The CUNY SPS 2022-2027 Strategic Plan

Expanding Access, Affordability, and Quality Over the Next Five Years

As part of its longstanding mission to support adult learners, CUNY SPS provides students with educational opportunities that are accessible, affordable, and quality—all strengths that help to ensure student success.

As an institution committed to accessibility, CUNY SPS currently offers 24 of its 26 degree programs online, allowing students the flexibility to take classes and complete their coursework on their own time and schedule. Alongside this, CUNY SPS provides a broad range of student services and financial support to help students flourish and save on college costs. The School has also become an innovator in adult learner accessibility and academic momentum strategies, leading the City University of New York in orientation for online study, credit for prior learning, use of open educational resources, transfer credit evaluation, and debt forgiveness and finish line scholarships. So far, these initiatives have made a positive impact— CUNY SPS’s enrollment stats reveal a diverse student body, with approximately 70% female students and nearly 65% BIPOC, highlighting how we’ve been able to make the school accessible to a wide range of adult learners.

Our other strengths—affordability and quality further support our students. CUNY tuition is one-third the cost of most of private colleges; we’re also consistently recognized nationally by ranking institutions like U.S. News & World Report, which has listed us in the top ten in several categories (see below). Our quality is also reflected in our online expertise, which has been honed by more than 15 years of providing online courses and degrees.

Even as CUNY SPS celebrates the success of these efforts, we recognize that there is a critical need to expand these strengths going forward. In a time of upheaval triggered by the pandemic, growing income inequality, and inflation, it is becoming increasingly difficult for many adults to return to college or complete a graduate degree, cutting short a cycle of education and advancement that would otherwise boost their social and economic mobility.

To address these issues, CUNY SPS has developed a 2022-2027 Strategic Plan. Released in May 2022, this ambitious 5-year plan is a living document that offers ideas and strategies that seek to expand upon the School’s mission and our strengths even as we acknowledge and address the larger societal shifts that are impacting our students.

Six Areas of Strategic Importance

- Expanding Enrollment and Access

- Ensuring Academic Success and Career Development

- Improving the Teaching and Learning Experience

- Broadening Professional Education and Workplace Learning

- Providing a Culture of Care

- Cultivating Innovation

The 2022-2027 Strategic Plan’s planning committee used the guiding concepts informed by accessibility, affordability, and quality—as well as those of flexibility, equity, and community— to guide the six areas of strategic importance outlined in the plan: Expanding Enrollment and Access; Ensuring Academic Success and Career Development; Improving the Teaching and Learning Experience; Broadening Professional Education and Workplace Learning; Providing a Culture of Care; and Cultivating Innovation.

For the CUNY SPS Foundation Board, the Strategic Plan is a key document that will help guide our own work over the next several years. Of particular interest is the Strategic Plan’s stated goals to increase enrollment and access, which dovetails with our own ongoing efforts to build financial support and expand our fundraising activities for CUNY SPS students.

Working closely with the School, the CUNY SPS Foundation Board has identified several ways that we can help achieve some of the goals outlined in the Strategic Plan.

Our own targets include:

- Launching the School’s next comprehensive fundraising campaign with a focus on raising funds for scholarships, emergency funds, leadership gifts, and support the overall goals of the strategic plan.

- Recruiting new Foundation Board members with the necessary skills and capacity to help achieve our goals.

- Continuing to develop new pipelines of alumni, corporate, foundation, and major gift donors.

- Holding alumni-focused events and activities to highlight the work of our alumni and promote engagement.

Taken together, these aims form a larger blueprint of the fundraising work the CUNY SPS Foundation will be implementing in the years to come. We look forward to providing the CUNY SPS community with more details on these plans over the next few months.