COOPER OVER A BARREL.

        The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art,     one of the nation’s finest art and engineering schools, is no longer unique. Starting in fall 2014, Cooper Union, as it’s known, will break a tradition of over one hundred years and start charging tuition. The good news is that the extra income will allow the school to “survive and thrive” according to its president, Dr. Jamshed Bharucha (a name with overtones of Sukkoth, but I doubt it.) The bad news is, well, there’s a lot of bad news.

Imagine the student body you can attract with a college education that is, essentially, free. Now, imagine the kind of faculty that attracts and the level of instruction it permits. Especially if you limit yourself to three subjects: art, architecture and engineering. That’s been the reality of Cooper Union for more than a century. Charging tuition will change all that.

First, the quality of the student body plummets because you are competing with every other college in the nation. A difficult task made harder by being a small, urban school that doesn’t even offer some of the things other schools brag about. Then, standards of faculty and instruction will follow it down like roped-together climbers falling off Mt. Everest.

What happened? How did charging tuition become necessary? You would think that owning the land under The Chrysler Building (among others) would insure a comfortable level of income. It helps. What doesn’t help is borrowing $175 million to invest in Wall Street. In light of the most recent financial crisis, that’s like getting your first package of heroin free or saying, “Grandma, what big ears you have.” 

It’s too late now. What’s done is done. Is there some way to limit the damage? Cooper Union wisely hired   a management consultant to consider the alternatives. Their advice was an across-the-board tuition hike, but only 25% of what constitutes a full scholarship. That way, the school is still an out-sized bargain. What are the chances that the trustees and Dr. Bharucha took that advice? Not a prayer - or barucha in hebrew. The new plan calls for students with means to pay $20,000 a year while needy students pay nothing. I’m sure their goal was to preserve part of Cooper Union’s tuition-free heritage. What they’ve achieved is an arrangement that’s ancien regime in its exploitation. All the students who willingly pay tuition are unwillingly subsidizing the others. That should make for cordial relations. It also gives new meaning to the word, “Upperclassman.”