Cooper Union used to be free to attend.

Inside Higher Ed reports.

A Path Back to Free for Cooper Union?

New York State’s attorney general plans to announce a deal today that will substantially change the governance of Cooper Union and could create a path back to restoring the institution’s longstanding but recently abandoned policy of being free to students.

The deal would require Cooper Union to add two students as voting members of the board and between five and nine (depending on the size of the board) alumni-elected trustees. In addition, four faculty members will be elected as nonvoting observers of board meetings. The board will also be required — in a move that is unusual for a private college — to publish all board minutes and reports, and to provide detailed reports on the university’s finances, with some exemptions for information that must remain confidential. These provisions all reflect criticisms from many students and alumni that the board has in the past mismanaged the university’s finances.

The agreement does not — by itself — require Cooper Union to return to free tuition. But the deal does require the board to create a committee, including student and alumni trustees and led by an alumni trustee, to try to find a way to do so by 2018. That year is significant because it is when rent Cooper Union receives on the Chrysler Building is due to increase from $9 million to more than $32 million a year, potentially creating a major improvement in Cooper Union’s troubled finances. According to a statement from Cooper Union, any plan to return to free tuition must also maintain “Cooper Union’s strong reputation for academic quality within its art, architecture and engineering programs at their historical levels of enrollment.”