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The Cooper Union is starting to bring back free tuition

2024-09-03T17:02:00-04:00

In a surprising move, The Cooper Union has announced a return to tuition-free education for all undergraduate seniors within each of the next four years starting with its Class of 2025. The reversal comes ten years after school trustees formally voted to do away with its free mandate for the first time as a result of financial strain. The New York Times was first to report on the announcement, which follows a $6 million grant from three Cooper alumni.

The Cooper Union says it is on track to be free to all students by the 2028-29 academic year. Current costs for undergraduates hover at $44,550. However, the school is prioritizing the ten-year plan. Current first-, second-, and third-year students will receive full-tuition scholarships in their senior years under it. In a statement, outgoing President Laura Sparks said progress on the issue "[reaffirms] the ideals that have been foundational to this institution since Peter Cooper opened its doors in 1859."

Previously on Archinect: Coo...

Cooper Union Board approves return to full-tuition scholarships for all undergraduates

2018-03-16T13:55:00-04:00

The Cooper Union Board and President released yesterday a plan to return to full-tuition scholarships for all undergraduate students. This decision is the result of an ongoing strategic planning effort of re-examining the schools structure and values after the 150-year tradition of free scholarships was broken in 2014 causing protests and public outcry.

The plan is a modified version of the recommendation published on January 15, 2018 by the Board’s Free Education Committee (FEC).

Consistent with the FEC's recommendation are:

Increases scholarships beginning in two years, provided we meet critical fundraising, operating expense, and operating cash surplus goals.
Returns The Cooper Union to full-tuition scholarships for all undergraduate students in 10 years.
Seeks to generate $250 million over the 10-year timeline to bolster the institution's financial resilience and invest in its world-renowned academic programs.

Some of the Board's modifications include:

Cooper Union will not rais...

Cooper Union to return to tuition-free model

2015-09-02T13:25:00-04:00

The Committee to Save Cooper Union (CSCU) has successfully convinced Cooper Union's Board of Trustees to reconsider their decision to charge tuition to ease the institution's financial crisis, a move that would have upended a 150-year tradition of free scholarships. Along with Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of the New York Attorney General's Office and the CSCU, Cooper Union signed a Consent Decree that will, in the words of the CSCU, "enable Cooper Union to find a practical path back to its full scholarship model; give alumni, students, faculty, and staff a powerful role in Cooper’s governance; institute strict oversight of the school’s progress toward its goals; spur a serious effort to balance its budget; and reform its governance." The CSCU has correspondingly settled its lawsuit against Cooper Union.

The Attorney General's Office has also filed a cy pres petition, which attributes the Attorney General's intervention in the matter to a need "to safeguard Peter Cooper's irr...

Editor's Picks #420

2015-06-17T13:37:00-04:00

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg presented Curated thoughts from an earlier (Archinect Sessions Episode #24 and #25) conversation with Kevin Roche, "a hero of the long-game". snooker-doodle-dandy noted "I have always liked Kevin and his work. He was one of the people whom drove me to the profession...have never had the good fortune to bump into him. It is on my bucket list!"

Plus, Julia Ingalls explored how Twitter and other "social media has oddly become a kind of virtual worker’s union, helping to expose unethical hiring practices".

News
Next September, the historic Neutra Institute and Museum in Silverlake will host a new play by Tom Lazarus entitled ‘The Princes of Kings Road'. eric chavkin "used to live there. Right after Pauline Schindler died. Some of the stories I heard made Kings Road house look like a real party palace. When I was there lots of architects would drop by….I hope they get this play right. The tales are true, the names famous."

Episode 33 of Archinect Sessions, which fea...

Stargazing with Patrik Schumacher: Episode 33 of Archinect Sessions

2015-06-11T17:40:00-04:00

This week, we devote the majority of our show to a discussion with Patrik Schumacher, about celebrity and the insularity of critical discourse in architecture. The idea of the "starchitect" is onerous to pretty much everybody in architecture, but that hasn't stopped us from using it. It's a popular media fabrication that, by becoming a potent cultural meme in its own right (thanks, Gehry), has derailed significant portions of architecture discourse into the murky realm of identity politics – the aesthetics and politics of a built object becoming an inextricable part of their designer's character. Schumacher's Parametricism may be an antidote to that. We discuss Schumacher's recent op-ed on these subjects, in the hope that keeping the discussion going will flush out something useful (or even flush away the "starchitect" concept entirely).

