NEW YORK — The chancellor of New York City’s public college system, Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, visited a prominent yeshiva in Brooklyn on Tuesday in an effort to expand college course enrollment at Jewish religious schools.

The public City University of New York (CUNY) is the largest urban college network in the United States, with around 240,000 students, and has served as a vehicle for upward mobility for Jewish New Yorkers for generations, but has been grappling with alleged antisemitism on some of its campuses for years.

Amid those tensions, Rodríguez’s visit to Yeshivah of Flatbush highlighted a CUNY program launched last year that opened enrollment in college-level courses to students at independent religious high schools.

The initiative is part of CUNY’s College Now program that offers free college-level courses to New York City high school students, but had previously been limited to public schools. The students who complete the courses gain credits toward college degrees. CUNY said that, most years, more than half of the yeshiva’s students enroll at CUNY colleges after graduating high school

More than 30,000 students participated in the College Now program last year, CUNY said in a statement, but the initiative is just getting off the ground at yeshivas.

Yeshivah of Flatbush and another yeshiva, Magen David Academy in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst, are participating in the dual enrollment program, acting as a model for CUNY collaboration with other private and religious schools.

Between the fall of 2024, when the program opened to religious schools, and this fall, enrollment in college courses through the program increased from 32 students to 78. The expanded program........

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