Surprise! A Class of College Seniors Learns Their Tuition Will Be Free.
The first day of the semester at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York on Tuesday came with a surprise for seniors that will make them the envy of college students everywhere.
Their tuition for the year will be free.
The announcement marks an unexpected milestone in the college’s effort to return to free tuition for all students, a model that had distinguished Cooper Union, a school for art, architecture and engineering, for nearly all of its 165-year history.
About a decade ago, the small, prestigious school in Manhattan faced a financial crisis. It began charging some students to attend, leading to student and alumni protests as well as a lawsuit. Amid the turmoil, New York’s attorney general — whose job is to oversee all nonprofit organizations in the state — opened an investigation, and then brokered a plan in 2018 to lead the school back to financial solvency. The goal was to bring back free tuition for undergraduates in a decade.
The move comes as other colleges and universities around the country are cutting programs and raising tuition as they face enrollment declines and other financial pressures. The Cooper Union wanted to chart a different way forward, putting all available resources toward scholarships and resisting spending on perks like smoothie bars or fancy gyms to attract students, the former president, Laura Sparks, who resigned this summer, said in an interview.
Though the plan calls for tuition to be free again for all undergraduates by 2028, a surprise $6 million gift this summer from three alumni donors allowed the timeline for seniors to be accelerated.
“It’s a reminder to everybody that there is another way to do this,” Ms. Sparks said, adding: “As a sector, we need to find more ways for more students to be able to afford a really excellent college education.”
The donation, along with cost-cutting and fund-raising measures, covers tuition for the next three years of graduating seniors, too, she said. Provided that the financial plan continues on schedule, all undergraduates will receive full scholarships by 2028.
Any senior who had already paid for the year will receive a refund, she added.
Free education is part of the school’s legacy. The institution was founded in 1859 by Peter Cooper, a wealthy industrialist, primarily to provide a free education to working-class students. Early in the school’s history, some students who could afford to pay did so, but for a century, no undergraduates paid tuition. That distinction made Cooper Union stand out, alongside the military academies, as one of only about a dozen colleges in the United States not charging tuition.
The school, which is in the East Village and enrolls about 1,000 students, ran into financial trouble in part because it borrowed $175 million about 20 years ago, mostly to build a marquee building for its engineering school. The resulting high debt payments and other financial missteps led the school’s president in 2013, Jamshed Bharucha, to decide that he had no choice but to reinstate tuition.
Ms. Sparks became president in 2017 to carry out the new financial plan. On Sunday, she said she felt the time was right to resign because she felt she had done what she set out to do at Cooper, including increasing its financial stability and diversifying the school’s teaching and leadership ranks.
Ms. Sparks came under criticism in October for her management of a protest on campus in which some Jewish students said a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators trapped them in the school library. But she said her decision to resign “does not have anything to do with the unrest.”
Malcolm King, an alumnus who was serving as the board chair, will be the interim president this year during a search for the next leader. Ms. Sparks will become a managing director at FS Investments, an asset management firm based in Philadelphia.
The student population at Cooper is diverse, both racially and economically: Among undergraduates who are U.S. citizens, 31 percent are Asian; 7 percent are Black; 13 percent are Hispanic; 28 percent are white; and 9 percent are multiracial or did not report their ethnicity. Slightly less than a third are eligible for federal Pell grants for low-income students — a higher share than other selective universities in New York City.
The tuition scholarships do not cover one major cost of going to college: room, board and supplies. The school estimates roughly $25,000 per year in expenses for those living in student housing. Students can apply for grants and loans to cover those costs.
Already, the school has been reducing tuition for most students. All of the school’s roughly 900 undergraduates received at least a half-tuition scholarship valued at $22,275 in the last school year.
Kevin Slavin, an alumnus and former board member, said the unexpected gift to seniors was a mark of how alumni have rallied around the school’s effort to return to its core mission of providing a free, top-notch education for undergraduates.
A decade ago, he said, “it was unimaginable that Cooper Union could recover.”