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Q&A
Discussion on CUNY Flex program for part-time students
1:22:51
·
139 sec
Eli Dvorkin elaborates on the proposed CUNY Flex program, which aims to support part-time students who can't access existing full-time student support programs. Council Member Dinowitz acknowledges the importance of such initiatives.
- CUNY has about 79,000 part-time students, many of whom are adult learners
- Existing programs like ASAP and ACE are designed for full-time students
- CUNY Flex would extend evidence-based supports to part-time students
- Dvorkin emphasizes the need to help students who can't enroll full-time due to work or family commitments
Eric Dinowitz
1:22:51
Right.
1:22:52
Was there anything else that you wanted to add to your testimony today or any other important details from your report that you'd like to share?
1:24:38
Yeah.
1:24:38
Of course, the very students who would need to work or like have to work and have no other they don't have access to the very program that's designed for the students who need that support.
1:24:52
So this, you know, the same with part time TAP which we had discussed at hearing previously and now part time, ASAP for part time students, you know, are really critical components to supporting, in very many cases, the students who need the most help, which is what we should be doing at CUNY.
Eli Dvorkin
1:23:02
Well, guess one one to add, I know this wasn't the focus of today's hearing, but I do think that the council, you know, getting behind this idea of CUNY flex is incredibly important.
1:23:10
And just to underscore what we're talking about there, you know, CUNY enrolls about 79,000 part time students.
1:23:17
I mean, that's a huge population.
1:23:20
And most of CUNY's adult learners, students over 25, are enrolled part time.
1:23:24
So when we published our report last fall that looked at the specific and kind of disproportionate challenges that those adult learners are facing, and by the way, 41,000 undergrads at CUNY are over the age of 25.
1:23:36
So that's more than the entire student body, for instance, at Columbia and NYU combined.
1:23:40
We're talking about a significant share of those students who can't access the the leading national models that we have in place today in CUNY ASAP and CUNY ACE because understandably those programs were designed for part for full time students.
1:23:54
And I get it, those the full time enrollment is correlated with better outcomes, but what our research showed so clearly was that so many of those adult learners in particular who are more likely to be among the the CUNY students who are parents, who are full time caregivers for older adults, who are working one, two, three more jobs, for many of those students, full time enrollment just isn't possible.
1:24:15
So I just wanted to underscore that as effective and successful as ASAP and ACE have been, there's a real need to help more of those part time learners as well.
1:24:24
And that's why we thought the idea of a CUNY Flex program that would take these evidence based supports that we know work, as you mentioned earlier, and it helped more of those 79,000 students access them too would be a significant boost for what we know already works.