CUNY’s First Fifty Years: Triumphs and Ordeals of a People’s University

Reflecting on its uniqueness and broader place in U.S. higher education, Picciano and Jordan examine in depth the development of the CUNY system and all of its constituent colleges, with emphasis on its rapid expansion in the 1960s, and the end of its free tuition in the 1970s, and open admissions policies in the 1990s. While much of CUNY’s history is marked by twists and turns unique to its locale, many of the issues and experiences at CUNY over the past fifty years shed light on the larger nationwide developments in higher education.