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    ArdenCord Jefferson
    1/10/14 9:24pm

    America: Where education is not a right, it's a privilege...and only to those who can afford it.

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      bluetileArden
      1/10/14 10:09pm

      Well who the fuck do you expect to pay for it then? Just curious...

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      DailyFailbluetile
      1/10/14 10:52pm

      The government. Same people that pay the military to invade foreign nations. Same people that give tax breaks to corporations. Same people that bailed out the banks. Is paying to educate future generations really that outrageous?

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    ThegalinredCord Jefferson
    1/10/14 10:11pm

    i have honestly never heard of this place. How does this work? How do you pay your teachers? How do you keep the lights on? Are the text books and supplies outrageously priced? Do they have donors that go nuts during fundraising time? This is wild. Where is this place again?

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      pauptopThegalinred
      1/10/14 11:00pm

      They have (had?) an enormous endowment, personally funded in 1869 by the founder of the school and own, among other things, the land the Chrysler building resides on (and leases)..

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      Cherith CutestoryThegalinred
      1/10/14 11:17pm

      It is (was?) one of the most prestigious schools in the country. Have you ever heard of the Cooper Union Address by Lincoln? It was made there. Thomas Edison went there.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coope…

      Inspired in 1830 when Peter Cooper learned about the government-supported École Polytechnique, Cooper Union was established in 1859.[4][5] The school was built on a radical new model of American higher education based on founder Peter Cooper's fundamental belief that an education "equal to the best technology schools [then] established"[6] should be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex, wealth or social status, and should be "open and free to all".[7]

      To achieve these goals, Cooper designated the majority of his wealth, primarily in the form of real estate holdings, to the creation and funding of The Cooper Union, a tuition-free school with courses made freely available to any applicant, although at the institution's beginning, according to the New York Times in 1863, "Those only are supposed to pay anything who are abundantly able, or prefer to do so."[17] Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, or sex was expressly prohibited.

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    bollocks-a-clava2Cord Jefferson
    1/10/14 9:22pm

    The administration was running an annual deficit and, in response, decided to...BUILD A MASSIVE NEW BUILDING designed by a FAMOUS ARCHITECT with UNUSUAL AND EXPENSIVE MATERIALS!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/41_Cooper…

    Yeah, that building was pretty clearly a scam to both make a name for the administrators and put the school into debt to force exactly what happened today.

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      AuntEggmaBlowtorchCord Jefferson
      1/11/14 8:13am

      Is this really a great loss?

      I mean, how many barrel makers do we really need anyway?

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        CK25AuntEggmaBlowtorch
        1/11/14 10:37am

        With fewer than 1,000 students, Alumni of the Cooper Union win a vastly disproportionate share of the nation's most prestigious awards. Recent awards include one Nobel Prize, ten Rome Prizes, 18 Guggenheim fellowships, three MacArthur fellowships, nine Chrysler Design awards, and three American Institute of Architects Thomas Jefferson Awards for Public Architecture. The school also boasts more than 23 Fulbright scholars since 2001, and ten National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships since 2004

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        alliumAuntEggmaBlowtorch
        1/11/14 12:21pm

        Well where's this guy going to keep all his arrows? A box?

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      gopheritCord Jefferson
      1/11/14 12:19am

      I really used to believe that tuition was necessary until I complained to one of my (hard science) professors about a tuition increase. His answer? "Do you think your tuition pays even 10 percent of your education? This whole place is financed from the overhead charged to grants.") It stung at the time and has proven true. I don't think that number has moved above 15% in the last 20 years for state schools.

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        narcissusCord Jefferson
        1/10/14 9:39pm

        As a tuition-free school, Cooper Union is the most exclusive, and nearly the most prestigious, school in the country. As a school that charges tuition, there are a lot better schools, dollar-for-dollar. I predict their revenue will go down in the long run.

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          pauptopnarcissus
          1/10/14 10:03pm

          I completely agree.. and it's so fucking depressing. I feel like I might as well drop my degree down a well right now as it won't be worth the ink jet paper it was printed on in 5 years.

