NYU Town Hall Questions University’s Long-Term Financial Plan

          Although the town hall was meant to focus on the finances of just a few contested building projects at New York University, students and faculty in attendance steered the conversation to big-picture economic risk and sustainable expansion, reflecting recent worries about NYU’s rapid growth.  Attendees became especially concerned with the idea of increasing enrollment and the university becoming unsustainably large in the future.

            The development discussed at the meeting is part of NYU 2031, a plan for university expansion originally proposed in 2010.  It included new construction near NYU’s current holdings around New York City, but most controversially, four new buildings in the Village.  Despite protests from residents and neighbors, the City Commission approved an increase of 1.92 million square feet on the two “superblocks” between Mercer Street and LaGuardia Place.  Lawsuits continue, but NYU has created the University Space Priorities Working Group (USPWG) to evaluate what sort of spaces should be built.

 “As you surely know, there is a litigation going on as we speak” said Larry White, giving an introduction to the Financial Committee of the USPWG, which hosted Thursday’s town hall meeting.  “Until that is resolved, nothing substantive will happen.”  Indeed, there wasn’t much new information being offered—the committee had only studied half of the development proposed on the superblocks.  Without an architect or even a definite plan for what new buildings would house, the Financial Committee had been examining the university’s finances to determine if such a large-scale project was possible.

Throwing up his arms a bit helplessly, White opened the floor to questions.  First to the microphone was Jan Lewstein, who questioned the financial risk of the project in light of disasters like Hurricane Sandy and the economic collapse of 2008.  “The budgeting to us looks fairly conservative” Andrew Schotter replied. Over the course of 30 years, NYU could borrow up to $1.4 billion, but has capped its annual debt service spending at 7% or less of its annual budget. To Schotter, the only problem that could truly affect NYU’s financial plans would be a drop in enrollment, which is unlikely to happen.  Indeed, the committee had projected a 0.5% increase in the number of undergraduate students each year.  This means that in 30 years, the undergraduate population would grow from about 38,000 to 44,500.

 “Should the student body be growing?” asked a biology professor, who was later echoed by other attendees.  If the student body constantly grows larger, it was supposed that NYU would continue to need more space, creating an infinite cycle of expansion.  Ted Magder, chair of the Working Group, emphasized that the university is “tuition-driven” and that this committee was unable to affect the “underlying economic.”  Since the committee was working on finances in an approximately ten-year period, they had not considered anything beyond that.

Alec Foster, a Steinhardt student and member of the Student Senators Council, decided it wasn’t just the committee members who weren’t thinking about the long run.  “The average student doesn’t care much,” he said, considering most would only be around for four years.  Even professors (over 30% of whom are adjuncts) might not stay at NYU until 2022, the earliest that construction could begin on the superblocks.  Although concerned with the value of his degree, in the end, said Foster, “this [issue] is kind of a huge distraction.”