New York City’s own numbers show CUNY graduation rates have been sliding for five straight years, even as taxpayers keep pouring money into the system.
Story Snapshot
- CUNY’s associate degree graduation rate fell from 39.8% in 2023 to 36.5% in 2025.
- Bachelor’s degree completion dropped from 61.9% to 57.9% over the same stretch.
- City officials blame a mix of weak K-12 prep and internal CUNY struggles.
- The decline follows years of steady growth before the pandemic hit.
Six Years of Sliding Numbers
New York City’s Mayor’s Management Report lays out the trend in black and white. CUNY’s six-year graduation rate for associate degree students climbed from 37.2% in 2020 to a peak of 39.8% in 2023. Then it reversed course, falling to 37.6% in 2024 and dropping further to 36.5% in 2025, according to the city’s own tracking data.
Bachelor’s degree students saw a similar fall. Their six-year graduation rate dropped from 61.9% in 2023 to 60.0% in 2024, then slid again to 57.9% in 2025. City records confirm both declines happened in the same two-year window, wiping out years of steady progress in one stretch.
A System Failing on Two Fronts
Education watchers describe this as a two-pronged problem. One prong is what happens before students even set foot on a CUNY campus. Public school preparation in New York City has weakened, leaving more incoming students unready for college-level coursework. The other prong sits inside CUNY itself, where advising, course access, and student support systems have struggled to keep pace with enrollment needs.
The New York Post first reported the near 10% drop in graduation outcomes over five years, citing the same city management data that tracks CUNY’s performance year over year. That is a striking number for a public university system that taxpayers fund heavily, and it raises a fair question about whether that money is producing real results for students trying to finish their degrees.
Who Gets Blamed for the Decline
How this story gets framed matters a lot for who takes the heat. If people blame weak K-12 schools, the city’s public school pipeline takes the fall, and CUNY’s own leadership mostly avoids scrutiny. If people instead point to CUNY’s internal operations, the university and its student-support systems face pressure to fix things fast. Either way, the losers are the students who enroll expecting a degree and don’t get one.
The city’s own report offers a cautious explanation, suggesting the declines likely reflect lingering disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic rather than one single cause. That is a reasonable acknowledgment, but it does not erase the fact that outcomes have gotten worse for two years running, even as pandemic restrictions faded into the past.
One Bright Spot Shows What Actually Works
Not every CUNY program is failing. The university’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, known as ASAP, has posted much stronger results for years. One CUNY evaluation found ASAP students graduated in three years at a rate of 54.6%, compared to just 26.4% for a similar group of students without the program. Independent research groups have confirmed ASAP nearly doubles three-year graduation rates compared to CUNY’s standard track.
I made 3 AIs fight about college. They ended up roasting the whole system.
Hidden models. One question: is college still worth it?
I expected three polite "it depends" answers. Instead, one of them said the quiet part out loud:
▎ "We market college as education and…
— Shrikar Archak (@shrikar84) September 26, 2026
That contrast matters. It shows CUNY can produce real results when it puts structured support behind students, but that success has not spread system-wide. Taxpayers and parents have every right to ask why a program proven to work for over a decade hasn’t been expanded to fix the broader slide in graduation rates across the whole university system.
What This Means for Families and Taxpayers
Parents sending kids to CUNY, and the taxpayers footing the bill, deserve a public university system that delivers on its basic promise: helping students earn a degree. A five-year slide in completion rates, even with a known fix sitting inside the same system, points to a management failure that city officials need to own rather than explain away. Accountability, not excuses, is what struggling students and the people funding their education actually need right now.
Sources:
nypost.com, ground.news, ccny.cuny.edu, york.cuny.edu
