CUNY Master Plan 2012-2016

MISSION PART THREE
health insurance, and other basic needs. These challenges can make it difficult—or impossible—for
CUNY students to attend or stay in college. In response, CUNY partnered with the SingleStop program
and the Robin Hood Foundation, in 2010, to make students aware of their eligibility for public benefits.
As a result, in the past two years, the University has been able to deliver close to $40 million in public
benefits to students enrolled at our community colleges.
To sustain these important programs, CUNY will begin discussions with SingleStop USA and the
Robin Hood Foundation to determine a timeline for institutionalizing staff, services, and benefits technology.
Moreover, during the next four years, CUNY will examine whether such services can be replicated
at the comprehensive and senior colleges.
Preparing for College Success
CUNY receives 70 percent of its students from the New York City Department of Education (DOE).
The University invests substantial resources in serving these public school students and in serving outof-school
youth. These services focus on preparation for and entry into college and movement through
the first year.
The goals of these pre-college programs are linked closely to the University’s mission: (1) to improve
the academic achievement of high school students so that fewer students require remediation upon entry
to college, and (2) to accelerate credit accumulation and degree completion for students who meet readiness
standards. The work attempts to eliminate obstacles in the transition from high school to college
and takes place through college/public school collaboration and curricular alignment.
Several University initiatives have received national recognition in this regard. College Now, for example,
is an enhanced dual-enrollment program that provides multiple pathways to college readiness
including college-credit courses, preparatory courses, workshops, experiential-based summer programs
and access to campus facilities and cultural offerings. As studies showed that students benefited from
participation in College Now, the program was scaled up. In 2010-2011 it served approximately 20,000
students at all of the undergraduate colleges and over 350 NYC public high schools. In 2012-2016 CUNY
will continue to perform rigorous research and evaluation on the effects of its dual-enrollment programs.
College Now is developing a quasi-experimental study on the effects of the program and is considering
moving toward a random assignment evaluation (an experimental design).
Newer initiatives have borrowed successful practices from College Now. At Home in College (AHC),
for example, is a Robin Hood Foundation funded college transition program that works with students
from DOE high schools and CUNY GED programs serving students who are on track to graduate but who
have not met traditional benchmarks of college readiness. The program prepares students for CUNY’s
placement exams, provides workshops that help them complete the Free Application for Federal Student
Aid (FAFSA) and the CUNY online application, and provides advisement support the summer before
matriculation and during their first year at CUNY. Initial outcomes have been positive, including gains in
college enrollment, gains on the CUNY Placement Exams (and less need for remedial coursework), and
higher persistence rates into the third semester compared to a similar CUNY cohort. AHC is scaling up;
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