http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2015/05/angry-faculty-savage-new-york-university/
Interesting story about one university.
Given NYU’s longstanding reputation of high price and poor financial aid, but with an apparent high ability to entice students who really cannot afford to attend, is that any surprise?
4 years ago my son was accepted to the very competitive Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. He cried with joy when he received a fancy admittance letter from his dream school. But he soon found that the total expenses for his first year were about 65k, and the school offered him a HUGE financial aid package–5k of grant and 50k of loans. So my son cried again realizing that his dream school was a merciless blood sucker. I was and am glad that we could not afford NYU. Beware of NYU, middle-class parents.
D is a graduate of NYU. I don’t recall any financial surprises. We knew it was expensive, we knew it was located in an expensive city and we knew we would not qualify for a penny of FA.
I am not defending the perks, etc. to top administration. Just saying that if you do not/can not afford NYU, then chose another option.
This piece says more about the frayed relationship between the NYU faculty and its president (who is stepping down at the end of the year) than anything else. For a little background on the faculty-president fight, this story from the NY Times a couple of years ago is a pretty good summary: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/nyregion/john-sexton-is-tested-by-nyu-faculty.html.
As for NYU, it is what it is, namely a very expensive private school with a relatively small endowment, that cannot afford the kind of guaranteed full-need financial aid that many of the Ivy League schools offer. It does provide a good education in the heart of New York City for those who can afford it. Certainly the stature of the school is much higher today than 20-30 years ago, so they must be doing something right. Is it perfect? No institution is perfect. Is it evil incarnate? No, it’s not that either.
I’m also not very sympathetic to anyone who claims they didn’t know that NYU was expensive. If you were asked to name the three things that immediately come to mind when you hear “NYU”, I would guess that expensive would be one of them. As @FallGirl suggests, the moral of the story is the same for NYU as for any school: don’t go there, and don’t send your kid there, if you can’t afford it.
Agreed. My D applied/auditioned for Tisch in 2002 and graduated 8 years ago. We knew when she applied that it was a very expensive school and their reputation then was similar to what it is now, very little aid that isn’t in the form of loans. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. It has been that way for years and years and it is clearly the case to anyone who does even a modicum of research.
Middle class families shouldn’t bother even to consider NYU.
I don’t agree with such a blanket statement. We are a middle class family. We knew NYU and many of the schools our kids applied to were very expensive. One of my daughters graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2009 and we are so glad she had the opportunity to attend as it was a perfect fit for her. We did qualify for aid, and she was awarded a significant scholarship (considered a mix of both need and merit) and we took out loans as well, and had other funds to allow her to attend.
I also agree with others that there is no surprise in the cost of the school and so one should think it through before applying and/or having your kid be admitted but then not able to attend (if you are comfortable with that scenario). Scholarships aside, we were willing to make this school happen for our kid no matter what. The significant scholarships for four years were a surprise when we opened the letter. She would have gone anyway, but that surely helped.
Ouch… the reasons highlighted in this paper are part of why I crossed NYU off my application PhD list.
I have to admit to finding this funny…
I think the issue most folks have with NYU(on CC), is that it’s often linked to all of the stories of folks with $100K+ of debt for a BA/BS. Even if that’s at schools other than NYU…NYU has become the “poster boy/girl” for taking on way too much debt for a BA/BS degree…
NYU’s real estate buying frenzy is pretty well known. That statement is quite accurate as far as I can tell.
However, it is not the only one with high cost and poor financial aid. Some other schools, like Boston University, Villanova University, Fordham University, Rose - Hulman Institute of Technology, several Penn State campuses (including University Park and several branch campuses), Case Western Reserve University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Carnegie Mellon University have similar or higher average student loan debt than NYU, based on searches at http://www.collegedata.com/cs/search/college/college_search_tmpl.jhtml .
It’s true that if you’re thinking about going to NYU (or sending your son/daughter), you already know that it costs a lot of money. What you might not know is that it could end up being a whole lot more than you initially thought. The other concerning thing is what most of that money is actually used for. The report everyone here’s talking about is called “The art of the gouge: How NYU squeezes billions from our students and where that money goes,” and was put together by NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan (FASP), a group of 400 faculty members. It comes in 3 parts:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-art-of-the-gouge-Part-1.pdf
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-art-of-the-gouge-Part-2.pdf
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-art-of-the-gouge-Part-3.pdf
When I read it, I was absolutely appalled. We’re not just talking a few random instances of extra fees or extravagant spending - it’s a super long document that lists more details and facts than you can find anywhere else, including breakdowns of individual fees and expenditures. It’s worth taking the time to read. Essentially, on top of being the most expensive school in the country, and the worst with financial aid, NYU has been routinely adding thousands of dollars in hidden fees and “nonrefundable deposits” (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), raising yearly tuition quickly and without warning, and using that money for everything but actual educational purposes.
