New York University's independent student newspaper, established in 1973.

Washington Square News

New York University's independent student newspaper, established in 1973.

Washington Square News

New York University's independent student newspaper, established in 1973.

Washington Square News

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Sexton, Board of Trustees betray NYU mission

Should NYU’s current administration stay or go? To answer that, we must first clear away the fluffy purple-torch branded bull-pucky that’s handed out by NYU President John Sexton and the university’s trustees like cotton candy. So, let’s get to the facts as I understand them. I would understand them better if the budget were open to review by faculty, students and the community, which it isn’t.

NYU is the most expensive college in the country based on the total cost of an education (tuition, fees, and housing). In addition, NYU is cited by the Princeton Review as having the worst financial aid of any major university.

In 2007, then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo caught NYU accepting kickbacks from Citibank. NYU financial aid officers would send students to high-interest Citibank loans when lower-interest rate loans were available. NYU was forced to return $1.4 million to students.

The NYU 2031 expansion plan was created by this administration in 2007 and approved two years ago. The stated goal of this plan is to increase academic space, despite the fact that the majority of it will be retail and dorms — all space that makes NYU money. This is why 39 academic departments have voted against it. Projected costs for construction are over $3 billion, and nobody understands where that money is going to come from. That is why Stern professors — hardly hardcore lefties — voted against it, 52 to 3.

Within the past year, NYU paid Jack Lew a “severance” payment of $700,000. While severance is usually paid upon dismissal, Lew was leaving voluntarily to work for Citigroup, where he made over $1 million annually. In addition to his $1.4 million annual salary, President Sexton will be given a “length of service bonus” of $2.5 million in 2015. After he retires, his pension is set at $800,000 annually.

In addition to their salaries and bonuses, top faculty and administrators currently have $72 million in outstanding mortgages for primary residences that were lent to them by NYU. In addition, five top administrators were given millions in loans to buy summer houses. Many of the loans we have information on are either forgiven over time, or have comically low interest rates.

Even without accounting for salaries, these administrative cash and prizes alone add up to a full-tuition scholarship for one-fourth of the freshmen class. Add in the $3 billion they’re going to raise for NYU 2031 and they could give every student a scholarship – and still have some left over. You simply can’t claim poverty on financial aid, promise to raise $3 billion for construction, and pay yourselves millions of dollars – at least not without destroying your credibility.

In response to the above facts, many schools and divisions at NYU have taken a vote of no-confidence in President Sexton. These votes have been passed at the College of Arts and Science, the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, the Tisch School of the Arts, Tisch Asia and the Union of Clerical, Administrative and Technical Staff at NYU — failing only at the Silver School of Social Work and a vote of support in the NYU School of Law. Defying precedent, including the successful ousting of Larry Summers at Harvard in 2006, the administration has responded only with vague promises to “continue communication” with university faculty, and by creating a trustee committee to analyze the problem, as if the trustees were not part and parcel of the problem. Its final report confirmed Sexton will stay for the next three years and created yet more committees to “study” and “discuss.” The recently-announced and vaguely-worded plan to raise $1 billion for financial aid is, depending on whether you’re cynical or not, a nice expression of belated care or a last-ditch attempt to redeem the school’s image. Whichever interpretation you prefer, it doesn’t erase the fact that this administration has had 10 years to prioritize financial aid, and has done nothing until now.

We as students are asked to accept all of this because of the increased success, selectivity, and prestige of NYU. Again, bull-pucky. Since Sexton took office in 2002, NYU has risen from 32nd to well, 32nd in the U.S. News and World Report ranking, while tuition has climbed by over $15,000 in even dollars. What has that paid for? What we know doesn’t look good.

I know that NYU isn’t all bad. It’s fantastic to learn in the city. Global programs, a signature contribution of Sexton, offer new frontiers for many students — although it would be nice if they were taught by full-time faculty, not adjuncts, and I could do without the questionable alliances with totalitarian dictatorships like those in the United Arab Emirates. In fact, almost all of my positive experiences at NYU have involved the faculty — precisely the people who want Sexton and Lipton to go.

The leaders of tax-exempt nonprofit organizations are bound to act according to the interests and mission of the institution. Whether or not NYU’s current leadership should stay, therefore, depends on your interpretation of our mission. Are we an institution of higher education dedicated to benefiting students and society, or an ATM for top administrators and the banking and real estate interests who make up the majority of our trustees? Call me naive, but I think it’s the former. Throw them out.

A version of this article appeared in the Aug. 25 print edition. Ben Miller is a contributing columnist. Email him at [email protected].

