N.Y. NPC. LAW § 717Duty of Directors and Officers

(a) Directors and officers shall discharge the duties of their respective positions in good faith and with that degree of diligence, care and skill which ordinarily prudent men would exercise under similar circumstances in like positions.

N.Y. NPC. LAW § 717Duty of Directors and Officers

(b) In discharging their duties, directors and officers, when acting in good faith, may rely on information, opinions, reports or statements including financial statements and other financial data, in each case prepared or presented by: (1) one or more officers or employees of the corporation, whom the director believes to be reliable and competent in the matters presented.

N.Y. NPC. LAW § 717Duty of Directors and Officers

Persons shall not be considered to be acting in good faith if they have knowledge concerning the matter in question that would cause such reliance to be unwarranted.

Is this the new definition of higher education: earning capacity as a function of cost of attendance?

The Financial Sustainability Plan – wasn’t that what used to be called the Tuition Plan?

What’s this nonsense about additional financial aid based on merit? Do some students have more merit than other students? Wasn’t that a line from “Animal Farm”?...

A record high number of B and C students, a record low number of A students.

The standardized test scores in engineering are down, too (just a few points, tho’).

Size of incoming freshman class,22.4% vs 15 to 16%...Comes to a dozen students moreout of some 200;160 students who aren’t Pell-eligible.

The families of over 77% of Cooper’s incoming class make more than the median income in the United States. With New York City’s record income inequality, what is the median income level in New York City?

The dorms were built for “geographic diversity” - a term used by non-NYC colleges to keep the diversity of NYC residents out of their colleges.

We’re not a commuter school anymore. High school students in America are desperate to get out of their parents’ houses - which is why Macaulay Honors students at CUNY schools get full-tuition scholarships and free room and board.

Art school application are up 5% this year because they were down 47% last year. That’s net down 44%.

Engineering applications are up because word has gotten around that you can get in with a B or C average if you’re willing to pay the $20K/year.

Has The Board of Trustees asked how many students from the NYC specialized high schools have decided to go to Cooper?

And how that compares to previous years?

Why is a new degree program in Computer Science being described as the Lapidus Design Institute the faculty voted down years ago?

So it can become part of the “Dream Scenario,” where the Art School is eliminated?

Much more popular to be able to get a master’s degree without having to perform any research.

Sure hope the employer doesn’t ask what you did your master’s thesis on.

Not to be confused with The Way Forward.

The first truly balanced budget since 1990?

Since 1990 - so we’re blaming John Jay Iselin, too, now?

Of course, nobody trusts Campbell or thinks highly of Iselin.

Please ignore the 2,500 votes of no confidence in the current president.

The same audited financial statements that led to the declaration of a balanced budget in 2008.

A logarithmic scale? As opposed to adjusted for inflation?

Hold your hand up if your salary has seen exponential growth since 1970.

Because that would involve all of those donors who set up funds to provide money for free education at Cooper agreeing to release those funds so that Cooper could continue to provide a free education?

Excluding the Chrysler Building … and also excluding the $175M we owe to MetLife and the new “net” $51M bridge loan “after expenses” – how many millions did we spend to get that loan?

Yeah, holy writ, never invade the corpus, just use the corpus as collateral against gigantic loans.

Okay, now we’re blaming White and Lacy, too.

Apparently, the current president has been the only president capable of sustaining The Cooper Union since 1970.

I actually have to agree that the “edifice complex” that President Humphries warned against was started by White and continued by Iselin and Campbell (Lacy’s claim to fame was his failure to get rid of the faculty union – and his balanced budgets).

The Charter change that allowed White to borrow money to finance the “edifice complex” started the whole thing off (with Iselin and Campbell borrowing as well).

Of course, the bridge loan is Bharucha borrowing, too. The only “edifices” he’s been involved with are the CHARAS/El Bohio dormitory deal and getting rid of St. Mark’s Bookshop.

But what’s this nonsense about the Chrysler Building income not keeping up with inflation?

Well, you can see why they panicked in the 1990’s.

Yeah, bad form taking out a new DASNY loan, building a Residence Hall on someone else’s property, and watching the Chrysler Building rent drop – to only 50% higher than its inflation-adjusted value in the 70’s and 80’s – down from 100% higher.

Charging students tuition creates a new revenue stream, thereby diversifying the investment portfolio, so it is no longer solely reliant on philanthropy (separating donated property like the Chrysler Building, Green Camp, and the Fish House, property purchased with endowment funds, like White’s condo, and cash gifts like bequests and naming opportunities, as if they weren’t all just philanthropy is a common distraction tactic).

Charging students “fake” tuition in 2000 so that the government would give the college Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) funds and Pell Grants was the only other revenue stream discovered.

The imaginary “tuition” figure tripled in 2003 – Cooper’s worst financial year – as the Board contemplated charging tuition for the first time.

Conservatory-style education?

“Both” project-based and hands-on – no more of that pesky theory stuff.

Try to learn chemical engineering without thermodynamics, electrical engineering without electrodynamics, mechanical engineering without fluid dynamics, civil engineering without structural mechanics…

Try to learn art without color theory…

And theorist John Hejduk is spinning in his grave.

Cohort pedagogy?

That means that Cooper students work on homework assignments with their friends and hand it in as if they did it alone. It’s a new model where the smarter students solve problems for the dumber students, and Cooper gets to claim that everyone is doing well.

We’ve already had an entire class fail Calculus.

I guess the first cheating scandal isn’t far behind.

Again, less emphasis on theory (thinking), more emphasis on doing (making).

That way the students will get a job when they graduate, but since they don’t know any theory, all of the knowledge they have accumulated will be obsolete in 5 years, and they won’t know how to think.

Thankfully, the President doesn’t teach any courses in art, architecture, engineering, humanities, or social sciences.

But he hired a dean who he made Chief Academic Officer who was a computer science professor.

"Now that we're charging undergraduate tuition, our new programs should be cohesive with our identity.”

“Having the hard math students and the easy math students running around the engineering school, to me, didn't make sense.“

- Dr. Theresa Dahlberg

“Rent” was about artists being gentrified out of the East Village.

And, sure, electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineers are designing and manufacturing products in the East Village. Not.

At least the architects and civil engineers get to design new condos in the East Village, inspired by the Thom Mayne building and its new neighbors.

“Core strengths” – was that mentioned or even defined anywhere?

No mention of the lawsuit, the threat of losing the PILOT, the defunding of the Cooper Union Alumni Association.

N.Y. NPC. LAW § 717Duty of Directors and Officers

Persons shall not be considered to be acting in good faith if they have knowledge concerning the matter in question that would cause such reliance to be unwarranted.

What did the Board of Trustees know, when did they know it, and what did they do to fix it?

Will it be enough to scapegoat the current president – and then proceed full-steam ahead with the “Financial Sustainability Plan” anyway under a new president?

Would it be better for trustees to settle the lawsuit out-of-court or continue to risk being barred from serving on a NPC board for life?

The college already lost half of the PILOT on 26 Astor Place and 51 Astor Place BEFORE charging tuition – what if it loses ALL of the PILOT – over $20M/year – by implementing the Financial Sustainability Plan?

It certainly appears that the “plan” for that “dream scenario” is to close the Art, Engineering, and Architecture schools, and keep only the new Institute for Design and Computation.

The Cooper Union: Giving Sustainability a bad name since 2011.

The Dream Scenario is when I wake up and all of this was just a bad dream.

Barry Drogin, Publisher,The Alumni Pioneer News Archive