In her forthcoming 2026 State of the State address, Governor Kathy Hochul is poised to unveil a significant enhancement to New York’s free community college initiative geared toward adults. This expansion, particularly timely as thousands of nurses in the city have recently gone on strike, includes new pathways for those pursuing a nursing career.

Introduced by Governor Hochul in her previous year’s address, the SUNY and CUNY Reconnect program offers New Yorkers aged 25 to 55, who haven’t yet earned a degree, the chance to return to school tuition-free. Designed to fill positions in sectors experiencing high demand, the program targets fields such as nursing, cybersecurity, teaching in underserved areas, and artificial intelligence.

The upcoming expansion plans to broaden the program’s reach by allowing any adult interested in nursing to participate, regardless of whether they already hold a degree in another discipline. Details of this initiative were exclusively shared with the Daily News in advance of the governor’s speech, underscoring the urgent need to bolster the workforce as New York confronts a projected shortage of up to 40,000 nurses by 2030.

“Investing in these students doesn’t just further their educational pursuits,” Governor Hochul stated, “it’s a step towards strengthening our state’s workforce.”

Meanwhile, nearly 15,000 nurses at some of New York City’s premier hospitals initiated a strike on Monday. The strike, provoked by unresolved negotiations over staffing ratios and other critical issues, disrupted operations at prominent medical centers in Manhattan and the Bronx, including Montefiore Medical Center, Mount Sinai Health System, and NewYork-Presbyterian.

The strike follows an executive order issued by Governor Hochul on Friday, which declared a disaster emergency in anticipation of the labor action.

Also in her speech Tuesday, Hochul planned to increase the number of eligible fields for SUNY and CUNY Reconnect, adding logistics, air traffic control and transportation, and emergency management to the list of industries already considered “high-demand.”

There’s no cap on the number of students served in New York’s free community college program. SUNY and CUNY campuses have received some 16,500 applications and enrolled more than 11,000 students through the initiative, now in its first year. Expanding the number of eligible fields through Reconnect could add hundreds more students to the rosters, depending on interest, state officials estimated.

A spokeswoman for Hochul said the estimated cost of the expansion would be released as part of the governor’s proposed state budget next week. For this school year, the state allocated $47 million to the program across both SUNY and CUNY campuses.

“I’m proud to add more fields like transportation and emergency management so that New Yorkers statewide and across industries can take advantage of this win-win program,” Hochul’s statement continued.