NEW YORK, NY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised his "Excelsior Scholarship" would provide "tuition-free" college to middle-class New Yorkers, winning praise from left-wing hero Bernie Sanders. But the state-wide program has only helped a tiny handful of New York City students, who are more likely to need financial aid, a new study shows.

"(T)he program is serving very few of the students who could benefit the most from free tuition," reads the report by the Center for an Urban Future. Some 4,155 students attending CUNY colleges received Excelsior Scholarship awards in the 2017-18 school year — just 1.7 percent of the system's total undergraduate student body, the report published Friday says.

They account for roughly a fifth of the 20,086 students across the state whom the program helped that year, the report says. That's just 3.2 percent of the state's undergraduates. The Excelsior Scholarship offers "tuition-free" education at SUNY and CUNY colleges to New York State resident families and individuals who earn up to $125,000 a year, a state website says. Cuomo, a Democrat, announced the program last year alongside Sanders, who campaigned on free college in his 2016 presidential bid.

The roughly $163 million program is meant to supplement other existing financial aid to help students fill any gaps, according to a state handout. But its hefty requirement that beneficiaries earn at least 30 credits each year they're in school shuts out most students, the study says. Nearly twice as many Excelsior applicants were rejected for "not sufficient credits" as the number who got awards through the program this year, according to the report.

The city has a disproportionately small number of Excelsior scholars given its large share of low-income students, the study shows.

Four upstate senior colleges each got more Excelsior awards than all of New York City's community colleges, even though 71 percent of CUNY community college students report having household income below $30,000, the report says.

Cuomo's office contested several of the report's findings, saying the study included students who weren't eligible for the Exclsior Scholarship and didn't factor in those helped by other financial aid programs. The report also misstated Excelsior applicant figures, the governor's office said — about 46,000 of the roughly 95,000 students who applied were eligible for the scholarship, but only around 23,000 needed it because the rest already had their tuition covered.