The City University of New York has 24 institutions of higher learning, the oldest of which is City College of New York (CCNY), with its 36-acre campus sitting prominently on a hill overlooking Harlem. CCNY was the very first institution in the United States to offer free higher education to students. The Free Academy had its official opening on January 21, 1849, with Dr. Horace Webster, a graduate of West Point, as its first president.

While those who attended the college may have been less affluent and not as well off financially as their peers, CCNY gave them such a high quality of education that City College has earned nicknames such as “the poor man’s Harvard” and “Harvard-on-the-Hudson.”