Audrey Cohen believed in education, but a specific kind of education: as stated in the Jewish Women's Archive: "...education based on the principle that people learn best when they use their learning to achieve purposes that improve the world."

Cohen graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh and went to graduate school at both George Washington University and Harvard. She volunteered during the summer at places like the YWCA, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the American Friends Service Committee. She married and began to raise a family. To that point, everything she was doing was "normal" for a middle class woman in the 1950s.

But Cohen wanted more. She wanted to work and still be a wife and mother, and she wanted other women to have the opportunity to do that as well. So in 1958, at the age of 27, she and a friend founded Part-Time Research Associates to help married women work under contract on part-time research projects. Cohen became an administrator and an ambassador of sorts, speaking to groups of women about employment and education. In 1964, now living in New York, she organized the Women's Talent Corps which enabled women in low-income neighborhoods to work in and for their own communities—as teachers' assistants, guidance counselor assistants, and paralegals. The organization provided 30 weeks of training, much of it on-the-job.

In 1969, the Talent Corps began to admit men. A year later it had expanded yet again, and Cohen renamed it the College for Human Services. It was soon accredited by New York State. Two years after that, Cohen began to develop "Purpose-Centered Education," which focused on students working effectively in groups, gathering and communicating information, managing change, and understanding themselves and others. The college added business programs and then graduate programs.

None of this was easy. In the beginning, New York City's social service departments did not look kindly on Cohen's efforts, noting that the college was seeking to serve mainly women and was directed mainly by women. But Cohen persisted—applying for grants, lobbying for change, and navigating through a slew of bureaucracies. At one point, in 1970, she restructured the entire college, eventually bringing about the purpose-directed curriculum the college would be known for. Her efforts paid off: the college became as "legitimate" as any other educational institution in the City.

Audrey Cohen made her life more difficult and more rewarding by her pioneering approach to helping others —not only on a one-to-one basis but more dramatically on a grand scale: an educational philosophy put into practice that provides opportunities to people who otherwise wouldn't have had a path to changing their lives for the better.

Update:
Audrey Cohen died of ovarian cancer in March 1996. The college continued to expand, carrying on her life's work. In 1992, it had been renamed Audrey Cohen College, but in 2002 it was again renamed—this time, to Metropolitan College of New York. It currently includes undergraduate and graduate programs in human services, business, healthcare management, public affairs and education, along with online learning options, free tutoring, a research library, and flexible class schedules that encourage students to work as well as attend school. Each year over 1100 students attend MCNY and over 400 graduate; many of them are adult women of color and recent immigrants. The curriculum allows a student to attain a Bachelor's Degree in 2 years and 8 months while working full time, and a Master's Degree in as little as 1 year while working full time.

You can keep track of Audrey Cohen's legacy at www.mcny.edu.