<p>It’s too bad all those alums who received free tuition can’t be contacted in order to pay it forward. that Union doesn’t have full giving participation from graduates is pathetic.</p>
<p>I just checked, and according to US news and world report, Cooper Union has an alumni giving rate of only 24%. Wow.</p>
<p>Olin is only about 10 years old, so it makes sense that there is not much alumni funding yet to mitigate endowment investment losses. It’s too bad Cooper Union doesn’t have better alumni support.</p>
<p>I wonder what percentage of Cooper Union graduates are the presumably higher paid engineering majors versus the presumably lower paid art and architecture majors. Lower paid graduates may not have much to give. (Cooper Union does not appear to make its common data set available, which would reveal this information.)</p>
<p>Olin started with an endowment and an expectation of free tuition. That quickly changed with the big crash in 2008 wiping out a big chunk of their endowment and they settled on half tuition.</p>
<p>It is also purely an engineering school which means all it takes is one or two graduates who might be future zuckerbergs who give back big.</p>
<p>Sad, that for whatever reason, another bedrock tradition bites the dust. When I was growing up in NYC, free tuition at Cooper Union was an article of faith–as was the now long-gone free tuition at CUNY.</p>
<p>It says freshman entering this fall will not pay, but what about next fall when they are sophomores? Or are they grandfathered for all four years?</p>
<p>Let’s see; in 2006, Cooper Union borrowed about $ 175 million of which $ 160 million later went to fund their controversial and expensive new building designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis. In 2009-2010, Cooper Union’s endowment was noted to be around $ 532 million. Cooper Union has been less than transparent about their finances for a long time. Perhaps they’ve wanted to charge some tuition for a while.</p>
<p>One of my friends, an alumni of Olin’s first class, said it was understood at the school there was only going to be temporary free tuition, and it wouldn’t be permanent (I forget if she said the first few years were also given a stipend for living expenses in addition to tuition.). I was even more amazed their senior capstone project had a $50,000 budget for two people compared to my group’s $500 budget for four, lol.</p>
<p>When Olin started charging half tuition, the current students were grandfathered with full tuition scholarship. That’s fair - those student made the choice with expectation of paying only room/board (which is not cheap… but it was still a terrific deal for the right fit students). </p>
<p>As a few years ago, Olin’s goals posted on the web said that if they ever started charging tuition it would be limited to average state university tuition. Alas, they were not able to do that. </p>
<p>The Olin capstone projects are a neat thing. The budget comes from industry, not the college itself.</p>
<p>I just interviewed an architect, a graduate of Cooper. Normally I would never ask but we got to talking about the recent news and I asked him if he ever gave back. His answer did not impress me and I most likely will not hire him to do my renovation. BTW, he was driving a very fancy sports car so his education served him well.</p>
<p>Interested to see how this affects applications in the fall. The guy said that “if people are only coming here because it’s free, we’re doing it wrong” is probably wrong, thinking apps won’t change.</p>
<p>Cooper Union wasn’t free before, due to non-tuition costs like room and board, although for local students willing to commute from home, the cost of attendance would not be much different from high school or community college.</p>