Dive Brief:
- Adult students in New York can now attend community college for free if they pursue degrees in certain high-demand fields, thanks to the state’s fiscal 2026 budget signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday.
- Under the program, known as the Opportunity Promise Scholarship, residents ages 25 to 55 with no prior degree can earn an associate degree in fields like teaching, nursing and engineering without paying for tuition, books and other fees.
- The budget allocates $28.2 million to the State University of New York and $18.8 million to the City University of New York — which collectively enroll around 600,000 students — to cover the costs of the last-dollar scholarship program. The budget takes effect immediately after being delivered late.
Dive Insight:
Hochul first pitched the free community college program in January, framing it as a way to address the state’s workforce development gaps. In New York, more than 4 million working-age adults do not have a college degree or credential, according to SUNY.
In March, CUNY officials told the New York City Council that 3,500 current students within its system would qualify for the proposed program. They also said the system expected an additional 1,700 students to enroll if the program were launched.
SUNY Chancellor John King on Friday celebrated the scholarship as “nothing short of a game-changer.”
New York State United Teachers, an educators union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, also praised the budget’s provisions for higher education as a move in the right direction, though officials called for further funding increases for the state’s two college and university systems.
“Greater support for CUNY and SUNY community colleges and new scholarships for students pursuing high-need fields are strong first steps, but a generational investment in public higher education is still needed,” Melinda Person, the union’s president, said in a statement Friday.
The state’s fiscal 2026 budget includes an additional operating funding for the state’s community colleges — $5.3 million for those within CUNY and $8 million for those within SUNY. Person note that both systems have operated on “austerity budgets” for too long.
Hochul has made higher education one of her main legislative priorities since taking office in 2021, focusing much of her efforts on SUNY.
In January 2022, she set an enrollment goal of 500,000 for the system, which had just over 394,000 students in fall 2021. The ambitious benchmark stood in contrast to SUNY’s previous decade of enrollment declines.
SUNY’s student body dipped down to just under 364,000 students in fall 2022, before experiencing two years of enrollment gains in a row. As of fall 2024, around 376,000 students enrolled in the system.
