How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Starting this fall, full tuition remission may no longer be offered to certain NYU staff members.
The new policy will require that some employees pay 10 percent of the costs of a graduate degree program or tuition for dependent children attending NYU. The change affects administrators and professionals, faculty and professional research staff who make more than $50,000 annually; those making less will not have to pay the co-payment.
The changes will also not affect union members — for now. Tuition remission is part of their contract, provost David McLaughlin said, but "given that we have applied this to non-unionized employees, it will be a topic of bargaining as contracts come up."
David Langkamp, a shop steward for the Union of Clerical, Administrative and Technical Staff at NYU, said tuition remission is one of the benefits that entices people to choose work in academia.
"It's a reason that a lot of our staff members chose to work here instead of a higher contract job in the corporate world," he said.
To answer questions about the proposed changes, the university held two town hall meetings in early February in conjunction with the Faculty Senators Council and the Administrative Management Council so that employees could voice their concerns.
But several employees said these meetings were less of a public discussion about proposals and more of a meeting to inform the community of the solidified budget changes.
"Part of what I think is bothering people about the whole thing is their approach," said one affected staff member, who spoke with WSN on the condition of anonymity. "It hasn't been exactly forthcoming or widely publicized or open for debate. The announcements of what's happening have been somewhat buried in e-mails."
Changes to the tuition remission policy were announced in an e-mail update about the university's budget and re-engineering efforts sent to the NYU community on Jan. 27. The few sentences on tuition remission were in the ninth paragraph of the e-mail, and no formal announcement was made to staff about the proposed change to the tuition remission policy.
The figure was chosen carefully because NYU's biggest expense is personnel. When it came to making cuts, it was "natural" that the university looked at personnel-related spending, McLaughlin said.
"This year, benefits cost an additional 28.5 percent over an employee's salary; our projections showed those costs growing to 29.5 percent next year (2010-11). That's not a sustainable trajectory," he said.
A low-cost loan program was initially offered by the university in order to aid employees who could not pay the 10 percent co-payment up front. Ultimately, the university decided to eliminate the loan program and instead institute a salary level that would exclude qualified employees from the co-payment.
"We chose that compensation level because we projected that the costs of eliminating the co-payment for employees in that salary band were equal to the savings we'd achieve by not having to administer the new, low-interest loan program we had previously proposed," McLaughlin said.
Liz Schnore, a UCATS member who works in the Office of Construction Management, has a 12-year-old daughter who may want to attend NYU. Though union members are not currently affected, if she has to pay the 10 percent co-pay in the future, her daughter will likely not be able to attend the university.
"I took a $15,000-a-year pay cut with the understanding that my daughter could come here to school if she got in," she said.
Schnore is also currently pursing a Master of Arts degree in the studio art program at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development — which she said she would probably not continue if the co-pay is applied.
"Our contract is renegotiated in 2011, and I suspect it may be on the table at that point," she said. "I don't think I can afford it. I'm having a really hard time struggling with paying the taxes on [the tuition]."
Faculty members and administrators who have been with the university longer and who make more than $50,000 annually will shoulder most of the burden.
Although many new hires are willing to forgo certain benefits, faculty who have been at the university longer expect the benefits they were offered when they took their positions to remain.
One affected staff member pointed out that long-term employees are more affected because "tuition reimbursement is not so much for themselves, but for their kids and for their families."
The 10 percent co-payment will go into effect Sept. 1.
New hires, after Sept. 1, will also have to wait a full year in order to be eligible to receive tuition remission.
According to McLaughlin, the set percentage will remain at 10 percent until 2015.
"It is possible that some employees may choose to leave; however, I doubt many will," McLaughlin said. "When you compare NYU's tuition remission policy to other universities', and when you consider the economic context in which the decision was made, we believe we will retain our employees."
