To: The Cooper Union Community

From: Jamshed Bharucha

Re: Reinvention of The Cooper Union

In recent weeks, I have engaged in candid conversations with faculty, students, staff and alumni about the financial challenges the institution is facing along with the opportunities for the future.  Governments, nonprofits and institutions of higher education throughout the world have not been immune to the current economic stress, and Cooper Union is no exception.  The institution’s severe structural budget deficit, which has existed for decades, is simply not sustainable.  The current economy has brought the situation to a head, making it absolutely urgent to find a sustainable financial model for The Cooper Union.  If we do nothing, the institution will be in jeopardy within a few years.

Placing Cooper Union on the path to a sustainable financial model will require the elimination of the structural budget deficit, which, based on Fiscal Year 2011, stands at approximately $16.5 million. With expenditures of about $60 million, this represents a deficit of nearly 28%.  We must act immediately to put the institution on a path to a sustainable financial model. A sustainable financial model means balancing the operating budget without selling assets or dipping into endowment beyond the spending policy. It means having revenue models that scale to the growth of expenses associated with operating an outstanding and vibrant academic enterprise positioned to engage the challenges and opportunities of our time.

To address this situation I am taking two immediate steps.  First, I have suspended all hiring, excluding those positions that are absolutely critical to the reinvention strategy.  Economic exigencies require that we do this. Second, I am announcing the formation of a Revenue Task Force, comprised of alumni with the appropriate expertise, as well as students and faculty.  The Revenue Task Force will evaluate all options and recommend a revenue enhancement plan by early spring to collect and analyze all revenue-generating ideas (which trustees, students, faculty, alumni, administrators and others already are in the process of offering) and to recommend specific mechanisms that can be counted on to achieve stated revenue goals over and beyond our current fundraising estimates. The possibility of adjusting the full scholarship policy is not a foregone conclusion, but it is a last resort and will be on the table. It is important to note that in the early years (approximately the first forty years) tuition was charged at Cooper Union.  It wasn’t until 1902, when Andrew Carnegie made a large gift to the institution, that a tuition free education was granted to students.  There should be no doubt that under any circumstance Cooper Union is irrevocably committed to Peter Cooper’s crucial vision of providing access to those who can least afford it, as reported by The New York Times here.

I am committed to open and honest communication with the community and I welcome your participation as we move forward to address the challenges ahead and develop a plan for reinvention.  In the coming week, I will send a communication naming the members of the Revenue Task Force.  The memo will include information about how you can feed your ideas to the group.  In the meantime, if you would like to sign up for a small group discussion with me, please click on the link below to sign up.  When you sign up please be sure to include your email address and phone number.  Alumni Sessions with President Bharucha

I would like to suggest four important elements to drive our reinvention. The first will be fostering innovation and intellectual curiosity. This means encouraging a culture of vigorous research, scholarship and other creative pursuits, as well as inventive and entrepreneurial activity. It involves the elaboration of ideas into tangible works. It also involves an emphasis on continuous innovation—pedagogical, organizational and intellectual. The second and third elements of our reinvention must affirm Peter Cooper’s dual commitment to access and service for the public good. Access means enabling students of merit to benefit from a fine education that would otherwise be out of reach. We must always have this as a priority, regardless of how we solve our financial challenges. Service for the public good means focusing on the deployment of technology, design and art for the good of society, the community, the nation, and in fact the world. Finally, our reinvention must cultivate a global perspective on every level of thinking and enterprise. It must prepare students for an age when the imagination is no longer fettered by the boundaries of geography, but rather operates in a deeply interconnected world.

As I have thought about our options, I have delved into the life and work of Peter Cooper, drawing upon primary sources that reflect his thinking. His was an expansive vision. Constantly inventing and reinventing, he created opportunity out of adversity, and pursued big ideas tenaciously. He wanted Cooper Union to be an engine of intellectual and commercial innovation and to be creative in its response to a changing world. He would have wanted us to seize the moment, identify our strengths, weaknesses and core values, and reinvent the institution.

There is enormous unrealized potential at Cooper Union. Peter Cooper wanted Cooper Union to be “equal to the best,” and his writings offer a treasure trove of possibilities as we consider our options. Based on the Board record during his lifetime, it is clear that he would have wanted us to fight, even in the face of adversity, to achieve as much of his expansive vision as humanly possible. Peter Cooper was unequaled in his enterprise and determination, driven by the conviction that almost anything is possible “with patient industry and minds that soar.” He was ambitious for his institution and expected it always to be blazing trails of intellectual production and social action.

As we chart a course for the future, I am inspired by the vision of the founder and reminded by the example of our students that we have an important responsibility to assure a brilliant future for this great institution.