Education in New York City is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. The city's public school system, the New York City Department of Education, is the largest in the world, and New York is home to some of the most important libraries, universities, and research centers in the world. The city is particularly known as a global center for research in medicine and the life sciences.

New York has the most post-graduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, 40,000 licensed physicians, and 127 Nobel laureates with roots in local institutions.The city receives the second-highest amount of annual funding from the National Institutes of Health among all U.S. cities.It also struggles with disparity in its public school system, with some of the best and worst performing public schools in the United States. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg the city has embarked on a major school reform effort.

The New York Public Library, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the country, serves Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island.Queens is served by the Queens Borough Public Library, the nation's second largest public library system, and Brooklyn Public Library serves Brooklyn^] The New York Public Library has several research libraries, including the Main Branch and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

New York also has many nationally-important independent universities and colleges, such as (in ,alphabetical order) Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, Long Island University, Manhattan College, New York University, Pace University, Pratt Institute, St. John's University, The New School, and Yeshiva University. The city has dozens of other private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as The Juilliard School and The School of Visual Arts. . Columbia University, an Ivy League university in northwestern Manhattan founded in 1754, is the fifth oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Barnard College is an independent women's college, one of the original Seven Sisters, affiliated with Columbia. Through a reciprocal agreement, Barnard and Columbia students share classes, housing, and extracurricular activities, and Barnard graduates receive the degree of the University.

Two of the United States' leading Roman Catholic universities are in New York City. The Jesuit-associated Fordham University, with campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx, was the first Catholic university in the Northeast, founded in 1841. St. John's University was founded by the Vincentian Fathers in 1870 and now has campuses in Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island; it is the country's largest Catholic university (over 20,000 graduate and undergraduate students).

Yeshiva University, in Washington Heights, is a Jewish university rooted in America's oldest Yeshiva, founded in 1886.

One of the nation's most prestigious conservatories, The Juilliard School, is located on the Upper West Side.

New York Law School is a private law school in lower Manhattan and is one of the oldest independent law schools in the United States.

The New York Academy of Sciences is a society of some 20,000 scientists of all disciplines from 150 countries.