Workforce Readiness

CUNY Programs to Grow Student Industry Pipeline with Digital Skills

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/31/19

Over the next year, City University of New York plans to unveil several programs designed to help students develop their "technological fluency" and competencies in preparation for taking jobs requiring digital skills.

Those efforts include:

• A new two-year master's program in cybersecurity at City College of New York, being designed with input from Facebook and other companies. Two years ago, Facebook worked with the college to launch a web security hybrid course to help students learn more about the field. The new master's is scheduled to launch in fall 2020 and is expected to include both internship and employment prospects. The work is also part of Cyber NYC, launched in 2018 by the New York City Economic Development Corp. The goal of that initiative is to establish the city as a global leader in cybersecurity, generate 10,000 "cyber jobs," promote new startups in the segment and provide a trained workforce for protecting the city's "anchor employers."
• Awarding of course innovation grants worth a total of $100,000 to 10 schools in the system for collaborations in cybersecurity and data analytics with Guardian Life, JP Morgan and MasterCard. According to CUNY, tech professionals will lead workshops, serve as guest lecturers and work with faculty to embed their ideas into school curriculum.
• Hosting at least 30 Google engineers during the current academic year. These experts have pledged to visit CUNY's eight four-year campuses offering computer science degree programs to encourage, educate and recruit students interested in technical careers.

"Whether students are entering the workforce in the healthcare, financial or nonprofit sector or a wide range of others, they will need digital skills; CUNY is working to make sure they get them," said Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez, in a statement. "Additionally, we want to make sure students understand the real-world applications that are becoming essential in just about every line of work. Because of our vast reach, and unparalleled ability to scale educational opportunities to the needs of so many different types of students, CUNY is positioned to equip large numbers of students to take advantage of these opportunities, and provide companies from every industry a robust pipeline of talent whose diversity mirrors that of the city."