Students at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art have more than the first day of classes to be excited about today. Earlier, as part of the college’s convocation, outgoing President Laura Sparks surprised students with the news that for each of the next four years, all graduating seniors will be tuition free. The Cooper Union includes internationally renowned programs in architecture, art, and engineering and classes in the humanities and social sciences.

The development to cover all tuition for seniors is a major milestone and accelerates Cooper Union’s progress toward successfully completing its Plan to Return to Full-Tuition Scholarships for all undergraduates by the 2028-29 academic year. The Cooper Union Board of Trustees announced the landmark decision to pursue this plan in March 2018, just four years after partial tuition was instituted at the college for the first time in its history to help close a structural financial deficit.

Current seniors will receive refunds from The Cooper Union for any tuition payments made for the fall semester and will pay no tuition for the spring semester. First-, second-, and third-year students will receive full-tuition scholarships in their senior years.

“In 2018, we began an ambitious journey to provide full-tuition scholarships for all of our undergraduate students,” said Sparks. “The response to our plan and the dedication of Cooper Union alumni and New York City funders have been tremendous. Thanks to the generosity of three extraordinary alumni donors, we are removing a major financial burden for our graduating classes and reaffirming the ideals that have been foundational to this institution since Peter Cooper opened its doors in 1859,” she said.

Peter Cooper believed that education should be “open and free to all” because as he saw it, “The best investment any society can make is in the education of its people.” Today, though, students are faced with higher education costs that have increased by an estimated 40% (adjusted for inflation) over the last 20 years, which has translated into outstanding private student loan debt totaling $128.8 billion.

With the inception of the Plan to Return to Full-Tuition Scholarships, The Cooper Union has been reversing that trend. The college has held tuition flat for six, consecutive years, has consistently increased scholarship levels, and is now accelerating its plan to restore full-tuition scholarships by providing free tuition for all senior over the next four years.

The possibility of offering all seniors full-tuition scholarships came together this summer when an alumnus made a pledge to the “Until All Are Free” fund that this donor established in 2016. George Reeves, a 1964 alumnus of Cooper Union’s Albert Nerken School of Engineering, and his wife and business partner Ross Wisnewski, then stepped in with a new commitment. For Reeves and Wisnewski, this follows a $4 million matching grant in 2021, which generated an additional $4 million, all for scholarships. Closing the gap to make the initiative for seniors possible was John Manuck, a 1969 School of Engineering graduate, and his wife Mary. For the Manucks, their new gift follows a $3 million grant made in 2023 from their family foundation to fund the John and Mary Manuck Distinguished Professor of Design at Cooper. In total, the three alumni donors are contributing an additional nearly $6 million on top of their prior gifts. Those commitments, along with the existing scholarships that Cooper provides and other grants and scholarships that students are eligible for, made it possible for seniors to be tuition free.

“We are so encouraged that Cooper is moving steadily toward tuition-free undergraduate education for all, and we are thrilled by this amazing opportunity to contribute to achieving this goal now for current students in their senior year. It is an honor to be a part of this investment in the future and a joy to witness the impact of doing so,” said Reeves and Wisnewski.

Manuck said, “The return to a tuition-free Cooper Union is of paramount importance. Establishing this status for the senior year demonstrates a serious commitment in this direction.”

Sparks shared with the Cooper community in July that she would be bringing her time at the college to a close at the start of the semester. This marks her final week, and Interim President Malcolm King, who is Cooper’s prior board chair and a 1997 graduate of the School of Engineering, noted the ability to make seniors tuition free is in keeping with the progress that Sparks championed throughout her time at the college. “I was the beneficiary of free tuition as a student of The Cooper Union. I was also a trustee at the time in 2014 when the difficult decision to institute tuition was made,” said King. “When President Sparks joined us in 2017, I was serving on the board’s Free Education Committee, and together with her and then-Board Chair Rachel Warren, we immediately set about the work of determining whether a path back to free would be possible. A year later, the Board adopted the Plan to Return to Full-Tuition Scholarships. Since then, we have surpassed the financial goals across the first six years of the plan, and Laura has been central to that momentum. We have work to do over the next four years to ensure we continue to meet our financial targets, however, the goal of restoring free tuition for all is within our reach,” he said.

The Plan to Return to Full-Tuition Scholarships, as adopted in 2018, laid out a 10-year timeline to generate the savings, expense reductions, fundraising, and other revenue increases necessary to sustainably provide full-tuition scholarships for every Cooper Union undergraduate student. The plan linked returning to full-tuition scholarships with building long-term financial health for the institution and providing for ongoing investment in Cooper’s academic programs and facilities. To date, more than $114 million in new funds have been raised.

Today, as the result of disciplined implementation of the Plan, more than half of the student body attends tuition free, and, on average, undergraduates pay less than 15% of the college’s $44,550 tuition.