Let’s look, for instance, at NYU’s claim that with their relatively small endowment, they simply can’t afford to extend more financial aid. If that’s true, then why, as the report shows, did NYU’s top 25 execs get a whopping 26% average pay raise—from $816,876 to $1,026,059 from 2010-2012, in the middle of the recession? Meanwhile, it apparently charges Pell Grant recipients, whose families make $30,000, $25,462, or 84% of their entire household income. (Yale, Harvard and Columbia charge $6,000/$7,000.) Yikes!
I know that you’re saying don’t send your kid there if you don’t have the $$, but even people who thought they could afford it sometimes can’t - to the extent that many students juggle two jobs on top of their course load, subsist on next to no food, are homeless, or even resort to virtual prostitution just to keep up with their tuition. That’s not mentioning all of the students whose FA packages do not grow with the ever-rising cost.
I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t go to NYU - there’s some great programs and classes there - but I do believe in giving people enough information to make an informed decision.
Seems like the information needed to make an informed decision is the financial aid letter (or net price calculator result before application) that shows that NYU is too expensive.
And this article, about labor issues at NYU’s Dubai campus:
The allegations sound a lot like the current ones about the building of World Cup venues in Qattar.
"In March, the emirates banned travel there by Andrew Ross, a professor at N.Y.U.’s New York campus, who had been critical of labor conditions. "
And this, from a faculty point of view – I’d be very troubled that a faculty member was not allowed to visit a “branch” campus of the university.
No doubt NYU is a very expensive place to earn a diploma. But from the fields I’m most familiar with, the university has in fact invested a lot in upgrading faculty and programs, partly because of donor-supported new faculty recruitment and sponsorship. Not just in professional schools such as law, business, and medicine, though those have been beneficiaries over the last decade or so, but also in core social sciences I’m familiar with including economics and political science.
“Many”??? Sources please! Honestly, there’s no need to post nonsense to make your point. And what’s “virtual prostitution” anyway?
Agree that some students are so desperate to go to college in Manhattan that they make really stupid decisions. That not NYU’s responsibility. It’s a private school. They can spend their money however they like. Don’t like it, don’t apply.
What is virtual prostitution, and does the appeal of NYU somehow explain the prevalence of sex workers in NYC?
We can now add a new category to the “unicorns of CC”- the kid who turned down Harvard and Yale and Stanford for U Alabama; the LAC which gets as much money in scientific research grants as UIUC and Michigan, etc. Now we have the kid who became a prostitute to pay for NYU!
These threads annoy me no end even though I have no horse in this race. I can’t afford a Mercedes- solution- I drive a Honda. I’m not graceful enough or thin enough to dance for the Bolshoi- solution- I work for a corporation where physical fitness and grace aren’t part of my job description.
I think it’s terrible that Mercedes spends so much money on leather seats. If they stopped doing that and put in plastic seats like my Honda, maybe I could afford a Mercedes. I think I should publish an expose on the cost of leather…
Okay! I finished all three parts. Even though I’m sympathetic towards the author(s) view, it does read like an epic CC rant…including several references to CC threads/postings.
Here’s a shout out to @sally305
I read the report, which was written by faculty and signed by 400 of them. I don’t see it as anything remotely like a CC rant. That anyone could possibly think that what the NYU administration does is okey dokey simply because they are a private institution is beyond me. It’s clear to me they are indeed gouging their students and the student’s parents. I also don’t know if all those hidden fees they charge their students are reflected in the NPC. I would be furious if the COA (tuition, room & board) was represented as one thing only find out all the extra fees after the fact.
I’ve also never heard of a private university charging international students more then US students. My students college certainly doesn’t do that. It’s one thing for a public U to do that but a private U?
And what is up with mandating all students must have the NYU medical plan - which looks very pricey to me and not very good, either?
Son’s school has one price for everyone with everything included - there are no extra fees for this or that. The only thing extra is medical insurance and, of course, it is waived if you have another plan (like you parents.)
I’m appalled about it and I don’t even have a student at that school or one who could be a future student.