In the news, we touch on BIG's design for Two World Trade Center displacing Foster's, the resignation of five Cooper Union trustees (including Danie...

The Cooper Union turmoil continues: President Jamshed Bharucha resigns

2015-06-11T12:46:00-04:00

It was a matter of hours from when the resignations of five Cooper Union trustees rolled in until their names were erased from the college’s website. And it was a day later that the President Jamshed Bharucha announced he too would resign, more than a year before his employment contract expires. Yet the upheaval that led to the acrimonious departures has been years in the making.

Events are unfolding very quickly in Cooper Union's leadership right now: Just hours after five members of the 23-member Board of Trustees resigned yesterday, Jamshed Bharucha, the school's embattled President, publicly announced his resignation in an email to the Cooper Union community.

Following is the email in full length (h/t Ken Koense):

Subject: Presidential Transition
From: The Cooper Union <alumni@cooper.edu>
To: All community and alumni
Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 7:09 PM

Dear Members of the Cooper Union Community:

I am writing to let you know that I will be leaving my post as President of The Cooper Union at the end of June, 2015. Starting in the fall, I will serve as Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in the Graduate School of Education.

It has been an honor to serve as the 12th President of Cooper Union these past four years. The focus of my presidency has been to secure Cooper’s finances for generations of deserving students in the future, while preserving excellence and...

Five Cooper Union trustees just resigned

2015-06-10T13:37:00-04:00

Last night five members of the Cooper Union’s board of trustees resigned: real estate mogul Mark Epstein (the board’s former chairman), Vassar College president Catharine Bond Hill, architects Daniel Libeskind and Francois de Menil (the board’s vice chairman), and investment banker Monica Vachher. Three of the departing trustees — Epstein, Libeskind, and Vachher — have written public resignation letters [...].

Following are the three resignation letters by Epstein, Vachher, and Libeskind — all widely claimed as strong tuition supporters and loyal to hotly contested Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha — in full length as published on the Committee to Save Cooper Union from the Committee to Save Cooper Union (CSCUFCSCU) website.

All,
I am writing to you from under two hats. One as trustee, and one as donor.
As a Trustee, I am hereby resigning from the Board, effective immediately. During my term as Chairman we were able to put the school on a path to sustainability. It was going to be a difficult path with some hurdles to get over. We were on our way, but have now gotten so far off of that path due to the actions (or inactions) of the Board that I no longer want to participate. I know that there are some in the Cooper Community that will take my resignation as a false victory of some sort. I am not resigning due to any pressure from that group, rather that I no longer want to associate wit...

Cooper Union graduates stage tuition protest at Commencement ceremony

2015-05-28T18:17:00-04:00

Cooper Union students pinned red felt squares to their graduation gowns and refused to acknowledge president Jamshed Bharucha, in the latest protest against the school's instatement of undergraduate tuition. The protest took place at the 2015 Commencement Ceremony yesterday, and was organized by student activist group Free Cooper Union, which has directed a variety of informational and protest actions in response to the landmark tuition decision.

On May 27, the day of the Ceremony, Free Cooper Union posted the following on Facebook:

At the ceremony, graduates receiving their diplomas refused to shake hands with President Jamshed Bharucha, who oversaw the school's decision to begin charging undergraduate tuition. Many students in the audience turned their backs on Bharucha during his presidential address. The protest echoed similar actions staged at 2014's Commencement, the year Cooper Union officially began charging.

In an effort to mitigate a lawsuit filed against the schoo l by a stud...

Lawsuit Filed Over Cooper Union Tuition

2014-05-28T18:57:00-04:00

Slightly more than a year after the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art announced its plan to charge tuition, a group of professors, admitted students and alumni filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday against the school's board of trustees. The plaintiffs' aim: to stop the school from introducing tuition next fall and to prompt a court investigation into how the board has managed school finances.

Applications to Cooper Union stumble in wake of decision to charge tuition

2014-04-10T17:59:00-04:00

[Cooper Union], which announced last April that it would charge undergraduate students tuition for the first time, released figures on Friday that showed overall applications were down this year by just over 20 percent. [...] The new figures indicate that the admission rate nearly doubled, from 7.7 percent last year to 14.4 percent this year, which still places Cooper Union among the most selective schools in the country.

The freshmen class of Fall 2014 will be the first in Cooper Union's history to pay tuition. It remains to be seen whether Cooper Union's reputation overtime will falter, as quality considerations are matched against tuition rates and student debt, and students are given fewer options to pursue affordable education.

