NEWS

Cooper Union: $9,300; CUNY: $6,600 — a stacked deck

By Martin Tessler

No, the numbers above do not indicate poker game winnings or losses but they do tell the story of a gross inequity and lack of fairness as to how public policy favors the blind public subsidization of Cooper Union students over those attending CUNY.

The long-fought battle over Cooper Union’s general large-scale development plan not only left us with a potpourri of contorted land-use and zoning approvals courtesy of the City (non) Planning Commission and City Council, but it also exposed the little-known but glaring 40 percent differential in public funding of CUNY students compared to their more favored counterparts at Cooper Union. From a dollars standpoint, this 40 percent gap translates into a $2,700 differential per student with CUNY being on the short end.

How this inequity in public funding came about is attributable to well-intentioned special legislation enacted by the New York State Legislature in the creation of the original Peter Cooper Trust in 1857. The intent of the Trust was to enable the children of the working class to obtain a higher education at Cooper Union by providing free tuition from Trust income. Subsequent legislation allowed the Cooper Trust to acquire real estate and retain all city real estate taxes levied on land and improvements it owned. The first major property acquired by the Trust beyond the original Foundation Building site was the land under the Chrysler Building. In 1969 the state Legislature expanded Cooper’s real estate tax retention to properties that it acquired up to that year, a policy opposed by the then-Mayor John V. Lindsay.

This same real estate tax retention proviso was the catalyst behind Cooper’s exploitive use of the widely criticized community facility provision of the city’s zoning resolution. The basic Cooper strategy was to couple development of larger commercial buildings allowed by zoning with the tax retention allowed by state legislation thus maximizing floor area and the taxes it produces. The end result was approval of an unneeded and oversized office building for Cooper’s Engineering Building site on Astor Pl. It also enticed Cooper into some adroitly deceptive maneuvering for a special permit by its lessee, the Related Companies, to allow an equally oversized 22-story apartment building on the Astor Pl. parking lot that Cooper also owns. The Related project is currently before the Board of Standards and Appeals.

Beyond Cooper’s “jewel in the crown” of the Chrysler Building land, which generates some $8 million in annual real estate taxes that Cooper retains, other properties owned by Cooper that it retains taxes on include, in descending order of New York City assessed valuation, the existing Engineering Building property which, if taxes were collected, would generate slightly more than $1 million annually, followed by the Astor Pl. parking lot which currently generates $88,000 and will generate a few hundred thousand more if the B.S.A. approves the 22-story apartment building. Cooper also owns two tax-exempt vacant parcels on Third Ave. next to the Dolphin Restaurant, which currently generate $24,000 a year. (Cooper is slated to sell the Dolphin properties in the near future.) Thus total real estate taxes retained by Cooper approximate $9.25 million based on current city tax rates. If divided by Cooper’s 990 students, this amounts to a public subsidy coming from the pockets of New York City taxpayers of approximately $9,300 per student.

Public funding for CUNY, on the other hand, for school year 2001-’02 (the most recent available from CUNY reports) amounted to a puny $6,600 per student, a differential with Cooper of 40 percent. This funding gap would not be so egregious if it were not for the fact that Cooper has it within its power to get “more bang for the buck”(something that it chooses not to pursue for reasons noted later). Nobody is arguing that Cooper should not get public funds considering the vital work it accomplishes in higher education in New York City and in view of the contributions its graduates make to society. What is debatable, however, is the fact that according to US News and World Report’s 2002 America’s Best Colleges, 69 percent of Cooper’s students come from families that can afford to pay full or partial tuition compared to the 31 percent who are in need of financial aid. In other words, Cooper’s call on city tax dollars could be lessened if it chose to charge full or partial tuition but only from those students whose families do not warrant four years of free tuition. Or, alternatively, it could educate more of those students who would qualify for admission from lower-income families.

One can easily ask whether it is equitable public policy to require CUNY students to dig into their pockets for tuition but give Cooper students who can afford to pay a free four-year ride? Is a 40 percent differential in per capita funding fair and equitable? Just to prove how bad this public funding policy plays out one need look no further than the city’s dire need for funds forcing an increase in the real estate tax rate by 18.5 percent in January. This automatically gave Cooper students an 18.5 percent increase in funding while CUNY students not only faced a cutback in public funding but were confronted with a tuition increase at the same time — a double whammy.

Peter Cooper’s original intent of educating the children of the working class has, for whatever the reasons, been somehow diverted by the well-intentioned but faulty administrative practice of granting free tuition to all. This diversion is perhaps best illustrated by a brief conversation I had with Bob Hawks, Cooper’s vice president for finance, during the 18-month vetting process of meetings over the Cooper large-scale development plan. I asked Hawks why, if 61 percent of their students could afford to pay full or partial tuition, Cooper did not require such payment. His answer was (and I am paraphrasing) that since Cooper does not have the physical facilities that other colleges have they would not be able to attract the top students unless they granted free tuition to all. Am I missing something or has the Cooper Trust been misdirected by an administration unwilling to get “more bang for the public’s buck” and at the expense of the school’s underlying mission of educating the working-class poor that was Peter Cooper’s intent?

Is there no one from our elected state Senate and Assembly officials who has the political backbone to step in and redress this inequity between the self-created Cooper oligarchy and the hardscrabble penury that CUNY students face from the state Legislature? Isn’t it time for our politicians to confront what the Cooper Union development scheme has exposed? Namely, a system that has produced a school believing it has an entitlement to public tax dollars but whose growing demands of public funding rides the wave of a widening inequity between it and the CUNY system. Public policy that mandates siphoning taxes from a municipality in dire economic straits to give to a private institution that refuses to impose tuition charges for students well able to pay full or partial tuition is policy that has gone haywire and needs redress.

As a graduate of Hunter College where four years cost me something like $120 in bursar’s fees and tuition was free I felt truly saddened when CUNY imposed tuition in the early ’70s. But times change and along with it so must public policy. If I were a CUNY student today I would be out organizing my fellow students and demanding the same deal from the Legislature that Cooper has. On the other hand, I am a taxpayer and I am going to do my damndest in bringing pressure on our state Assembly and Senate to redress this archaic public policy.

Our very own state Senator Tom Duane and Assemblymember Deborah Glick have kept close tabs on Cooper’s development plans during the past two years but this matter of funding policy never surfaced above the land-use and zoning issues. It’s time to make Cooper a more democratic and at the same time a more equitable institution. How about it Tom and Deborah?

Tessler is chairperson of Community Board 2’s institutions committee.