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Op-Ed: NYC Should Fund Community College Metro Cards

Commentary/Op-Ed - June 2018

Op-Ed: NYC Should Fund Community College Metro Cards

While the City Council's Fair Fares Plan would undoubtedly provide a much-needed boost to tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are barely scraping by, it remains in legislative limbo. As a practical alternative, New York can start by making MetroCards free for the city’s community college students.

by Tom Hilliard

Tags: community colleges economic opportunity transportation

CUNY’s community colleges serve as the city’s most reliable springboards to the middle class. However, for many community college students, non-tuition expenses, including food, housing, and transit, are among the biggest factors that cause students to drop out. There’s a lot that could be done to help more students stay in school, but few things would be as valuable as offering free MetroCards. 

In this City Limits op-ed, CUF Senior Fellow for Economic Opportunity Tom Hilliard suggests a compromise to the City Council's proposal for half-price MetroCards for poor families that is more affordable and very much aligns with the city’s goal of reducing inequality: Make MetroCards free for the city’s community college students.

Read the op-ed here.

This op-ed is a continuation of the Center for an Urban Future's extensive research on higher education and economic mobility in New York, including the recent study Degrees of Difficulty: Boosting College Success in New York City.

Photo Credit: Kirk Morales/Unsplash

General operating support for the Center for an Urban Future has been provided by The Clark Foundation, the Bernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation, and the Altman Foundation. CUF is also grateful for support from Fisher Brothers for the Middle Class Jobs Project.

Center for an Urban Future (CUF) is an independent, nonprofit think tank that generates innovative policies to create jobs, reduce inequality and help lower income New Yorkers climb into the middle class. For 20 years, CUF has published accessible, data-driven reports on ways to grow and diversify the economy and expand opportunity that are anchored in rigorous research, not preconceived notions about outcome. Our work has been a powerful catalyst for policy change in New York City and serves as an invaluable resource for government officials, community groups, nonprofit practitioners and business leaders as they advocate for and implement policies to address some of New York’s biggest challenges and opportunities.

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