Cooper Union board votes for tuition to begin Fall 2014

2014-01-10T21:03:00-05:00

The Working Group plan puts forward a number of recommendations that are worth pursuing under any financial model. However, we believe that the contingencies and risks inherent in the proposals are too great to supplant the need for new revenue sources. Regrettably, tuition remains the only realistic source of new revenue in the near future.

Below is the entire email announcing the Cooper Union's decision to start charging tuition this fall, breaking the school's 153-year tradition.

Catch-up on the history behind the controversial move, explained in Archinect's 13 top issues of 2013: #5: Free Cooper Union

To: The Cooper Union Community
From: Richard S. Lincer
Date: January 10, 2014
Subject: Working Group Report

In late June 2013, an ambitious plan took shape to provide an alternative to a tuition-based financial plan for The Cooper Union. Authored by trustees, faculty, staff and alumni, this alternative came to be known as the “Working Group Report.” In December, the board began a rigorous review of the assumptions underlying the financial plan that had been adopted by the board in April 2013, and studied in depth the specific recommendations of the Working Group.

This review was conducted by everyone on the Board of Trustees with the assistance of the Huron Group, The Cooper Union’s financial consultants. ...

Free Cooper Remixes Banksy Confessional

2013-10-15T12:23:00-04:00

For the latest in their inventive visual mockery of Cooper Union president and unalloyed economic realist Jamshed Bharucha, the student activists of Free Cooper Union satirically reconfigured a Banksy work that popped up near the school’s campus over the weekend.

Cooper Union and former occupiers reach an agreement

2013-07-16T19:03:00-04:00

We have received news that the administration, Board of Trustees of The Cooper Union and those who have occupied the Office of the President since May have reached an agreement that ended the occupation on Friday, July 12. A "working group", as described in more detail below, consisting of Board, faculty, alumni, students and administration representatives, will be established to seek an alternative to tuition that will "sustain the institution’s long-term financial viability and strengthen its academic excellence".

The working group will report to the administration and Board of Trustees for consideration at the December Board of Trustees Meeting.

The Board also confirmed, in accordance with the motion approved at the June Board meeting, that procedures for student representation on the Board will be established at the September meeting.

An interim room has been identified as a Community Commons that can serve as a student center or a community center for all members of the...

Editor's Picks #324

2013-07-16T18:48:00-04:00

News
The LA Times reported that a Rancho Cucamonga structure described as one of the last surviving examples of Chinese worker housing in the region has been selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation for its 2013 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Archinector Christopher Sison wrote "No, the Chinatown House is not a restaurant at Victoria Gardens Shopping Center. Yes, Chinese immigrants made it to Rancho Cucamonga long before Ice Cube and cousin Day-Day ever did. Unbeknownst to most local residents, Rancho Cucamonga once housed a significant Chinese immigrant population that was vital to developing the agricultural economy of the Cucamonga Valley...Advocates hope that attention from the National Trust designation will gather supporters and hopefully attract grant money for the rehabilitation of the building. The Chinatown House Preservation Coalition and other local advocates hope to save the structure and turn it into an educational space that ...

BERLIN SOLIDARITY! FREE COOPER UNION!

2013-05-12T19:51:00-04:00

As alumni living abroad in Berlin, we stand In solidarity with the students occupying the presidents office. We are moved by the actions of the occupying students, enraged by the actions of the Board of Trustees, President Bharucha, and former President Campbell. We are demonstrating outside of John Hejduk's Kreuzberg Tower to symbolize the legacy of Cooper Union and the global reach of free education. Long live Cooper Union, demand free education!

On May 12th Cooper Union alumni in Berlin gathered in front of the Kreuzberg Tower, designed by John Hejduk to show solidarity with Free Cooper Union. This action is in correlation with a student occupation of 50+ students who have currently been occupying the president of Cooper Union, Jamshed Bharuch’s office, since May 8th. The recent string of protests, and petition of no confidence in the president, is in reaction to Cooper’s Board of Trustees decision to charge tuition for the first time in the historically free school, and a variety of other community grievances with the administration and Board of Trustees.

The Kreuzberg Tower was part of the Inernational BauAfstellung Program in 1987, and is one of John Hejduk’s very few built works. The founder and first Dean of Cooper’s Architecture school, John Hejduk viewed the Cooper Union as a spiritual space, “A place that believes one of society's prime social responsibilities is towards learning and education in the deepest sense.”...