‘CUNY Beyond’ Will Integrate Career Connections and Work Experience in Every Undergraduate Degree Program, and Serve 180,000 Students Annually by 2030
Nearly 10,000 CUNY Students Have Already Been Hired by the City’s Largest Private Sector Employers
Transcript From Address Available Online
City University of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez today delivered his State of the University address, unveiling an ambitious five-year plan to integrate career preparation and workplace experience across the University. The nation’s most sweeping effort, CUNY Beyond will elevate and integrate a focus on career outcomes into every undergraduate degree. CUNY Beyond will impact 180,000 CUNY graduates annually by 2030, helping them leave school with a job offer or letter of acceptance into their next degree.
“Even amid new challenges, CUNY continues to grow and thrive. Yet we also know that success depends on our ability to change and adapt,” said Chancellor Matos Rodríguez. “More and more, students expect college to prepare them to thrive outside the classroom. CUNY Beyond is how we meet that need. Understanding that while just one quarter of students utilize career services, all attend class, we’re integrating career outcomes into every aspect of the college experience. In doing so we’re going to provide the support students need while ensuring that CUNY can continue to deliver on its founding mission to uplift our students and our city.”
A Higher Education Moonshot
In his remarks, delivered at the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture, Chancellor Matos Rodríguez laid out the challenge facing higher education: “It’s not enough for students to graduate with a degree—they must leave with direction, preparation, experience and connections.” Offering CUNY Beyond as the University’s answer to this national challenge, the Chancellor stated that by 2030, the initiative aims to triple the number of students in paid internships and increase employer recruitment from CUNY by 20%. Successful implementation is projected to drive an estimated $3.3 billion in future wage growth and provide a $700 million return on public investment through higher earnings and economic mobility.
“The vision of CUNY Beyond—to make career readiness integral to every college student’s learning journey—is a big step forward in opening doors to economic mobility and meaningful, high-paying careers,” said Julie Sweet, chair and CEO at Accenture and chair of the New York Jobs CEO Council. “The Jobs Council is proud to partner to scale the tools, employer access, and industry connections that are needed to help make these opportunities real.”
“A person’s ZIP code should never dictate the careers and opportunities they can pursue. That’s why we are proud to partner with The City University of New York, an institution uniquely positioned to unlock opportunities for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers,” said Matthew Klein, chief program and impact officer at Robin Hood. “With the launch of CUNY Beyond, CUNY is scaling effective practices into system-level transformation. We’re investing not just in degrees, but in careers, and in CUNY’s ability to further support the economic mobility of its students.”
“Our grant-making is based on the fact that both a college degree and a strong first job is key to helping New Yorkers climb the social and economic ladder,” said Cass Conrad, executive director of the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation. “We are excited to support CUNY Beyond in its effort to wholly redesign the college experience and change the trajectory of students’ lives by connecting them with meaningful and rewarding careers.”
“CUNY Beyond is truly visionary, creating the tangible change Americans are seeking from post-secondary education: a stronger and more direct connection between college and career,” said Ruth Watkins, president, post-secondary education at Strada Education Foundation. “Education-to-career guidance— at the beginning of a post-secondary program—provides information about New York City’s high-demand jobs and enables students to make choices about how they can achieve these opportunities. Paid work-based learning, both off-campus with regional employers and on-campus, helps students achieve better employment and better earnings. CUNY Beyond benefits New York’s industries through better prepared talent, ready to meet the needs of today and challenges of tomorrow.”
With support from industry partners and philanthropic partners like Robin Hood and The Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, the program will be rolled out in phases over the next five years, starting at Hunter College, Lehman College, LaGuardia Community College, and Borough of Manhattan Community College. At each school, implementation will center on scaling evidence-based practices in five key areas:
- Career Exposure and Exploration: Ensure that students explore and identify careers aligned with their interests early, including before they’re enrolled. National research shows that students who participate in career-connected orientations are 15% more likely to graduate in four years.
