According to Chancellor John B. King Jr., the SUNY system is doing well, enjoying more support from the state government and has a firm foundation of projects and programs aimed at making itself a better tool for more New Yorkers to achieve their goals.
In his 2026 State of the University address last week, King said the SUNY system’s 64 campuses are focused on improving student performance, cutting out barriers that keep people from being able to access higher education and bringing nontraditional students in the doors.
King pointed out how SUNY has kept its tuition flat for years, charging about $7,000 for classes at the four-year schools dotted around the state. He noted that more than half of in-state undergraduate students don’t pay any tuition to attend SUNY, relying on a combination of state and federal financial aid programs.
“Over the last three years, we have achieved back-to-back-to-back enrollment gains across every sector,” King told a crowd at The Egg performing arts center in Albany. “All across the state, we help students from every background graduate with the critical thinking abilities fostered by a well-rounded, rigorous general education, real-world skills, and strong career prospects—without a mountain of debt. Sometimes, those students are coming straight from high school. But increasingly, SUNY helps launch a second act—and makes manifest a once impossible dream.”
In recent years, state officials and SUNY administration have invested in programs aimed at bringing older people back onto campus; programs like SUNY Reconnect which is specifically aimed at people age 25 to 55, who graduated high school, but didn’t go to college or complete a degree, who want to get into a high-demand field. Through Reconnect, they can get an associates degree from a community college for things like air conditioning or refrigerator repair, computer science, dental hygiene, mechanics, and nursing among many other degrees.
Since it launched last year more than 5,600 people have enrolled in SUNY Reconnect, and King said that number will grow as more campuses that offer associates degrees start participating.
And King said that SUNY’s other efforts to provide education to people who need extra help to make it work are also going well. SUNY runs two programs that give extra help to students to complete their degrees with focused academic, financial and mentorship supports; the ASAP and ACE programs. The programs are expanding to more and more SUNY schools each year; at 34 campuses, 7,000 students participate in these extra help programs. King said SUNY is anticipating there will be 10,000 students in the programs for the next academic year.
And even outside of those programs, King said SUNY is working to make it easier to navigate through degree programs and graduate on time.
“We’ve taken what we know works from ASAP and ACE, and we’re expanding it across the SUNY system,” he said. “Our landmark academic momentum campaign is now helping integrate evidence-based strategies, like degree mapping and targeted advising, so every student who begins at SUNY sees a clear path to completing a degree and gets all the support they need to get there. This year, we will go even further to strengthen advising, redesign gateway courses, and make transfer work even better.”
That includes investing in basic support programs like campus food pantries, transportation assistance and emergency aid grants.
“We do this knowing that addressing students’ basic needs creates the enabling conditions for the rich, rigorous and engaging academic experiences we seek to provide,” he said.
King noted that these priorities are part of a long legacy of SUNY focusing on those who need extra help to get through school, pointing to the long-running Educational Opportunity Program that has seen countless successful graduates, including the retiring Assembly Majority Leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo.
King also took a moment to note the advantages that the SUNY system of colleges provides; more than 95% of all New Yorkers live within 30 miles of a campus. The 64 campuses and the system’s central administration employ more than 165,000 people, and altogether the schools generate $35.5 billion in economic activity each year.
SUNY is getting $15.1 billion from the state government this year; King said that SUNY generates about $7.38 in estimated economic activity with every dollar the system receives.
King made a small reference to the challenges facing SUNY and other American university systems from the Trump administration’s opposition to continued research funding for a variety of issues. Cuts at the National Institutes of Health and other research projects canceled by the President’s administration, as well as a freeze on grants for months last year, have cut at least $32 million from SUNY’s research programs since last year.
King noted that last year he spoke during a time of extreme uncertainty, but now had good news to report.
“As I stood on this stage last year, I promised that while SUNY was far from immune to the federal threats to higher education research budgets, our resolve was unwavering,” he said. “I am proud to report that resolve has borne fruit over the past year. Consistent with Governor Hochul’s goal to double SUNY research, we are breaking new ground and leading the way in everything from treatments for intractable diseases, to better understanding devastating conditions like Alzheimer’s and PTSD, to emerging fields like quantum.”
King said that the future for SUNY is a question of how much it can do, how many of its mission goals can be achieved.
“We can, we are, and we will,” he concluded.