Cooper
Union has offered not to renew its president’s contract to try to address an
inquiry into the college’s finances and a lawsuit over its decision
to charge undergraduates tuition for the first time in more than a century.
Last week, the Cooper
Union board voted to offer to let the college’s president, Jamshed
Bharucha, go after his contract expires next year, as part of a larger deal
with the state attorney general’s office, according to three people with
knowledge of the discussions.
The office of Attorney General Eric
T. Schneiderman has
been looking into whether Cooper Union’s move
last year to start charging its students was appropriate. But the inquiry
has also focused on a batch of financial decisions made about 10 years
ago.
At that time, the school borrowed $175 million
to construct a new building in the East Village, using the land it owns under
the Chrysler
Building as collateral. In the process, it renegotiated the rent it charged
to Tishman
Speyer Properties, which controls the Chrysler
Building, in an arrangement that the board’s critics said grossly
undervalued the land. Among the issues the attorney general is exploring is
whether Cooper Union board members had conflicts of interests when the rental
agreement was made.
Mr. Bharucha, an academic with a background in
cognitive neuroscience, became president in 2011, so those interlocking deals
predate him. But he shepherded the start of tuition, and, according to some
board members, he alienated people across the school community, including board
members who supported instituting tuition.
Two board members, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity because the board was declining to comment publicly, said that
regardless of the attorney general’s inquiry, a renewal of Mr. Bharucha’s
contract was far from assured.
Mr. Bharucha’s departure would not end the
investigation. However, the board’s vote, which was reported
by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, puts the college and the attorney
general one step closer to a deal that is expected to also include a package of
procedural reforms and monitoring, according to a person with knowledge of the
discussions but who was not authorized to speak publicly about them.
Returning the school to financial health and
restoring free tuition “is going to take a dramatic change in the way Cooper
Union is run, therefore Bharucha has to go,” said Richard Emery, a lawyer who is
representing a group of faculty, alumni and students called the Committee to Save Cooper Union in a
lawsuit
challenging the tuition.
“The entire financial architecture of the
organization, of the school has to be redesigned.”
The college, formally the Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art, was founded in 1859, and endowed with
valuable New York City real estate by the industrialist Peter Cooper with the
goal of educating working-class New Yorkers.
Mr. Emery has argued that the way Mr. Cooper
set up the school, he intended to require that it be free, and to alter that
would require court approval.
Lawyers for the board, however, say that the
trust only requires the school provide some free nighttime lectures.
“Words, aspirations, quotes, dreams are not
binding,” Barbara Mather, a lawyer for the trustees, said last year.
The attorney general’s office has been trying
to mediate between the two sides.
Mr. Bharucha said in an interview on Friday
that when he joined the college, he had not planned to institute tuition, but it
became clear that the school’s operating deficit was double what had been
previously thought. He put in motion a plan to stabilize its finances, he said,
by charging tuition to undergraduates on a sliding scale depending on need, up
to about $20,000 a year, and by starting new programs, like master’s degree
studies, to generate more revenue. This year’s freshman class was the first to
be charged under the tuition schedule.
Mr. Bharucha said returning to a tuition-free
model at the college would be a “catastrophic mistake.” But he declined to
discuss last week’s board vote or the possibilities for his life after Cooper
Union.
“I have no regrets about taking the job or
about the leadership that I have exercised because Cooper Union is an
extraordinary place,” Mr. Bharucha said. “It was attractive to me then, and it
still is now.”
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