Matthew Goldstein, who oversaw an expansion of the city’s public college system and set out to raise its prestige with a new honors college and other measures, announced on Friday that he would step down after 14 years as chancellor of the City University of New York.

In an interview on Friday, he said that having been the longest-serving chancellor by far, he felt the time was right to leave. “I had an agenda that was in my mind when I first accepted the invitation to do the job, and we have succeeded beyond that agenda, things I never envisaged we would be able to do,” he said.

When Dr. Goldstein, 71, came into office in 1999, a mayoral task force had just labeled CUNY “an institution adrift.” The task force called for the university’s total restructuring, to transform it from a confederation of loosely affiliated institutions into a coherent entity with more consistent standards and effective practices. Benno Schmidt, a former Yale president and an author of the report, later said of CUNY, “The word chaotic doesn’t even begin to describe it; it’s moribund.”

Dr. Goldstein had administrative experience, having previously led CUNY’s Baruch College, and, briefly, Adelphi University. But reforming CUNY posed enormous logistical and political challenges. The university now has 490,000 students at 24 colleges and professional schools. It is jointly funded by the city and the state, in addition to tuition, which is now $5,730 at the four-year schools. And with the overwhelming majority of its students coming from New York City public schools, the university’s success is somewhat dependent on the quality of education those institutions offer.