History of College Now

At the time it was conceived in the fall of 1983, high schools and colleges rarely collaborated. The program became operational in spring 1984 when it recruited its first class of 449 students at four local high schools. It was immediately successful and the program expanded over the next five years to 17 schools. Today it operates in 35 public high school scattered throughout two boroughs of the city and serves over 4,100 students a semester.

In 1998, in response to the issues of declining high school academic performance and intensive demands on remediation at CUNY, the university replicated the College Now program at its five other community colleges. In February of 2000, the Chancellors of CUNY and the New York City Board of Education announced the creation of a city-wide educational collaborative called the College Now Initative to increase student access to the College Now program and expand its mission to include higher standards of academic achievement for all public high school students. This historic school-college partnership dramatically expanded the operations of the College Now program to include 17 of the university’s colleges. The program offers dual enrollment and college-readiness programs in more than 350 NYC high schools and enrolls close to 20,000 students annually.