This month, graduating high school seniors throughout New York State will receive personalized letters inviting them to pursue a college degree at their local public college. Those in New York City will be encouraged to apply to the City University of New York (CUNY), while those living outside the city will receive a confirmation of their automatic acceptance into a local community college within the State University of New York (SUNY), where they may start attending this fall. High school seniors will also be assisted with applying to receive financial aid from the federal and state government.
This initiative is part of Governor Kathy Hochul’s effort to make higher education accessible to students of all backgrounds by eliminating barriers to pursuing a degree. In spite of these efforts, a significant barrier that remains is the cost of pursuing a degree.
Six years ago, former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo announced to an energized crowd, packed into the auditorium of Laguardia Community College, that any state resident who comes from a family with an annual income of $125,000 or less would be able to attend any two- or four-year public college tuition-free with the newly founded Excelsior Scholarship.
The crowd erupted, showering Cuomo in applause and cheers. Alongside him sat the U.S. senator of Vermont and two-time presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a known advocate for nationwide free college and the elimination of student debt.
When the applause ceased, Cuomo continued.
“Thank you,” he said. “It is going to be the first program like it in the United States of America. It is once again New York leading the way. It should be a wake-up call to this nation.”
In the crowd was 16-year-old Andrés Aguirre, whose high school had brought his class to the event. At the time, Aguirre thought free tuition seemed too good to be true. “It seemed like a fairy tale when they first announced it,” says Aguirre, now 22. “You know, many fairy tales don't turn out to be what they say.”
Aguirre received the Excelsior Scholarship and has since discovered that obtaining free tuition is not as simple as Cuomo made it seem.
The Excelsior Scholarship requires students to meet an exhaustive list of terms and conditions that has caused the program to exclude far more students than it serves. The obligations that students must meet before, during, and after receiving the award make it so free tuition is not guaranteed to all New York residents below the maximum income.
Rather, access to free tuition depends on whether students have the ability to earn their associate’s degree within two years or their bachelor’s within four (unless their degree requires five). They must also remain in the state post-graduation for the same amount of time they received the award. In short, free tuition is not promised to most students. The majority of applicants for the program get denied. And for those who do receive the award, it may be withdrawn and converted to a loan once they no longer meet the program’s academic and residential requirements.
This policy makes it so that, by design, the scholarship does very little to improve college accessibility and instead reinforces economic and racial disparities. The majority of Excelsior dollars flow to students who come from middle to upper-middle-class families who can support them through college, thus allowing them to complete their degree within the allotted time. Working-class students of color are the least likely to receive and hold onto the scholarship, as it can be challenging – if not impossible – to fast-track completing a degree while maintaining a job.
Kendra Shiloh, a 22-year-old graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) of the State University of New York (SUNY), received the scholarship in 2019 and completed her bachelor’s degree this spring. She is one of the relatively few Black students to have attended college through Excelsior.
Shiloh says that if she hadn't received free tuition, she probably would not have gone to college. But it was a struggle. While earning her degree, Shiloh reserved the morning for completing assignments for the six classes she took during her last semester at FIT. As a textile development and marketing major, Shiloh focused on the production of sustainable fabrics as well as color creation for fashion apparel and decor. She had to come up with design ideas and use professional equipment to create high-quality items.
After working on her assignments, Shiloh would attend one of her in-person classes, which could stretch as long as four hours. Or, depending on the day, she would have a shift at the jewelry store where she worked 20 hours per week. It was difficult to juggle class and work with her projects and assignments. Yet, Excelsior left her no choice.
“Working and being in school is definitely a lot and not something that I would necessarily have wanted to do if I didn't have to,” Shiloh says. “But I do have to pay rent, bills, and make sure that I’m able to live.”
To receive and keep the Excelsior Scholarship, students must take 30 credits per year to graduate within two years if pursuing an associate’s or four if pursuing a bachelor’s. Students who attended college prior to receiving the scholarship and are not on track to graduate within the allotted time do not qualify. The award does not cover the costs of classes held in the winter or summer terms, encouraging students to split the 30-credit requirement between their fall and spring semesters.
For some, 15 credits per semester could look like taking five classes worth three credits each. However, for students at colleges like FIT, where the number of credits allotted per class ranges from one to three, they may need to take six to seven classes to meet the minimum requirement. In Shiloh’s major, the course Total Quality Management for Textile Products counts as only one credit, while the lab for the course counts as 1.5.
The pressure to load up on courses can be overwhelming, especially for students who have obligations outside of school.
While Aguirre was pursuing his degree in public affairs at Baruch College, he was also working 20 to 30 hours per week at whichever job he held at any given time. He worked in food service, at the library, and in internships focused on public affairs. To cope with the demands of his schedule, Aguirre trained himself to not think about school while at work.
“It was definitely not easy. And I think I put a lot of credit into just being able to, I guess, separate them in my head,” Aguirre says. “And it just kind of clears things up for you. Because you're like, ‘okay I don't have to think about this for a while.’ And then we come back here. And there’s work that I got to do.”
