The Banker's Impossible University

Anthony J. Drexel was not your typical university founder. He was a banker — partner to J.P. Morgan, builder of one of Philadelphia's most powerful financial dynasties, and a man who had never attended college himself. When he opened the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry on December 17, 1891, he wasn't trying to create another ivory tower. He was trying to burn the concept down.

The vision was radical for the Gilded Age: coeducational from day one, non-sectarian, and open to students of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds. In an era when higher education was a gentleman's finishing school, Drexel built a "high-grade technical school" for the urban working class. The first class had just 70 students. The ambition was limitless.

The Main Building, designed by Wilson Brothers & Company, was itself a statement. Now a National Historic Landmark, its 35-foot terra-cotta entrance features busts of Galileo, Shakespeare, and Newton — representing the balance of art, science, and industry that would define the institution. The buff-colored brick was a deliberate choice: futuristic and artistic against the era's dominant dark stone. It was designed to be a "city under one roof," housing everything from the library to the gymnasium. Anthony Drexel didn't live to see his institute mature — he died in 1893, just two years after opening day. But the DNA he embedded would prove nearly indestructible.

For its first 23 years, the Drexel Institute didn't even grant degrees — it was a "school of opportunity" for immediate professional skills. The first Bachelor of Science wasn't awarded until 1914. But in 1919, President Hollis Godfrey launched what would become the university's defining feature: cooperative education.

The idea was simple and, at the time, borderline heretical: students would alternate six months of full-time classroom work with six months of full-time employment at real companies. The first cohort was 152 engineering students placed with five employers, including DuPont and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Drexel became one of the "Big Three" pioneers of co-op education in America, alongside Cincinnati and Northeastern.

The "Drexel Model" meant five-year undergraduate programs and 18 months of professional experience before graduation. Critics called it vocational training dressed up as education. Employers called it a pipeline of pre-tested talent. Today, Drexel partners with over 1,500 employers in 38 countries, and nearly 50% of graduates receive job offers from their co-op employers. The model that seemed radical in 1919 is now the envy of universities worldwide.

The name change came first. In 1936, the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry became the Drexel Institute of Technology — a signal that engineering and hard science were now the center of gravity. The old "Art" in the name had served its purpose; the future belonged to slide rules and circuit boards.

Then came the war. When Pearl Harbor pulled America's young men into uniform, Drexel's enrollment cratered from 5,000 to 2,600 virtually overnight. But the institution pivoted with characteristic pragmatism, becoming a national hub for Engineering Defense Training. The campus that had trained commerce students was now training the people who would win a world war.

The postwar boom, fueled by the GI Bill, brought the students back — and then some. Under President W.W. Hagerty (1963–1984), Drexel underwent its most dramatic physical transformation. The campus expanded from 10 to 40 acres, growing westward into Powelton Village. The buildings that went up during this era were brutalist concrete "fortresses" — functional, unapologetic, and completely at odds with the elegant Main Building. In 1965, Drexel awarded its first Ph.D.s in the physical sciences, cementing its transformation from vocational institute to legitimate research institution.

On February 25, 1970, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania officially recognized the school as Drexel University. It should have been the beginning of a golden age. Instead, it was the prelude to the institution's darkest chapter.

Hagerty's aggressive expansion into Powelton Village had created friction with the local community — protests, a "closed campus" reputation, and an institution that felt more like an occupying force than a neighbor. Worse, the expansion had been financed with optimism rather than revenue. When Hagerty departed, the bill came due.

Enrollment dropped sharply through the early 1980s. The administration began dipping into the endowment not for strategic investments, but to pay utility bills. At the lowest point, there were serious discussions — not rumors, actual negotiations — about the University of Pennsylvania absorbing Drexel entirely. Anthony J. Drexel's impossible university was on the verge of ceasing to exist as an independent institution.

The near-death experience of the 1980s is the chapter that most Drexel alumni don't know about. It's also the chapter that makes everything that followed so remarkable.

Constantine Papadakis arrived in 1995 as something Drexel had never had before: a CEO-president. A Greek-born engineer with a corporate executive's instinct for branding and deal-making, Papadakis understood that survival required not just better management, but a completely reimagined identity.

His boldest move came in 1998, when he engineered the merger with the bankrupt MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine. Taking on a failed medical school was, to put it mildly, a bet. By 2002, it had become the Drexel University College of Medicine, instantly transforming Drexel from a technical university into a health sciences powerhouse. It was the kind of move that either makes you a legend or gets you fired. Papadakis became a legend.

The digital bets were equally audacious. In 1983, Drexel had already become the first university in the United States to require all students to own a personal computer — the Apple Macintosh. In 2000, under Papadakis, it became the first university with a fully wireless campus. These weren't publicity stunts; they reflected a genuine institutional conviction that technology was inseparable from education. The campus expanded with new buildings — the Daskalakis Athletic Center, Gerri C. LeBow Hall — and enrollment surged past 20,000 for the first time. The dragon wasn't just alive; it was breathing fire.

The measure of any university is, ultimately, what its people do after they leave. By that standard, Drexel punches absurdly above its weight.

Norman Joseph Woodland (Class of '47) invented the barcode. That's not hyperbole — while working on his graduate research, Woodland drew a series of lines in sand on a Florida beach and realized that Morse code, extended into a visual pattern, could encode product information. Every time you scan a grocery item, you're using a Drexel alumnus's invention.

Paul Baran (Class of '49) co-invented packet switching — the foundational technology that makes the internet work. Independently of Donald Davies in the UK, Baran realized that data could be broken into packets and routed independently across a network. Without that insight, there is no email, no streaming, no web.

Christopher Ferguson (Class of '84) commanded STS-135, the final flight of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. When Atlantis touched down at Kennedy Space Center for the last time, it was a Drexel Dragon at the controls. Susan Seidelman (Class of '73) directed Desperately Seeking Susan, launching Madonna into film stardom. And Lex Fridman, the AI researcher and podcaster with millions of followers, earned his Ph.D. at Drexel.

A co-op school for working-class Philadelphians produced the barcode, the internet, and a shuttle commander. Anthony J. Drexel would have loved the irony.

Under President John Fry (2010–2024), Drexel completed its transformation from scrappy survivor to genuine academic heavyweight. In 2018, it achieved Carnegie R1 status — "Very High Research Activity" — placing it in the top tier of American research universities alongside institutions with endowments ten times its size. Research expenditures hit $169 million in 2023.

The physical ambitions have scaled accordingly. Schuylkill Yards, a $3.5 billion development project, is transforming 14 acres of railyards adjacent to 30th Street Station into an "Innovation Neighborhood." In 2024, the major subway station was renamed Drexel Station at 30th Street, a symbolic marker of how thoroughly the university now dominates the western bank of the Schuylkill River.

Recent mergers with Salus University (2024) and the acquisition of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children have created one of the largest health sciences footprints in the Philadelphia region. The "Drexel 2030 Plan" emphasizes interdisciplinary research, civic engagement, and health sciences integration.

From 70 students in a single building to 22,000+ across a constellation of campuses, hospitals, and innovation districts — Drexel's 135-year arc is one of American higher education's most improbable success stories. The banker's impossible university isn't just surviving. It's thriving. And it's only the mascot — the Dragon, named by a sportswriter in 1928 who said the football team "fought like dragons" — that still carries a whiff of the mythological. Everything else is very, very real.