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The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported italic=no in France. The school was built on a radical new model of American higher education based on Cooper's belief that an education "equal to the best technology schools established" should be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex, wealth or social status, and should be "open and free to all".
The college is divided into three schools: the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, the School of Art, and the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. It offers undergraduate and master's degree programs exclusively in the fields of architecture, fine arts (undergraduate only), and engineering as well as a shared core curriculum in the humanities and social sciences.
The Cooper Union was one of very few American institutions of higher learning to offer a full-tuition scholarship to every admitted student, a practice it discontinued in 2014, instead offering a half-tuition scholarship to each admitted student. , nearly half of its undergraduate students were attending on a tuition-free basis. In September 2024 the school announced that for the next four years, all students (including current students) would not pay tuition for their senior year.
Cooper's dream was to give talented young people the one privilege he lacked: a good education from an institution which was "open and free to all". To achieve these goals, Cooper designated the bulk of his wealth to The Cooper Union. According to The New York Times in 1863, "It was rare that those of limited means, however eager they might be to acquire a knowledge of some of the higher branches of education, could obtain tuition in studies not named in the regular course taught in our public schools." Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, or sex was expressly prohibited.
The Cooper Union's free classes have evolved into three schools: the School of Art, the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, and the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. Since 1859, the Cooper Union has educated thousands of artists, architects, and engineers, many of them leaders in their fields. "The Cooper Union: History" Cooper Union website. Archived on August 4, 2011. Retrieved October 1, 2017
After 1864 there were a few attempts to merge Cooper Union and Columbia University, but these were never realized.
The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, was founded in 1897 as part of Cooper Union by Sarah, Eleanor, and Amy Hewitt, granddaughters of Peter Cooper.
Widely reported in the press and reprinted throughout the North in pamphlet form, the speech galvanized support for Lincoln and contributed to his gaining the Party's nomination for the presidency. It is now referred to as the Cooper Union Address.
Since then, the Great Hall has served as a platform for historic addresses by American Presidents Grant, Grover Cleveland, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Bill Clinton. Clinton spoke on May 12, 1993, about reducing the federal deficit and again on May 23, 2006, as the Keynote Speaker at The Cooper Union's 147th Commencement, along with Anna Deavere Smith. He appeared a third time on April 23, 2007, along with Senator Ted Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Norman Mailer, and others, at the memorial service for historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Most recently, Barack Obama delivered an economic policy speech at Cooper Union's Great Hall on April 22, 2010. Obama to Wall St.: "Join Us, Instead of Fighting Us," The New York Times, April 22, 2010 On September 22, 2014, President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas delivered his first formal speech in English.
Other historic speakers in the Great Hall have included Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mark Twain. "The Cooper Union: History" Cooper Union website. Retrieved October 1, 2017 The Great Hall continues to serve as an important metropolitan art space and has hosted lectures and performances by such key figures as Joseph Campbell, Steve Reich, Salman Rushdie, Ralph Nader, Hamza Yusuf, Richard Stallman, Rudolph Giuliani, Pema Chodron, Michael Bloomberg, Evo Morales, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. When not occupied by external or hosted events, the Great Hall is made accessible to students and faculty for large lectures and recreational activities, including the school's annual Culture Show. In 1994, the Cooper Union Forum of Public Programs was honored with a Village Award from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
In late 2008, the Great Hall was closed to students and outside events for the first major renovation of the hall since 1978. It reopened in March 2009.
The Cooper Union maintains an archive of ephemera and recordings from events that have taken place in the Great Hall through the Voices from the Great Hall Digital Access Project.
In 2002, the school decided to generate revenue by razing its engineering building and having it replaced with a commercial building, and replacing its Hewitt Building with a new building called 41 Cooper Square.
