No tuition, but still a price to pay

As a high-school senior in Texas, Justin Allen knew he wanted to study art in college, but family finances left him without a lot of options. Expensive art schools were out of the question, and remaining in-state seemed very likely.

But then Allen found one school that was affordable for anyone - The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City.

Cooper Union's full-scholarship policy - under which the school covers tuition, valued at around $30,000, for all of its nearly 1,000 students - allowed Allen to pursue his passion for art without worrying about being able to pay.

Colleges around the country are working to increase access for lower-income students, by stepping up financial-aid packages, replacing loans with grants for the neediest students and, in a few cases, eliminating early admissions. More than half of the Ivies, including Penn, have taken one or more of these steps in the past year. But the Cooper Union seems to be ahead of the pack.

It easily beats out Penn in terms of economic diversity, though the University's policy of loan-free aid packages for families with annual incomes under $50,000 was only announced in the spring.

But for other schools, even a multibillion-dollar endowment doesn't mean free tuition is an option. And with the potential rewards of such a system come costs that might cause students and administrators alike to balk.

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The Cooper Union - which has schools for art, architecture and engineering - has not charged a single student tuition since it was founded nearly 150 years ago.

And that legacy has helped create a far more economically diverse population than the Ivies can boast, with roughly 20 percent of the school's students coming from families earning under $35,000 per year, according to Cooper's Dean of Admissions and Records and Registrar, Mitchell Lipton. About 40 percent of students also receive financial aid for non-tuition expenses like room and board.

Although Penn Director of Student Financial Aid Bill Schilling would not provide statistics on how many Penn students come from low-income families, he said that 300-400 undergraduates are considered "disadvantaged." These students - who get no-loan packages and receive anywhere between $43,000 and $46,000 in aid - make up, at most, only 4 percent of the student body.

About 45 percent of Penn students receive some sort of financial aid through the school, according to Schilling.

The Cooper Union is also relatively racially diverse, with 50 percent of its student body non-white, compared to 41 percent of Penn's Class of 2010.

From the numbers, better aid seems to be what elite schools are betting it is: a path to a more diverse student body, and one that still has great academic credentials.

Cooper students average a 1340 on their SATs, and among Cooper engineering students, who make up more than half of the student body, the mean is 1425. This is only slightly less than the mean score of 1437 for Penn's Class of 2009.

That's in addition to Cooper's 10 percent admit rate and 70 percent yield, competitive with those of the best schools in the nation.

Many of the students who go to Cooper could get admitted to "top-end schools" like Harvard or the California Institute of Technology, but they go to Cooper because it's free, Lipton said.

Students agree that the full-tuition policy is a big draw.

"There are a lot of people here who got accepted to a more expensive school, wanted to go to that more expensive school, but couldn't afford it, so they came here," Cooper sophomore James Monroe said.

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But while students agree that the school is very diverse, both racially and socioeconomically, they say that this is not necessarily due to the full-scholarship policy.

Diana Santos, who graduated from Cooper in 2004 and received her Master's degree from Penn's School of Engineering last spring, said that she didn't think the free tuition was what created Cooper's diverse student body, nor that there is that big a disparity in the economic breakdown between Cooper and Penn.

While Penn students tend to be more ostentatious with their money, there isn't necessarily less of it at Cooper, she said.

Lipton himself admits that Cooper - which, unlike Penn, has no formal affirmative-action policy - still has a long way to go before it achieves full diversity, especially in its engineering school, which has disproportionately few black students. In light of Harvard and Princeton universities' decisions last month to do away with early admissions - a policy the two schools say unfairly disadvantages lower-income students - Cooper Union will also rethink its binding early-decision policy, under which about 20 to 30 percent of the school's students are admitted.

"We need to ask ourselves, 'Are we serving the broadest number of students in this way?'" Lipton said.

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Students agree there's nothing wrong with a free ride, but the policy has drawbacks as well. For one thing, there is an inherent trade-off between a school's revenue and the luxury of student life.

Cooper's campus is very small, with only five buildings. There's no cafeteria or dining service, and the library isn't open 24 hours a day, Santos said. Compared to Penn, Cooper has less money to spend on supporting student organizations, and the facilities aren't as top-notch.

The school's small size and dearth of amenities creates a "lack of a campus life," Cooper junior Kevin Teoh said. But Cooper has New York University as a neighbor, and the city itself provides the cultural resources that the campus lacks, he added.

And the benefits of free tuition trump the disadvantages anyway, students insist. "I don't think anyone can legitimately complain . considering how much the school is already giving you," Santos said.

The lack of revenue from tuition is also a challenge for administrators, who must look to alternate sources in order to meet operating expenses.

According to Lipton, the school's revenue sources include its $300 million endowment, its real-estate holdings - Cooper Union owns the land that the Chrysler Building is on, as well as other properties - and money raised through aggressive fundraising efforts.

While all of these methods of earning money are standard for colleges, Cooper is forced to work harder than other schools to raise funds, Lipton said.

And although Cooper's mission of providing free education to some of the country's neediest students seems like it should make the school an obvious choice for philanthropists, Lipton says that's not the case. On one hand, being full-scholarship "opens doors to places because [we're] unique, but it's not easier to get the money."

The school has to work hard to convince foundations and other donors that it's "not just sitting pretty with the money," he added. Its ability to make do without tuition revenue creates a perception that it's very wealthy and doesn't need any help - a perception that officials struggle to overcome.

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But while schools like the Ivies are wealthier and do have larger endowments, experts say Cooper's financial-aid model would not be feasible at larger research institutions - no matter how much socioeconomic diversity it may foster.

Harvard University, example, has the largest endowment of all American colleges - close to $30 billion this year - but many of its schools and programs still rely on tuition revenues.

Tony Pals, spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, pointed to Harvard's medical and divinity schools in particular as institutions that are world renowned - providing "incredible public benefit" - but not self-sustaining.

"Harvard could narrow its academic focus to a few programs that are likely to produce high-earning alumni and are relatively inexpensive to run and have enough money left over to fully fund their students. But Harvard would cease to be Harvard, and it would be the nation's loss," he wrote in an e-mail interview.

"To expect . large research universities to become completely tuition-free for everyone anytime soon is not realistic. To expect them to continue to search for new ways to become more affordable is," he added.

Harvard Director of Financial Aid and senior admissions officer Sally Donahue agreed that other schools turning to full-scholarship policies is unlikely. "I think it would be incredibly difficult for schools to fully fund all of their students, regardless of financial need. In a world of limited resources, it strikes me as more prudent to target financial-aid resources toward families who would otherwise not be able to pay for college," she stated in an e-mail interview.

Harvard - like Penn and several other Ivies- currently gives grants rather than loans to its neediest students. But despite improved federal aid programs over the past few years, a significant number of students still pay partial - or full - tuition.

And even if schools could give up tuition fees, they might not be willing to do so.

Anne Gross, a vice president at the National Association of College and University Business Officers, said schools might hesitate in eliminating tuition since students might then not take their free education very seriously.

"Sometimes, people don't value that which is given away for free," she said.

In any case, that a policy is different doesn't make it better, officials maintain.

Schilling said Penn's financial aid policy can be just as effective as Cooper's full-scholarship model in creating economic diversity - "as long as families are aware of it."

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