INTUITION FREE: The End of Free Tuition at Cooper Union
Peter Cooper was a man of great intuition on a mission to educate the people who made him rich. He believed power came from administering money, not from hoarding it. He tried to reform a public school system that was failing NYC. He knew that an enlightened community is in everyone’s best interest except for the corrupt and greedy.
He put his money where his mouth is and created The Cooper Union. His school would be a prototype to follow, and would be free as air and water. It lasted 150 years and cultivated scholars and luminaries far beyond its size. A few robber barons took note and set up colleges of their own and now they are all gone, and education - even at City College - is no longer free.
Education is a business run by corporate CEOs. There are no more genteel college presidents. Diploma Mills bring in huge amounts of money selling narrow specializations known as “domain expertise”. It promises the good life in the digital age and downplays the importance of the fine arts in enriching that life. Trump University and The University of Phoenix took it to extremes but the Ivy League is not far behind. Money is all that matters and “thar’s gold in them thar diploma mills.”
Cooper Union’s Board of Trustees decided to go with greed and blew our treasure on a razzle-dazzle ‘icon’ to attract the silicon set. It was a big mistake. Cooper is now ordinary, dark and desperate. Meetings to discuss a way out of this crisis are futile because they are dominated by those who created the problem in the first place. They hate the mission and have made subtle changes along the way, such as the new wording “full scholarship” instead of “tuition free”.
Peter Cooper decreed that when the alumni no longer support the mission of free tuition, the school should cease to exist. Students of privilege will not fight for that principle and the large contingent of foreign post graduate students have stolen the gift and never looked back. That was never a sustainable model. The tax-free status of the institution is at the expense of NYC taxpayers in the neighborhood – and very few get in. Most who attend can afford the Ivy league.
It was leaked that the New Academic White Elephant across the street was to be named the Jeffery Epstein Building, his brother sits on the board and both were students at Cooper. The Trustees betrayed Peter Cooper on so many levels and they are rich enough to underwrite mistakes but they lack the character to fess up and make amends.
At the architecture school, John Hejduk was the only dean to hold a professional degree and a license in New York. All the rest are dilettantes undeserving of the appointment. That is suicide for a professional school. The Trustees have no respect or understanding of the education of an architect. They should resign and all records made public but they are hanging on afraid of what the sunlight will reveal.
The promise of returning to free tuition is completely disingenuous. They are buying time hoping we lose memory or die asap. How can alumni be asked to give more to a leadership that refuses to be transparent? Students are graded and faculty are evaluated, so why are the Trustees immune from review? They ignored all warnings because there are no checks and balances for them.
Chairman of the Board Mark Epstein walks out of a closed-door board meeting in December 2012. Students hold clear plastic representing their demand for more transparency in the board's past and future actions.