Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez encouraged undocumented immigrant students to keep applying to the City University of New York (CUNY) on Thursday amid President Trump’s legal challenge to New York’s in-state tuition policy.
“I don’t want anybody to be confused because there’s lawsuits, and because of other things, that you should be intimidated not to be able to apply,” Matos Rodríguez said at an annual ‘Welcome to CUNY’ event for high school seniors. “Not the case.”
“We’ll go to court, defending the state law that guarantees that, so that we can continue to benefit all CUNY students,” he added, alongside Chancellor Kamar Samuels at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
In August, Trump’s Justice Department sued multiple states, including New York, alleging their in-state tuition policies for undocumented immigrants at public colleges and universities discriminate against American citizens from out-of-state, who have to pay full tuition.
The annual tuition at CUNY’s senior colleges is $6,930 for in-state students, and $18,600 for out-of-state. At the State University of New York (SUNY), tuition is $7,070 in-state and $17,730 out-of-state. Community colleges at both CUNY and SUNY cost less.
New York, including CUNY and represented by Attorney General Letitia James’s office, filed a motion to dismiss the federal government’s lawsuit in late September, citing constitutional concerns, according to court documents.
The Daily News previously reported on two New York students who feared that the lawsuit, if successful, could force them to drop out of college and give up on their dream careers.
At Thursday’s school assembly, Matos Rodríguez and Samuels distributed ‘Welcome to CUNY’ letters to dual-enrollment students at Manhattan Early College Academy for Marketing & Media Arts and Union Square Academy for Health Sciences, who are among the 70,000 high school seniors to receive the personalized missives this year.
This is the fourth consecutive year that the letters — which provide more information about the application process, including that New York has waived application fees through Nov. 16 — have been given out.
The chancellors said a record number of the city’s high schoolers registered for dual enrollment through CUNY last school year: 37,000 students.
“All of our data … shows that the students who participate in College Now or early college, when they come to us, they graduate faster. They have higher GPAs,” Matos Rodríguez told the Daily News.
Samuels added that one of the dual-enrollment programs, FutureReadyNYC, expanded this fall to roughly 190 schools — an increase of 11 programs, a public schools spokeswoman said. CUNY is one of multiple partners that provide early college credit through the career-focused initiative.
“That’s the goal: To make sure that we’re providing as many students as possible with accelerated and college-level opportunities,” Samuels said.