Cooper Union Looks at Charging Tuition
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Facing serious financial trouble in a weak economy, Cooper Union, the New York City college founded in 1859 to provide free education for the working class, may begin charging undergraduates tuition for the first time in more than a century, its president said Monday.
"Altering our scholarship policy will be only as a last resort, but in order to create a sustainable model, it has to be one of the options on the table," Jamshed Bharucha, who took over as president in July, said in an interview.
Such a change would be a cultural shift for an institution whose tuition-free education and esteemed programs in engineering, architecture and art have made it one of the nation's most selective colleges, admitting 5 percent to 10 percent of applicants annually, depending on the department.
Peter Cooper, a self-taught industrialist, inventor and social reformer, founded the college with the mission of making higher education available to all; it was among the first to admit blacks, women, students of any religion and those who could not pay, making it need-blind long before the term existed.
Dr. Bharucha emphasized that lower-income students and many middle-income ones would continue to attend free, and that none of the 900 current undergraduates would be charged.
He said that if Cooper Union decided to charge tuition, it was not clear whether it would set its price comparable to those at other private colleges, $40,000 or more, or adopt a different payment structure.
Despite consternation at the East Village school and on Facebook among students and alumni who had heard murmurs of a possible change, Dr. Bharucha said no decisions had been made. He plans to ask the board of trustees next week to approve creation of a task force to look into ways to solve the college's persistent, and worsening, budget problems, and report back next spring.
First Published November 1, 2011 12:01 am
