NYU President John Sexton
In a
New York Times story on just how thoroughly corrupt and self-absorbed our nation's elites have become, is this entry on my alma mater:
The house, which is owned by John Sexton, the president of New York University, was bought with a $600,000 loan from an N.Y.U. foundation that eventually grew to be $1 million, according to Suffolk County land records. It is one of a number of loans that N.Y.U. has made to executives and star professors for expensive vacation homes in areas like East Hampton, Fire Island and Litchfield County, Conn., in what educational experts call a bold new frontier for lavish university compensation.
N.Y.U. has already attracted attention for the multimillion-dollar loans it extends to some top executives and professors buying homes in New York City, a practice it has defended as necessary to attract talent to one of the most expensive cities on earth.
...
Universities in similar circumstances, like Columbia and Stanford, also have helped professors and executives with home loans. Aid for vacation properties, however, is all but unheard-of in higher education, several experts in university pay packages say.
You've heard financial executives use this same excuse for why they have to give even the most abysmal executives millions of bucks in compensation: "we must attract talent." Talent is always measured in the seven figures. But really, the leadership at NYU thinks it is vital to make sure its top executives and professors have multi-million dollar condos in Manhattan as well as summer homes on Fire Island. But what do they do for students? Total
cost at NYU for the 2012-2013 school year is an astounding $64,000. And $17,000 of that is just for resident housing, the equivalent of a just over $1,400 per month studio apartment. Only you aren't getting a studio apartment. You're getting this:
The university does not provide loans to cover student housing expenses.
So while NYU executives and "star" professors get low cost loans for multimillion dollar Manhattan condos coupled with a Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Summer home loans, the students get hit with a $17,000 bill to bunk up with 3 or 4 other people with zero financing. And they get to be taught by underpaid adjunct professors who don't get anywhere close to those kinds of benefits, so that that the "stars" can do "research." Or whatever it is that star professors do. Harold Ford Jr. is on the faculty at NYU and all I can see he ever does is occasionally check in at his office at Morgan Stanley and sit around peddling dumb shit on TV. I'm sure he's the kind of person they'd never be able to get without offering him a luxury apartment and a summer home.
This is all part of a general trend during this New Gilded Age we are living in. Academia is not immune.