(photo: @CUNYedu)

A month into the City University of New York’s fall semester, the COVID-19 pandemic, budget cuts, a drop in student enrollment, and anxiety remain the hallmarks of an uncertain new period in the history of the nation’s largest public urban university system. CUNY has chosen to remain almost entirely virtual this semester, with fewer than 2 percent of the fall semester’s 50,000 classes occurring in person.  

Preliminary figures show CUNY’s enrollment dropping by roughly 4.4% since last fall, according to a CUNY spokesperson who