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          homomannarcissus
          1/10/14 10:55pm

          Exactly.

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        ConcreteClover (Four Leaf)Cord Jefferson
        1/10/14 9:13pm

        Yikes. So, next year's classes should include "How to Stage an Effective Protest".

        GIF
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          DeliciousFlavorConcreteClover (Four Leaf)
          1/10/14 9:21pm

          I would say you Britta'ed your comment to fit with the GIF, but that is just absolutely fantastic.

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          ConcreteClover (Four Leaf)DeliciousFlavor
          1/10/14 9:30pm

          I would say you Britta'ed your comment to fit with the GIF, but that is just absolutely fantastic.

          I did? Ugh.

          GIF
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        pauptopCord Jefferson
        1/10/14 10:45pm

        The 205y/o foundation building is enscribed with the phrase, "To Science and Art" which along with architecture, comprise three fields of study that are often considered the crucial "building blocks of society".

        Should only the rich be able to access an education and subsequentially go on to influence and contribute to such fields? What about those who, regardless of economic class or backgroud work the hardest and are of exceptional talent and drive compared to their peers?

        A meritocracy only functions when the parameters of criteria are open and inclusive to many. Cooper Union was one of the first institutes of higher learning to offer classes to women and basically invented the concept of Continuing Education for the working class. As a traditional 4 year college, admissions continued to recognize that economic and social priviledges affect who gets funneled through the "best" private prep schools, and so they upheld a quota of its accepted students come exclusively from NYC Public Schools. This did not prove detrimental to the quality of its student body, (most all of the acceptances field offers equivilant top programs) but rather afforded opportunities to its students who may have otherwised been burdened financially, as well as created a dynamic community of students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

        We learned to work with, rather than in spite of each other, and at the end of the day, everyone in the room with you deserved to be there equally because we all worked our asses off, and because someone/something bigger than all of us believed in us enough to invest in us.

        I realize times change, and money talks.. but I really don't see a good outcome to this development. As others have commented, once you dissolve the prestigious bestowment of merit, you've simply entered the pay-for-play field like every other private institution.

        I remember working as a student representative on the art admissions during my sophomore and junior years. There were a few notable children of celebrities applications in the lot. Two famous artists kids and a lifestyle gurus niece. Looking in the students records I noticed a trend that some of these kids were applying over and over. Obviously they had huge names and I am certain generous donations were or could have been arranged on the table in a heartbeat.. but their applications were god-awful and with little more than a glance elicited a "pass" from the preliminary round.

        Several years after a graduated I browsing the current student magazine and noticed two of those illustrious names, tellingly profiled as current students. Had they gone off to Europe to focus on their foundation work and proven themselves finally after all those years? Afterall Cooper rarely accepted students more than a couple years out of highschool and both of those girlswere pushing 30.. It left a terrible taste in my mouth and I figured it was probably then, the first inkling of the "end"...

        Meh.

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          BRAINIMPLANTpauptop
          1/11/14 1:56am

          marry my sister? she just got out of jail.

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          pauptopBRAINIMPLANT
          1/11/14 5:15am

          Is she's into female heroin addicts with disporportionately active right brains?

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        LaParadeDesSaucissonsCord Jefferson
        1/10/14 9:54pm

        Just shows universities aren't centers for learning and knowledge anymore.

        They're for-profit, mindlessly growth-oriented scams run by administrators trying to fatten their paycheck and pad their resume year over year so they can leapfrog to another more plum position.

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          OldLadyRunningLaParadeDesSaucissons
          1/10/14 10:14pm

          No shit. I went to small liberal arts college with an endowment larger than some countries' GNP. They beg for money constantly while building stupid new facilities and hiring spouses, partners of profs, and alums to made up jobs all at the VP level. I swear everyone who works there is a VP of something. It's ridiculous.

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        OrientalRugCord Jefferson
        1/11/14 11:16am

        Anyone who had art school plans thwarted by this news should look into Bruce High Quality Foundation University.

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