Progress Update on the Plan to Return to Full Tuition Scholarships

Dear Cooper Union, 

We hope this message finds you enjoying a wonderful start to your summer! We write today to share a just-published report that presents the progress of our Cooper Union community toward the Plan to Return to Full-Tuition Scholarships, which was adopted by the Board of Trustees in 2018. The Plan at Five Years: Returning to Full-Tuition Scholarships details the important work we’ve accomplished together in building financial resilience for the long term, investing in our academic programs, supporting our students, and investing in our facilities and student spaces. 

Two of the report’s significant highlights are these: 1) We’ve held tuition flat every year since the fall of 2019 – zero tuition increases.  2) We’ve increased scholarship levels, according to the Plan, so that by Fiscal Year 2023, more than 80% of tuition costs, on average, were covered for undergraduates and nearly 50% of students attended The Cooper Union tuition-free. Next year, the average amount of tuition costs covered will reach 83%. 

As we state in the report’s opening message: 

“With the first half of the Plan complete, we are pleased to report a genuine transformation in the making. We met the Plan’s cumulative financial targets over the first five years and made overwhelmingly positive progress on multiple fronts, including: 

•    Achieving steady financial gains, despite the challenges of the pandemic and the economic uncertainties that followed. 
•    Investing in and advancing our academic programs. 
•    Increasing scholarship levels according to the Plan. 
•    Making capital improvements to our facilities, including the opening of new, interdisciplinary student spaces and critical maintenance on our historic campus buildings.” 

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“Considered in total, this effort has generated the momentum and positive trajectory required to deliver on a bold, ambitious future for The Cooper Union. Moreover, our work together has established a national model for addressing the college affordability crisis in the US and equalizing access to higher education. And that is perhaps the most significant outcome of all.” 

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“When the Board approved the Plan to Return to Full-Tuition Scholarships, we knew it was ambitious. Some said it was unachievable. Now, 165 years after Peter Cooper embarked on his own plan for The Cooper Union, we can see that achieving this Plan is within our reach.” 

We invite you to read The Plan at Five Years for a look at the work that we – faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors, partners, friends, and Trustees – achieved together. We hope you will see yourself reflected in these pages – whether in the examples of Cooper’s academic innovation and partnerships, student achievements and experiences, diverse faculty, financial progress, community outreach, new spaces, or enlivened historic spaces. Together, we established a formidable foundation that launched the second half of this work, and this fiscal year is expected to again reach Plan goals. As we say in the report, “Let us continue in good faith to push past the finish line, together.” 

On behalf of the full Board, the Free Education Committee, and Cooper’s leadership team, thank you for all you do for The Cooper Union. We look forward to sharing more updates as we move closer to our goal of reinstating full-tuition scholarships for all undergraduates. Enjoy your summer! 

Malcolm King EE‘97, Chair of Board of Trustees

Carol Wolf A‘84, Chair, Free Education Committee                      

Laura Sparks, President

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.