How do people view NYU?

cobrat
Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:18:58 +0000

mom2collegekids:

I just can’t figure out how a school of its ranking hasn’t figured out how to manage its endowment so that it can give decent financial aid. Can’t NYU put its experts at Stern to work to figure that out?



NYU’s tiny endowment is due to a number of factors…some of which are artifacts from the last few decades:

Number of students: There’s only so many ways the comparatively tiny endowment could be split up over 140,000 total undergrad and grad students across all NYU divisions.

NYU’s recovery from near bankruptcy during the late 1960’s-early 1970’s which forced the sale of the Bronx Campus…current location of Bronx Community College.

Expense of maintaining the buildings, facilities, and other miscellaneous items for such a large university…especially in NYC. Add to that upgrades/improvements made to facilities to modernize and make it more enticing for applicants, students, and faculty.

Seeming lack of alumni giving relative to the proportion of the graduates…especially considering most of the NYU undergrad student population IME and from high school classmates/friends who attended tended to come from really well-off families and if they went to Stern or certain departments of CAS were able to gain highly paid jobs right out of undergrad. I’m mainly talking about students and families who didn’t have to take out massive loans for their NYU educations/degrees.

Costs to effectively market NYU to applicants, alumni, and potential faculty…and it has certainly been effective!

Considering all of these factors, it will take NYU more time coupled with much concerted effort to build up its endowment to the point it can match its academic peers and hopefully…provide more than the miserly levels of FA/scholarships they’ve been doling out over at least 2 decades from my own experience and those of numerous high school classmates and friends who attended NYU Stern/CAS.