Most didn’t come from families making more than $80k and nice snide comment about 1990 dollars despite the fact most of those CUNY alums I referred to above were toddlers/early elementary school aged back in that decade.
You’re also fail to consider other possibilities such as the bureaucrats making mistakes about eligibility, bureaucratic snafus delaying payment from those sources, or possibilities those sources may not fully cover all tuition/expenses in practice due to budget shortfalls during certain years.
A possibility I don’t dismiss especially considering back when I was in HS, the NY Regents Scholarship program did end up getting scandalized in the local papers when they ended up in such a budget shortfall to the point they had “no money” to provide funds for the scholarship and yet, had enough money to mail out checks for $0 to scholarship recipients…including some older HS classmates.
Also, there’s a growing issue of community college students at the CUNY 2 year schools accumulating some debt according to friends who teach/admin there.