Correction: A former version of this column incorrectly stated the 2031 plan was created in 2011, when in fact it was created in 2007. The column also incorrectly stated a vote of no confidence failed in the School of Law. Instead, it was a vote of support that passed in the school. WSN regrets these errors.

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  • L

    Lowell Joseph GallinAug 31, 2013 at 3:34 pm

    Kol HaKavod (All Honor) to you for standing up to these Tyrants and their monstrous Tyranny.

    Reply
  • A

    A. S. E.Aug 27, 2013 at 1:11 pm

    Think how much scholarship money and money to fulfill the educational mission has been diverted away from students to overgenerous retirement packages and forgivable loans. This is criminal and immoral.

    Reply
  • N

    Norwegian WoodAug 26, 2013 at 9:26 pm

    As someone else has pointed out, an NYU department chairman recently testified in a court of law that “nobody reads” the NYU faculty code. Indeed, if the administration refuses to budge and the conflict continues, this situation can only worsen. There is some rather disturbing material, including trial testimony of NYU officials who try to explain why they failed to investigate plagiarism allegations for 20 years, at:

    http://raphaelgolbtrial.wordpress.com/

    Reply
  • A

    abone2pikAug 26, 2013 at 9:47 am

    Excellent recap of the many serious/nefarious issues confronting NYU faculty, students and neighbors.
    One correction: the 2031 expansion plan has been in the works for more than ten years. After years of research and community input, Community Board 2 voted against the plan. But that didn’t stop Bloomberg’s extraordinarily pro-development City Council from approving it.
    Note, Coles Sports Center will be torn down with no temporary relocation, leaving students with only the over-crowded Palladium Facility14th Street. Note,too, NYU Board of Trustees is composed of many of the city’s biggest developers. So, the point is: it’s all about the real estate, brother!

    Reply
  • J

    Jim K.Aug 25, 2013 at 4:14 pm

    Great argument, the one major flaw being – you failed to even acknowledge any of the evidence that clearly contradicts your claim:

    http://www.nyu.edu/nyubythenumbers/

    Now, we were 34th not 32nd in 2002 – a minor gripe, I know. But I’m curious, why did you choose to cite only from the one poll that doesn’t show a major increase in NYU’s rankings? Note the gain of almost 30 places in the Shangai survey for all universities in the world, not just the US:

    http://www.nyu.edu/nyubythenumbers/assets/pdf/NYU-rankings.pdf

    And last but not least – you do know that the hotel’s been out of 2031 for more than a year now, right?

    http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/n-y-u-2031-modified-again-clears-another-hurdle/

    Reply
    • B

      Ben MillerAug 25, 2013 at 7:55 pm

      Hi Jim! Thanks for caring enough to comment.

      You’re right on about the hotel. I’ve asked my editor to remove that specific clause (“and a hotel”) from the piece online, in print that sentence was cut for space reasons. The important claim – that NYU2031 is majority non-academic – still stands.

      USNWR: we were 34th in 2003; 32nd in 2002, according to the Chronicle of Higher Ed:
      http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/

      On the Shanghai rankings: our entire rise came between 2002 and 2004 – in 2002 we were 50th in Shanghai, in 2004 32nd, and it’s been up and down since then. Accounting for the time to calculate the rankings, that’s not quite two years of Sexton’s leadership. Was he brilliant enough to leapfrog us 20 spots in any meaningful way in just two years or is this carryover/methodology/etc?

      There are also specific issues with the Shanghai rankings in that they’re relatively easy to game. Large %ages of the score are derived solely from the number of Nobel and Field winners on-faculty. Nobody’s saying they aren’t great to have, but it’s relatively easy to create professorships for these individuals that make their scores count for Shanghai but that don’t have them on-campus all
      that much. Think Gordon Brown, who’s a “global distinguished professor” or some similar title but whose presence isn’t of issue to 99% of students because he comes once a year or so. I take similar issue with using the Times rankings, which take their largest data set from citation influence.

      I used USNWR because I wanted to look as holistically as possible at who undergraduate students are when they come in, and what undergraduate students can expect to experience. Since 2002, NYU’s research growth has been financed to a large extent by increases in the number of undergraduates, dramatic increases in undergraduate tuition, and correspondingly dramatic amounts of undergraduate debt.

      In a way, it’s emblematic of his top-down approach. You might call it
      trickle-down academics – spend lots of university resources on a few big names while transferring an ever-growing proportion of actual teaching to underpaid adjuncts who qualify for food stamps.

      Ideally, WSN would have given me 3,000 words to write this column and I could have included much much more like this in my analysis. Until they’re willing to turn an issue over to me, though, this will have to do.

      Reply