One of the few American universities that didn’t charge tuition saw its decline and failure from a decade of mismanagement and bad financial decisions.
Cooper Union in New York City was the target of a petition from the New York attorney general that gave an uncharacteristically frank analysis of a modern university, according to Buzzfeed.
Bad timing, real-estate boondoggles, and mistakes drove Cooper Union to start charging tuition in 2013.
The petition blasts Cooper Union officials for the financial problems that “had festered for nearly seven years.”
Beyond the specific incompetency, conflicts of interest, and poor financial decisions of Cooper Union, the petition reflects the evolution of university governance.
That is, universities have started acting like corporations.
“Large nonprofit universities like NYU, Boston University, the University of Southern California act in a corporate manner. You see it in terms of their development, their new programs, new products, their real estate facilities, their pricing. And in that regard, not materially distinct from how the for-profit universities operate,” Ryan Craig, the managing direction of the investment firm University Ventures, told Buzzfeed.
As universities respond to the changing role of a college degree in society, their narrow focus has expanded. Students must be educated, but they must also be entertained.
With the federal government providing more aid, and more access to loans, universities have seen an influx of students demanding various amenities and support programs, along with faculty and administrators.
The shift to a variegated university has been a gradual development. Clark Kerr, the president of the University of California system during the 1950s and 1960s, famously understood the university and its place in American society as a “multiversity.”
The costs of such a shift, however, have been slowly recognized. Administrators can lose sight of the university’s mission, to the detriment of the institution.
Cooper Union, it appears, has been the most recent example. Whether it will serve as a warning or as a model for other higher-education institutions is yet to be seen.
