Education

Schooling is compulsory from age 6 to 16. Since the Unification Act of 1904 coordinated the state's educational agencies, the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York has been the administrative body that supervises elementary, secondary, and higher education in the state. The commissioner of education is the executing officer of the Board of Regents and is appointed by the board. The members of the board are elected.

The State University of New York (SUNY), created by the legislature in 1948, consists of almost 70 centers of higher education. The system includes state colleges and universities and locally operated community colleges supervised by SUNY. It also includes several specialized colleges operated on the campuses of private universities.

SUNY colleges of arts and sciences are at Brockport, Buffalo, Cortland, Fredonia, Geneseo, New Paltz, Old Westbury, One onta, Oswego, Plattsburgh, Potsdam, and Purchase. Empire State College at Saratoga Springs is a nonresidential unit. University level campuses are at Albany, Binghamton Buffalo, and Stony Brook, Long Island There are health science centers in Brooklyn and Syracuse.

Two agricultural and technical collegia are part of SUNY. Other specialized schools include the colleges of agriculture and life sciences, veterinary medicine, and human ecology and the school of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University, Ithaca; the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse; the College of Optometry, New York City; the Institute of Technology at Utica-Rome, Utica; and the Maritime College, New York City.

The City University of New York is a municipal institution in New York City that is largely state funded. It includes 10 colleges, among them Brooklyn, City, Hunter and Queens colleges, and several community colleges.

The federal government maintains U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.