- Integrated Academic and Career Advising: Provide students with integrated academic and career advising and establish degree maps that combine academic and career milestones. A three-year pilot introducing career-infused degree maps at the College of Staten Island’s Computer Science Department led to a 43% increase in students securing internships and a 144% increase in the number of students who graduated with a full-time job.
- Career-Connected Learning: Develop and update courses based on regular industry feedback to ensure students have the skills necessary for career success. CUNY data shows that students enrolled in courses developed with industry partners are twice as likely to land a job at graduation.
- Paid Work-Based Learning: Equip students with early career experience, including paid internships and apprenticeships that are integrated into degree paths. Data shows that students who participate in paid internships are three times more likely to get a job offer at graduation than those who don’t.
- Employer Engagement:Create more employer partnerships that will expand CUNY students’ access to opportunities. In CUNY academic departments that have an industry specialist on the team, 94% of the jobs students reported were directly aligned with their degree.
The unveiling of CUNY Beyond follows this week’s announcement by CUNY and the New York Jobs CEO Council that nearly 10,000 CUNY students have been hired by the City’s largest private sector employers during their five-year partnership. Created by CEOs from 27 of the largest employers in the New York area, the Jobs CEO Council launched in 2020 with a commitment to hire 100,000 New Yorkers by 2030, including 25,000 CUNY students.
Other speech highlights include:
- For the third year in a row, CUNY is partnering with the New York City Public Schools to send personalized “Welcome to CUNY” letters to nearly 70,000 seniors on pace to graduate. For the first time, the letters were emailed, enabling greater personalization.
- CUNY is waiving the application fee for NYCPS students from Monday, Oct. 27 through Friday, Nov. 21. More than 80% of incoming CUNY students come from the NYCPS system.
- CUNY and City Hall announced that the former Bronx General Post Office is being turned into a 190,000 square foot, state-of-the-art facility for healthcare programs at Hostos. This effort, which dates to the Chancellor’s tenure as Hostos president, will double the college’s capacity to train students for careers in New York’s health care industry.
- CUNY is investing about $850 million in facilities infrastructure improvements and expects to complete or substantially advance more than 100 projects across the University in the current fiscal year. They include the installation of rooftop solar panels and electric-vehicle chargers at City College’s main parking lot and a $30 million renovation of the Medgar Evers College athletic center.
- The speech also offered an overview of the CUNY’s cutting-edge research and new academic programs:
- The School of Professional Studies now offers a fully online master’s degree in Generative AI and Borough of Manhattan Community College became the first CUNY college to offer an AI certificate program.
- At City College, a research team partnered with Memorial Sloan Kettering to develop a groundbreaking AI model that can detect breast cancer in MRI images and pinpoint the location of tumors.
- The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy created an unprecedented global platform, Firefly Innovations, bringing together nearly 9,000 public health professionals from around the world to drive innovation and create healthier, more resilient communities.
- Bronx Community College received $6 million in funding from the National Science Foundation and the State Education Department to transform its campus into a hub of research and innovation, enabling students to co-author peer-reviewed studies, study abroad and intern at preeminent organizations like NASA.
The City University of New York is the nation’s largest urban public university, a transformative engine of social mobility that is a critical component of the lifeblood of New York City. Founded in 1847 as the nation’s first free public institution of higher education, CUNY today has seven community colleges, 11 senior colleges, and eight honors, graduate, and professional institutions spread across New York City’s five boroughs, serving nearly 240,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and awarding 50,000 degrees each year. CUNY’s mix of quality and affordability propels almost six times as many low-income students into the middle class and beyond as all the Ivy League colleges combined. More than 80 percent of the University’s graduates stay in New York, contributing to all aspects of the City’s economic, civic, and cultural life and diversifying the City’s workforce in every sector. CUNY’s graduates and faculty have received many prestigious honors, including 13 Nobel Prizes and 26 MacArthur “genius” grants. The University’s historic mission continues to this day: provide a first-rate public education to all students, regardless of means or background. To learn more about CUNY, go online.
By CUNY Communications
