Cooper Union, a college in New York city with a 154-year history of tuition-free education, has experienced more than two months of protests and sit-ins after President Jamshed Bharucha announced tuition would be charged for the coming academic year.
After peacefully taking over the president’s office in May, Cooper Union students officially ended their occupation last week, agreeing to take part in a working group that will consist of board, faculty, alumni, students and representatives from the administration.
Cooper Union News reports that the working group will be established to undertake a “good faith effort to seek an alternative to tuition that will sustain the institution’s long-term financial viability and strengthen its academic excellence.”
After discussing the issue, the working group plans to submit its report to the the board of trustees for consideration at a meeting in December. Students shouldn’t celebrate just yet, as it remains unclear whether the board will accept plans to keep the school tuition-free.
Cooper Union is an anomaly among U.S. colleges and universities, which charge students thousands of dollars for an education. Although tuition for the 2013-2014 school year is listed as $39,600, the office of admissions reports that all 918 students who attend the school will receive a scholarship to cover all costs.
With nationally recognized art, architecture and engineering programs, a free education has made the school all the more competitive in recent years, with acceptance rates hovering around 8 percent.
After President Bharucha announced that the 2014 academic year would be the first in which students pay tuition, about 50 students began an occupation of the president’s office, collecting hundreds of signatures from others who support the action.
Democracy Now reported in May that Victoria Sobel, one of the students involved in the occupation, said more than half of the students in the School of Art had signed a statement voicing no confidence in Bharucha’s administration.
“This is a nonviolent direct action. You are not being held in this room, you are free to exit when you please,” student Devonn Francis said. “Jamshed Bharucha, we are here to deliver you a statement of no-confidence from the school of art. We no longer recognize your presidency at Cooper as legitimate and in so doing we commit to reclaim this office in the interim until a suitable administrative alternative is secured.”
While most industrialized countries still offer free or highly subsidized higher education, the U.S. stands alone in terms of costs for college education. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that in many countries with “progressive tax structures, such as Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, students pay low or no tuition fees and have access to generous public subsidies for higher education, but face high income tax rates.”
The OECD adds that in many other countries — including Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Spain and Mexico — students pay “little or nothing for higher education.”
Regardless of the final outcome at Cooper Union, the picture of higher education is bleak for most American students, who pay an average of $22,000 each year for college.
This has caused most students to turn to loans in order to obtain a degree, leading to a collective $1 trillion debt for U.S. students.