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NYU Asks Employees For Donations To Help Students Pay Crippling Cost Of Attending NYU
By
Lauren Evans
Published Mar 27, 2015
Modified Mar 27, 2015
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By
Lauren Evans
Published Mar 27, 2015
Modified Mar 27, 2015
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Incoming NYU students can expect to shell out roughly $71,000 for tuition and expenses next year. An awful lot of that money is going to pay for administrators, President John Sexton's Fire Island beach house, and the pricey Manhattan real estate the university is sucking up like a satanic vacuum. So where will they find the money to educate these 18-year-old adult-lets, who can't possibly fathom what it means to enjoy a lifetime of crushing debt?
Trim the salaries of their top administrators, or at least stop handing out obscenely large bonuses? Quit opening satellites in foreign countries with dubious human rights records?
Or why not just appeal to the school's apparently underpaid staff to help out?
Here's an email that was sent to staff earlier this week:
Dear Colleagues,
Every day you show your dedication to our students. Today, I invite you to join me in giving those students an additional support. I invite you to make a gift for scholarships.
Our community is enriched each year by deserving students who would not be here without scholarship support. The senior class comes together to leave a legacy of scholarships through the 1831 Fund. Last year the faculty and staff matched their gifts. This year our goal is to provide 80 brilliant young minds with the chance for an NYU education - a dynamic urban experience that you make possible with your daily efforts.
You can make your gift to the 1831 Fund, a scholarship fund at any school, study away scholarships, or the general scholarship fund. Your voluntary participation is most appreciated.
Tomorrow you will see students raising gifts at tables across campus. Please join them and make your gift today.
Thank you for all that you do for NYU this day and every day.
Warm wishes,
Erin Dodd
Executive Director, Annual Fund
The tipster who sent it works in admissions, and said that the request was widely perceived as "tone deaf," though "unfortunately somewhat indicative of the culture within the university, particularly within the upper echelons of the administration."
"The ever-increasing tuition is very much a concern for our students and some of our administration, so that request to employees for money to help subsidize financial aid awards is absurd and asinine," the tipster writes. "Especially when you factor in the millions of dollars spent on expansion of the University's presence around the world and NYC."
So where is the money going? That's the question posed by Professor Mark Crispin Miller, who teaches media studies at the school. "It's not going to the faculty," he said, adding that he and his colleagues receive, on average, raises of 2.5 percent—a "stark contrast" to the princely sum poured into the coffers of the higher-ups.
Nor, he said, is it going to the "lower administrative level." After the Princeton Review ranked the school's financial aid and administration the worst in the country, Miller said the quality has only continued to diminish: "There just aren't enough people who know how to get things done—they've been kind of squeezed out," he said.
But it's not going to students, either, Miller said, pointing to an incident last year in which counsellors working in the campus' over-extended crisis center told distressed students they were booked, forcing them to wait weeks for an appointment.
Rather, Miller posits the money is going to NYU's widely-publicized expansions, in addition to padding the already bulging pocketbooks of top university officials.
In short, he echoes our tipster's sentiment that the request is inappropriate. "They could easily provide enough money for these scholarships, by paying their own top people less, by cutting back on their extravagant investments in real estate throughout the city," he said.
NYU spokesperson John Beckman said such appeals for donations are common at other universities, and explained why he personally contributes:
Even though NYU is not my alma mater, I'd like to make it a bit easier for a student with financial need who dreams of attending NYU to be able to go there. I have seen the transformation of NYU from a good, essentially regional university into a highly esteemed international research university; I take pride in that.
But like a lot of my colleagues, I know that NYU is in the unusual position of being regarded as being similar to the top universities academically, but being unlike them in terms of financial resources, and especially per student endowment. That low per-student endowment means NYU has fewer resources available for financial aid than many peer institutions.
"Fewer resources" is a questionable term, considering its ravenous expansion and hefty payouts to departing officials. In the end, Miller points out that the intake of cash isn't going where it should: Students and faculty.
"The credit rating agencies give NYU high marks because of the value of their real estate portfolio, so on paper it looks like a thriving concern," Miller said. "But that spending is not benefitting the most important members of this community, and I mean the students and the faculty. Who else matters, ultimately, at an institution of higher learning?"
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Lauren Evans
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