Primarily designed to house the Cooper Union's School of Engineering and School of Art, the new building's first eight above-ground floors are populated by classrooms, small engineering laboratories, study lounges, art studio space, and faculty offices. The ninth, top floor is dedicated completely to School of Art studio and classroom space in addition to the art studio spaces located throughout the building. The lowest basement level consists almost completely of the school's large machine shops and design laboratories, as well as much of the HVAC and supply infrastructure. The building's first basement level houses primarily the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, a 198-capacity lecture hall and event space designed as a smaller, more modern alternative to the Great Hall.
Current and past students voiced opposition to charging tuition. The then-president of the school, Jamshed Bharucha, indicated depletion of the school's endowment required additional sources of funding. In 2012, the college announced approval from its board of trustees to attempt to establish a new tuition-based cross-disciplinary graduate program, expand its fee-based continuing education programs, and impose tuition on some students in its existing graduate programs.
In December 2012, as a protest against the possibility of undergraduate tuition being charged, 11 students occupied a suiteKaminer, Ariel. "Tuition Protesters Still in Top Office at Cooper Union" The New York Times (May 24, 2013) in the Foundation Building for a week.Moynihan, Colin. "Cooper Union Students End Occupation of Suite After a Week" The New York Times (December 10, 2012) Charging high tuition was complicated by the school's lack of customary amenities offered by other high-tuition schools.
The college ended its free tuition policy for undergraduates in 2014, but offers need-based tuition remission to incoming undergraduates on a sliding scale. On May 8, 2013, a group of students occupied President Bharucha's office in protest over news reports about ending free tuition. The administration, board of trustees, and those members of the Cooper Union community who had been occupying the Office of the President since early May reached an agreement that ended the occupation on July 12.
Throughout 2013, 2014, and 2015, the committee to Save Cooper Union (CSCU) — a coalition of former and current students, alumni and faculty — campaigned to reverse this decision, urging the president and the board of trustees to return Cooper Union to "its tuition-free and merit-based mission, ensure the school’s fiscal recovery, and establish better governance structures."
On September 1, 2015, the school and the CSCU announced the CSCU's lawsuit against the school's administration was resolved in the form of a consent decree signed by Cooper Union, then-New York State's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and the CSCU. The decree includes provisions for returning to a sustainable, tuition-free policy, increased board transparency, additional student, faculty and alumni trustees, an independent financial monitor appointed by the Attorney General, and a search committee to identify the next full-term president.Staff. "New York Reaches Deal with Cooper Union, Plaintiffs" Diverse: Issues in Higher Education (September 2, 2015)
On January 15, 2018, the Free Education Committee (FEC) of the school's Board of Trustees released their recommended plan to return to full-tuition scholarships for undergraduates only by the academic year starting in the fall of 2028. In March 2018, the board released its approved, updated version with the same milestone. In 2024, the school announced that approximately 83% of undergraduate tuition costs would be covered by scholarships in the 2024–2025 academic year and that they were proceeding as planned towards their goal of 100% coverage in the 2029 fiscal year.
Specialized facilities for teaching and research include the Maurice Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering established in 2002 and the interdisciplinary Maker Space Lab, established in 2020 for the use of engineering, art, and architecture students.
The Cooper Union Art program is often referred to as "Polymath" or "versatile" when compared to other Fine Arts colleges; incoming students do not choose an academic major within the Fine Arts field, but instead are permitted and encouraged to select courses from any of the School of Art's departments. The curriculum place heavy emphasis on each student's creative and imaginative abilities, rather than technical precision in a specific medium.
In addition, numerous smaller exhibition spaces exist throughout both buildings on campus. Larger spaces on the upper floors of the Foundation Building are used primarily for interdisciplinary exhibitions with the School of Architecture. For presentations of video and digital media, the Great Hall and 41 Cooper Square's Rose Auditorium are used.
The faculty includes architects, design and construction managers such as Peter Eisenman, Samuel Anderson, Nader Tehrani, and Diana Agrest. Former faculty members include the architects Michael Webb, Peter Eisenman, Raimund Abraham, Lebbeus Woods, Diane Lewis and John Hejduk.
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