How one of America’s last free colleges screwed its students and betrayed its legacy

Campbell became president in 2001, and immediately decided that what Cooper Union needed was a Master Plan. Under the plan, the college would raise $120 million, mostly for new architecture. (Not a new program inarchitecture, mind you; rather, new buildings, which Campbell decreed were necessary despite the fact that none of the faculty agreed with him.) Once $84 million of the total had been raised, the old art school would be demolished, and a shiny new building would go up in its place. Then the engineering school would move into the shiny new building, the old engineering school would also meet the wrecking ball, and a big black skyscraper would go up on the site of the old engineering school, the lease payments from which would bring “long-term financial stability” to Cooper Union.

None of this made much sense, nor did any of it come with broad support from faculty, students, or alumni. Certainly no one objected to the idea of raising $120 million, but for a school with only 1,000 students or so, almost everybody could come up with alternative (and, frankly, better) uses for that kind of money. Invested at a real rate of 4% (a number which was quite realistic at the time), an extra $120 million for the endowment would produce a permanent income stream of almost $5 million a year. That’s more than three times the $1.2 million student aid budget in 2001, or a full 35% of the $13.7 million spent that year on “instruction”.