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As NYU gears toward consolidating its staff and departments and plans for international campus expansion—amidst major tuition increases, other schools, like Brown University, are working to make education more affordable for their students through the Academic Enrichment Plan.
Private universities are known for their academic excellence and pricey tuition. But today, universities like Brown, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Dartmouth are making an effort to lower the cost of private education for students who receive financial aid. The Academic Enrichment Plan, approved by Brown University, is one example of the many endeavors of these universities to increase financial aid. The plan will eliminate parental contributions from most families earning less than $60,000 and will eliminate all loan requirements for students from families earning less than $100,000 a year. It will also reduce loan burdens for all other students who receive university financial aid. Such projects are making it possible for undergraduate students to attend Ivy League colleges and graduate with little or no debt.
On the other hand, America’s No.1 dream school, NYU has raised its tuition 5.5 percent in the past five years and is believed to continue to increase in the near future. At the same time, NYU’s Executive Vice President Mike Alfano announced a plan to stop hiring administrative staff and consolidate school departments last month. These efforts are said to save NYU $25 million dollars a year, which Alfano said could go towards financial aid and funding for the international expansion of NYU’s campus. Although the university has not released any plans for financial aid, they have disclosed plans to open satellite campuses in other countries and branch out to Governor’s Island, Downtown Brooklyn, and Midtown Manhattan. The enormous increase in tuition should force the university to tackle this issue first and then discuss the costly plan of expansion. However, that has not been the case.
Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a professor at Cornell and author of Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much, explained that increasing financial aid has little to with the funds that NYU is currently raising through the administrative cuts. “Brown University has much larger endowments per student that NYU, which enables them to be so generous in financial aid.” The funds that Brown University receives from its alumni total close to $3 billion as opposed to NYU’s $2 billion. Ehrenberg also stated that Cornell has taken a similar approach to that of Alfano’s consolidation plan, which he believes will “make the non-academic side of the university more efficient.”
Others have their doubts. Steve Fletcher, a teaching assistant for the Concepts in Social and Cultural Analysis course and a graduate student who participated in the NYU graduate student strike three years ago, explained that Alfano’s plan to consolidate departments would greatly affect students. Fletcher stated, “Students rely on administrative staff for advice and help navigating their majors, their housing, their healthcare, and everything else that happens on campus. There’s no magic tech fix that can replace the high quality work and personalized attention students deserve, so the real result is to squeeze more work out of the already over-worked administrative staff that remain after the reorganization.” In addition, Fletcher is not convinced that any surplus of funds would actually go to financial aid. “It’s disingenuous for NYU to use its financial aid problem to justify spending cuts in administrative staff should bear the consequences of NYU’s failure of leadership on tuition and financial aid.”
While there has not been much pressure from students to further investigate NYU’s budget, they do express concern about their tuition and how their money is spent. A College of Arts and Sciences sophomore, Tenisha Cole, would like to know the “actual breakdown of NYU’s budget and how much of the endowment goes to tuition?” Cole’s financial aid package was covered mostly by her acceptance into the Higher Educational Opportunities Program (HEOP). HEOP is a state-funded program, which gives economical disadvantaged students the opportunity to attend and afford universities like NYU. This program, among other things, evaluated her mother’s financial status and covered a substantial amount of her tuition. Cole stated that NYU’s financial aid package was better than the other schools that she applied to, which included SUNY Albany and Binghamton, due to HEOP. However, Cole did not understand why there was such big disparity in the financial aid of both NYU and Brown. “Brown is also a private university like NYU. I do not understand why NYU cannot have a similar program to increase financial aid.” While Cole expressed that she had always dreamed of going to NYU, had she known about the financial aid plans of other schools she would have considered them. “It makes me sad because I am paying so much money to go to my dream school, when I could actually go to a better acclaimed school for less.”
Jewelle Bruce, a CAS sophomore, does not feel that NYU has been putting student’s tuition to good use. She said “You’d think that for the amount of money that I’m paying, books and meal plans would be cheaper, there would be a better quality of food in the dining halls, or even the residence halls would be nicer.” Furthermore, she felt that cuts in administration were not necessary to pump more money into financial aid. Bruce explained that the real culprit is NYU’s infatuation with expanding the campus which requires a large amount of funding.
Despite NYU’s costly tuition, the institution continues to get record numbers of applicants each year. Students are attracted to the constant action of NYU’s metropolitan campus. However, if the tuition continues to skyrocket, NYU will continue to be only a dream for many students.
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