Getting To Know: The City College of New York (CCNY)
CCNY was the last school that I visited in 2026. I was there to visit the architecture school with my colleagues, Linda Jang and Kate Ryan. I had worked with CCNY in my past life in the software business, So, I remembered how to get to campus from Penn Station on the 1 line, but not much else. Back in those days I only set foot in the North Academic Center, a massive but uninspiring multi-purpose student center.
I got to see more inspiring buildings on this visit, especially Shepherd Hall and the Great Hall inside. Walking through Shepherd Hall (photo up top),our group also saw a statue of George Washington and a bust of Abraham Lincoln (photos below). CCNY students rub Lincoln’s nose and Washington’s shoe for good luck.
The heart of this campus features Collegiate Gothic style architecture, much like oI saw at Yale. I dropped another photo here.
The campus is situated between Hamilton Heights, where Alexander Hamilton once resided and Harlem. Hamilton’s former home is now managed by the National Park Service. There are rough edges around this campus. However, there are also many delis that CCNY students will frequent for meals versus eating on campus. The 1 line makes it easy to get to Midtown Manhattan for internships and part-time jobs.
CCNY has an interesting history.
The school was founded in 1847 as the Free Academy of the City of New York. When Bernie Sanders campaigned for president in 2016, and advocated for free public college for all, he used CCNY and its sister public colleges in New York as examples from the past. The CCNY campus was first built on its present site in 1907. Intended to educated working-class students, it was known as the “Harvard of the Proletariat.”
Notable CCNY alumni include, among many:
- Andy Grove, founder of Intel, for whom the engineering school is named.
- Colin Powell: former U.S. Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor, for whom the School for Civic & Global Leadership is named
- Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State
- Frank Gehry: architect, designed of many eclectic buildings
- Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars
- Judd Hirsch, Alex Rieger in Taxi and actor in other shows and movies, including Independence Day and The Big Bang Theory
CCNY is a true New York institution.
Unlike NYU where a small minority of students hail from the Big Apple, the overwhelming majority of CCNY’s 13,000 undergrads come from there.. From personal experience I’ve come to believe that native New Yorkers are more street smart than college undergrads who are experiencing city life or big college town life for the first time. CCNY houses only 600 undergrads; everyone else commutes, sometimes for over an hour on the subway.
CCNY managed to remain tuition free until 1976 when the city’s fiscal crisis reached a head.
At that time CCNY was an open admissions institution that was not overly selective. Most recently, however, the acceptance rate was just under 60%. Admissions are test optional; the school does not report the middle 50 percent range for either the ACT or SAT on its Common Data Set. But CCNY also loses about a fifth of a freshman class each year.
It’s hard to consider four-year graduation rates for this school when one considers the most likely student–A New York City resident who needs aid and may also need to work. The average student loan debt for 2024 graduate–and this was only about ten percent of the class–who borrowed to cover educational costs was $7,200.. Eighty percent of the first-year students who entered in 2024 received need-based scholarships. The average award was just over $9,400., which exceeded tuition and fees for a New York City resident.
There are solid academic opportunities at CCNY.
CCNY offers 73 academic majors within eight schools or divisions. Some majors, such as Advertising and Public Relations, Atmospheric Science, Branding & Integrated Communications and Electronic Design & Multimedia are tough to find anywhere. CCNY also offers the opportunity to create your own major. . CCNY offers a BS-MD in partnership with CUNY School of Medicine. as well as accelerated paths to masters degrees. The BArch degree, which leads to licensure, is one of the best buys for those who are serious about becoming an architect. Psychology is the most popular major, followed by the engineering programs and biology.
CCNY reports a student-faculty ratio of 14 to 1, fairly low for a school with approximately 13,000 undergrads. But less than a quarter of all classes had fewer than 20 students while nine percent have more than 50. Nearly 60 percent of the faculty are part time.
Conclusions
Visiting CCNY reminded me about how hard it is for a university system to address affordability while trying to maintain high educational quality. This school offers tremendous value for New Yorkers, but it was easy to see where cost cutting and deferred maintenance have taken their toll on the campus.
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