<p>Anyone have any thoughts on this?</p>
<p>I'm a new student at NYU (transfer) and have seen numerous videos/articles about the expansion plan. John Sexton really wants us to be all around a top 5-10 university. Do you all think this is possible? What are your thoughts?</p>
<p>As a student here, I'm concerned that in the future my undergraduate institution will either fall off a cliff, or soar to new heights (I'm not convinced NYU will stagnate, but either jump one way or the other).</p>
<p>I went to that meeting last year that JSex hosted for members of the community and NYU to discuss the 2031 expansion. I think some of the stuff he’s proposing is for the best, but expansion for the sake of expansion frankly isn’t.</p>
<p>Expansion - Being in NYC, naturally NYU is restricted and I understand the sentiment of Villagers that we’re kind of “taking over downtown”. Columbia has the same problem but Morningside Heights is totally different than the Village. I hate when JSex compares us to Harvard, Cornell, etc and justifies expansion by saying we have less square footage per student whatever BS - no ****, we’re in NYC. Expanding out to Governor’s Island (small island out of Manhattan) is a terrible idea imo. Keep us downtown, at least. </p>
<p>I don’t think needless expansion is going to help NYU be a better school. Much of it is about real estate and $$$, not Academic programs. I think one of NYU’s flaws is that we’re too big, actually. I would rather see them accept fewer students (which will take care of our housing real estate issues and mean a smaller community, more resources to go around).</p>
<p>The Sustainability part of the campaign is all good, of course, I’m glad they’re considering that. I just hope NYU doesn’t grow too fast for its own good and burst, you know?</p>
<p>Here are the 2031 plans in case anyone wants info: [NYU</a> 2031: NYU in NYC](<a href=“NYU Space Planning: The Core Plan”>NYU Space Planning: The Core Plan)</p>
<p>“I would rather see them accept fewer students (which will take care of our housing real estate issues and mean a smaller community, more resources to go around).”</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree more.</p>
<p>According to that square footage per student profile, Yale has 866 square feet per student, while NYU has 160 currently, and plans to have 240. However, hey forget to mention how many students each institution has.</p>
<p>Yale has 11,593 students. NYU has 50,917 students. </p>
<p>11,593 x 866 = 10,039,538 Yale total square footage</p>
<p>50,917 x 160 = 8,146,720 NYU total square footage</p>
<p>If NYU were to have 11,593 students our sqft per student would be:</p>
<p>8,146,720/11,593 = 702 square feet per student, beating Columbias 326, and Harvards 673.</p>
<p>I’m hoping that Sexton is increasing the undergraduate size to increase positive cashflow, allowing to build a MUCH larger endowment and better facilities (some of our classrooms are a joke). After this renovation is complete as well as a larger endowment, he may begin to scale back admissions rates, allowing the endowment to take care of costs (if the portfolio manager is good enough), and keeping selectivity on the low side to increase prestige.</p>
<p>I think his idea for students to be able to “pick a continent like picking a class” is terrific. Yale and Harvard are already hoping on that bandwagon. However, I don’t want to see NYU become a University of Phoenix where everyone, everywhere can join.</p>
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Silver and Waverly are kind of outdated, but they’ve renovated several floors to update things, and I don’t think it’s different from other private colleges with older facilities. The newer buildings (Courant, Henry Kaufman, Tisch Hall the new Genomics Center) are really nice. </p>
<p>Plus I think the #1 worst thing about NYU is our Financial Aid, it’s renowned for being the worst in America. If JSex were to do what you said - accept a lot more students to up the endowment - then that would mean continuing our legacy of attracting mostly rich kids while low-income and middle-class students are discouraged by the price tag. More students = larger classes, more crowded facilities, real estate problems with Housing, etc. So your idea would make sense money-wise, but it’s like stretching quality for quantity kind of.
Yeah totally, it’s hard to take over the globe and remain selective at the same time. 
Personally I love the global perspective but sometimes I wish they would focus on the main campus more - the NY in NYU stands for New York, not Abu Dhabi or something.</p>
<p>Yea, I mean, I understand the difficulty that comes associated with trying to expand while keeping standards in terms of the types of students that get accepted. I feel as if we are building so many campuses, which I love, but there is really no need to accept additional students. I actually think that it would make sense to expand, and increase our square footage, without increasing the amount of kids being accepted. Think about it: If the new plans for Governors Island comes through, and that new Washington D.C. campus works out, it would provide us with a lot more room to send the students to, so that the campus wouldn’t feel so crowded and we could take care of that whole housing fiasco. I understand though, that greater square footage be directly proportional to greater admissions rates. I would love to think that a high caliber of students would be applying here because of it, but frankly, I don’t think they would. If we can allocate resources to bring high profile professors from some of the HYPMS schools, I think it could definitely boost our ratings, and attract stronger applicants.</p>
<p>I applaud Sexton’s ambition, but I think what he’s doing is very wrong. Instead of throwing tons of money into needless expansions to Brooklyn, Governor’s Island, etc for the sake of making our “Square Feet per Student” on par with Yale, Harvard, etc (which in my opinion is a very superficial and insignificant comparison that says nothing about academic quality), we should be SAVING money, and CUTTING our student body size drastically so the endowment per student is higher.With a higher level of endowment per student, we would be able to offer better Financial Aid and therefore have a happier student body. At the moment, most of NYU is either wealthy, or will graduate with tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of $ in debt. This is unacceptable for a “top school”.</p>
<p>NYU’s problem relative to Ivies is not based on academic prestige. Our programs have superb quality across the board. The issue is our bloated size. Ivy League student bodies are much smaller than ours, and thus they are able to meet much more FA need. If we were to make things a bit smaller, I’m sure (for those who care about this sort of stuff,) NYU could EASILY rank among the USNWR Top 20 schools.</p>
<p>Yankees, I totally agree. Has anyone ever confronted Sexton about this, formally?</p>
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Great post! I would not mind if JSex got lost in the deserts of Abu Dhabi and you were President :)</p>