A college education is an investment. As the level of educational attainment rises so do life-long earnings.

• The average bachelor's degree recipient earns over $690,000 more than a high school graduate during a 40-year career. A person who has earned an associate's degree can expect to earn over $230,000 more than someone who has finished high school but did not go to college.
• Earnings of graduates were dramatically enhanced by the University's original open admissions policy during the 1970s. According to Dr. David E. Lavin, Professor of Sociology at Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate School, students previously ineligible for admission to CUNY earned $67 million more in just one year in the 1980s than they would have if they had not gone to college, and those numbers are multiplied throughout their lives. Prof. Lavin's research was published by Yale University Press in 1996 in a book, Changing the Odds: Open Admissions and the Life Chances of the Disadvantaged that he co-authored with Dr. David Hyllegard.
• At least half of CUNY's students could not afford to attend any other college, according to an annual survey. These studentsabout 252,000 from 1970-95could not have attained the higher earnings that result from having a college education.

Return on the CUNY Investment

Because they earn more, CUNY graduates pay substantially higher taxes.

• Each year, New York State and New York City derive approximately $646 million more in taxes from CUNY's 1970-1995 graduates than if these taxpayers had not received a college education.