Aguirre was able to push himself to the finish line. Yet, for many students, getting through the program is next to impossible. According to government data, the majority of students in the nation take at least six years to complete a bachelor’s degree. Low-income students specifically tend to take breaks in their education or lighten their course loads so they can continue working. Consequently, low-income students are the least likely to benefit from the program.
According to a report by the Center for an Urban Future (CUF), the Excelsior Scholarship primarily serves students enrolled in SUNY, which is largely attended by white and middle to upper middle-class students. At SUNY Buffalo, for instance, the median family income is $99,400 and at least 43 percent of students come from families that are within the top 20 percent of earners. Based on the CUF report, Excelsior dollars are less likely to benefit students enrolled in CUNY, where the student body is nearly three-quarters non-white and largely low-income.
In Excelsior’s first year, only 5 percent of CUNY’s first-time first-year students received the award. Only half of that 5 percent went on to keep the scholarship for another year, according to a 2022 report by the Urban Institute. Of the small percentage of eligible CUNY students, Black students and community college attendees were the least likely to receive the award, illuminating how the program’s obligations reinforce inequity.
The program’s threat to disqualify students who reduce their course load or take breaks from pursuing their degree can also harm those who are experiencing times of distress. And the obligations that seem simple to meet, such as living in New York State, can heighten the possibility of losing the award.
In the fall semester of Shiloh’s second year, her father passed away. Amidst her grief, she nearly lost the scholarship despite meeting its course requirements. The award was challenged under the premise that “one or more parents no longer live in New York.” According to the scholarship’s manual, the residency of a dependent student is deemed to be that of the parent.
To hold onto the award, Shiloh had to prove her residency. She filled out a residency form documenting every job she’s held, every house she’d lived in, and every school she’d attended for the previous five years. She presented supporting documents, such as her father’s tax forms and his death certificate to the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC). After several weeks, HESC declared the challenge to be an error. Yet, the threat of losing her scholarship persisted.
Shiloh began to prioritize rest. In her final semester, she took asynchronous online classes whenever possible and swore off all-nighters. With graduation on the horizon, she looked forward to being done with overextending herself to meet the scholarship’s requirements.
Yet, the award comes with another significant ask. Graduates must live in the state for the same duration of time that they received the award. If they work, they must be employed within the state. If they do not meet this obligation and cannot prove that “allowable hardship” prevented them from doing so, the award will be converted to a zero-interest loan to be paid off within 10 years. The program manual does not offer examples of what counts as “allowable hardship.”
Aguirre, now a graduate of Baruch College, is limiting the scope of his job search to meet this obligation. Given his interest in public affairs, he sometimes reflects on the opportunities he could have pursued in the nation’s capital. “What if I could do the same thing in Washington D.C.?” he says. “There are so many opportunities to work in the political sector, the nonprofit sector elsewhere. And just going to college in the city for so long, makes you wonder a lot.”
During his time as governor, Cuomo argued that New Yorkers should not pay for the education of someone who will eventually leave the state. According to Cuomo, the purpose of investing in the college education of New Yorkers is to ensure that they will utilize their degree to be an “asset” to the state, thus offering a return on the government’s investment.
Regardless of the reasoning, the limit on mobility serves as another barrier that undermines the accessibility of the program. Students may avoid applying for Excelsior because of uncertainty over whether they could meet the residency requirement and ultimately benefit from the scholarship, without needing to pay it back. Unlike other financial aid programs, such as the state’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) and FAFSA, Excelsior’s aid is not guaranteed to all who receive the award. The possibility of it being rescinded remains long after students have completed their education.
This policy makes it difficult for students in need of free tuition to receive it. Hence, six years after Cuomo touted Excelsior as the nation’s first accessible college program, residents are still fighting for access. Many current and former CUNY and SUNY students are advocating for free tuition without additional obligations and burdens.
“There’s always this threat [that] if you don’t keep to the certain standards, whether it’s graduating on time, or getting a certain GPA, or staying in New York, you then have to pay that [money] back,” says Ayesha Schmitt, higher education coordinator of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). “That’s not free college.”
Schmitt organizes students to pressure New York State legislators and Governor Kathy Hochul to pass the New Deal for CUNY, a bill that would grant free tuition to all students as well as provide funding for hiring additional professors and mental health counselors. Financial aid would be granted as a first-dollar award, unlike Excelsior, which is granted only after students try to access federal grants and TAP awards first.
For Excelsior recipients, free tuition without additional obligations would have allowed them to pursue their degrees without overworking themselves.
“I probably would have taken things a lot easier,” says Aguirre. “There was this unspoken pressure – that I always thought was something I put on myself – just to keep going.”
Similarly, Shiloh thinks that free tuition with no obligations would have allowed her to pursue her degree at her own pace and truly commit to learning. “If I was part-time, I would be able to actually enjoy the classes more instead of meeting five different deadlines in one night,” she says.