The value of a CUNY degree keeps growing for graduates

New Yorkers know a good deal when they see one. That’s why more than 200,000 of them enroll as CUNY undergraduates every year and invest in something increasingly rare in the nation: A high-quality, affordable education leading to a degree that can pay for itself within months of graduation.

That CUNY value has been documented again by education economists whose research has established CUNY as the nation’s leader in propelling students to upward economic and social mobility. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal’s 2025 list of the best-value colleges in the country placed five CUNY campuses in the top 10. And nine CUNY schools were among this year’s Forbes magazine list of “The 25 Colleges With The Highest Payoff.”

The Wall Street Journal considered two factors in comparing how long it takes graduates of each school to recoup the price of their degrees: the net cost of the degree for students who receive federal financial aid and how much more those graduates earn early in their careers than comparable high school graduates. For the second year in a row, the Journal named Baruch College the top-value college in the nation. They calculated that a degree from Baruch adds about $45,000 to graduates’ median annual salaries – a boost that means they can break even on CUNY’s low tuition just three months after they get their diploma. According to the paper’s analysis, all five of the CUNY colleges in the top 10 offer an “investment-recoup” time of seven months or less.

This high return on investment is no accident. It speaks to the talent and determination of CUNY students as well as our colleges’ success in preparing them for well-paying careers. It’s also a result, increasingly, of the strategies we have pursued to put student success at the center of our mission – particularly the priority we have placed on connecting classrooms to careers.

As I explained in the Wall Street Journal, we’re doing this by continuing to expand opportunities for paid internships that are increasingly critical to career outcomes, and by making a concerted effort to help students plan, prepare for and fast-track their transition to the workforce.

To help meet these objectives, we are constantly forging new partnerships. One great example is the CUNY Inclusive Economy Initiative. Since we launched it with Mayor Adams two years ago, the program has provided over 2,700 CUNY students with paid internships and other preparation for jobs in fields that are most in demand. Through our founding partnership with the New York CEO Jobs Council, 6,000 CUNY graduates have been hired by major companies in just the last two years.

Over the past five years we’ve secured $43 million from nearly 50 sponsors for our CUNY-wide career success initiatives, with more employers and supporters engaging with us every month through our expanded Office of Careers & Industry Partnerships. One of the newest and most forward-thinking of these initiatives is the CUNY Career Success Fellows program, which has brought together 50 of our most dynamic faculty members to incubate new ways of aligning students’ academic interests with their career pathways. And with support from the Robin Hood Foundation, we’re scaling up a groundbreaking initiative that uses what we call academic and career mapping to help students stay on track to land competitive jobs in fields aligned with their majors.

All these efforts, and so many more, are part of the added value of a CUNY degree.  Behind the numbers of the rankings that our colleges dominate each year are the students on every campus in the city who are building their own futures as they lift New York.

Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the United States.