a $52 million loss of tuition revenue for the city’s public university system, on top of tens of millions of dollars in cuts from the city budget, and more looming slashes from the state, officials said at a City Council hearing.
Matthew Sapienza, CUNY’s chief financial officer, attributed the falling enrollment numbers to pandemic-related financial and safety concerns.
Many CUNY students “previously worked full- or part-time and would not be able to pay tuition during the crisis and many … depended on crowded buses and subways to get to and from class,” he said.
The biggest enrollment drop came from the city’s community colleges, following national trends. The system’s four-year colleges were up one percent from last year’s enrollment totals, Sapienza said.
CUNY officials said the falling student numbers and ongoing budget crunch drove their decision to lay off nearly 3,000 adjunct staffers last summer.
But union officials and lawmakers said the mass adjunct layoffs have led to swelling class sizes and more limited course offerings.
Scott Cally, a professor and union leader at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, said English courses at his school are capped at 29 students, while the same course is limited to 15 students at four-year Baruch College in Manhattan.
“Does this sound like equity to you, where the least prepared students are forced into the most crowded classes?” he said.
Critics said the university should have used some of the $236 million in federal CARES Act funding to prevent the adjunct layoffs. Officials say they were required to spend half of the federal funds on direct student aid, and are still formulating their plans for allocating the roughly $80 million remaining.
