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Newsday tries to figure out if NYU is a "Dream school or 'evil empire'?". There really isn't a consensus as kids who want to head to the big city think NYU is keen while Washington Square area residents, on the other hand, hate the school, but the Newsday has some interesting factoids and insights from NYU's president John Sexton:
- It's the city's seventh largest employer, with more than 13,000 employees (Gothamist isn't sure if hopsital employees count, but we assume so)What do you think of NYU's ever-expanding presence downtown? While the conflicts between NYU and area residents are bad, they don't seem as bad as ones between Columbia and Harlem residents - especially after the Morningside Park incident in 1968.
- NYU buys $160+ million annually in goods and services from city businesses, with an additional $17 million from Village-based businesses
- Between 2000 and 2004, NYU has spent $400 million on construction and renovation; President Sexton thinks the turning point was the law school expansion in 2001, which, after a court battle, allowed NYU to build a 10-story building
- The Catholic Church on the southern perimeter of Washington Square Park is being eyed by NYU, with President Sexton claiming NYU would "not build to the legal maximum" and exacerbate the skyline blight (The Catholic Church is a big landowner in the city)
- Student and faculty housing might be next located in Brooklyn or NYU (!!)
- The supermarket at LaGuardia and Bleecker (the Morton Williams?) might be one target of NYU's future Manhattan expansion
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The problem I have with NYU is how they've changed the neighborhood. Where was once the Palladium is now NYU dorms. They've changed the make-up of the East Village, made it "safe" for suburban white kids and driven up rents and out the locals....
The gentrification of the east village, etc., is not entirely NYU's fault. However, as a former student, I can say that they are an evil corporation, and their new architechture, and some of the old, is awfully ugly. Private university in the public service? Give me a break. They're a money making institution. I currently work for NYU Medical Center, and aside from the med school, there is no financial relation to the university. They sold it after it started losing money after the advent of HMOs in the early 90s. Later, NYU medical center merged with Mount Sinai. The merger didn't work out for various reasons and the two are separate entities once again.
Despite all the construction, as a current NYU Stern MBA student I can attest that there is still a lack of space. A few examples:
NYU houses its MBA students who chose students in the palladium where they have to deal with 12 floors of undergrads and cramped "studio" apartments which may be the smallest in manhattan. The undergrads do things like pull fire alarms at 4am...
NYU loses a lot of good professors when they start to have kids and all they can offer them is a two bedroom in washington square village (which was originally intended to be grad school housing). This is the biggest reason the school is looking for buildings in Broklyn and Jersey.
I don't get the critism of the law school and kimmel center's height. They're next to building of up to 11 stories that date from the 30s and on the other side of the park there is that massive residentual building that looks kinda like a castle that dwarfs all of them.
The problem with NYU is they are no longer a university in the middle of a creative neighborhood. They are now THE neighborhood themselves. Either with explicitly NYU focused buildings, or the land they own and--pressumably--are eyeing towards future expansion.
The second they overwhelmed the neighborhood is the second they became evil. And as someone who has known NYU grads over the years, the allure of NYU is increasingly questionale. I know very few undergrads who truly speak glowingly about NYU.
In a microcosm, I look at the whole Bottom Line incident as a perfect example of NYUs larger issues. Yes, they were landlords of the Bottom Line and had a legal right to take over the property when rent went into arrears. But when the Bottom Line came up with the money owed, NYU like an 800lb gorilla in a bulldozer just ignored that and forced their legal right to provide yet another "Violet Cafe" for the school. 100% pathetic. Destroy an icon of music to provide cafeteria space. It's that kind of idiocy that really makes people hate NYU.
NYU may be a frustrating school for students, which is why reviews are such a mixed bag. What consistently keeps it from ranking higher in the US News and World report college issue is that it has a really tough time hanging on to undergrads, the students who think they want to live in NYC and then realize that their 18 year old selves might really be better off on a grassy quad somewhere. NYU's expansion is aimed at fixing this, among other things.
As a recent graduate of the school who transferred there midway through, a lot of the criticism is just. It is a money-sucking monster, the architectural values are bankrupt, the students are often spoilt brats who do little to add to the downtown community.
However, NYU deserves credit. It is now a world-class university that draws cultural events to the area and provides numerous programs open to the public, although they are generally poorly publicized. the students are relentlessly creative and bright, making downtown often the epicenter of trends and youth culture. while the dorms are regrettable, why should this be a surprise? most students move out as soon as they can. what sort of 22 year old chooses to live in a dorm over their own apartment, especially when on-campus living is vastly more expensive than off? of course you should steer clear of them.
NYU students are not guilty for gentrifying the area, that process was an inexorable one initiated by artists. NYU would never have become the 'dream school' it is today had the neighborhood not been cleaned up- you think parents would be spending $45,000 to send their kids to live with dealers? The process began well before the students got in on it. to complain about the fact that the neighborhood is no longer vibrant- perhaps that reflects the aging beholder and current culture more than any effect NYU has had.
nyc deserves a university like nyu, and doesn't always acknowledge the benefits. the students it attracts are the ones that pick up your dry cleaning, watch your kids, collate your copies, proof your drafts, clean your brushes, run your orders, prepare your briefs and bus your tables. making none or minimum wages, they are some of the most overeducated menial laborers you'll find anywhere. with a student body of around 30,000, the majority claiming that they work or intern, the city benefits greatly from having such a production plant of labor and brains.
town/gown relations are rarely perfect. but as someone who cleared your tables to fuel the real estate boom, pushed money into local businesses during late night study sessions, worked five unpaid internships to find one real job, loathed the bureaucracy of my school but loved my professors, and encourages others to apply, i think that those who complain should perhaps re-adjust their perspective.
NYU undergrad = cr*ppy school. Kids want to go there because its in NYC and they can escape the suburbs, not because of any academic excellence. Its basically an overpriced CUNY.
NYU grad schools = good schools, but basically the default for people in NYC who've worked a few years and don't want to leave town or haul themselves north to Columbia.
sure, nyu may be a soulless monster corporation that eats children and ushers out all the "other people"...but, uh, you haven't seen that change going on elsewhere?
cause new york doesn't really seem the same like it did ten years ago. or even thirty years ago.
my god, did you know the irish no longer run the bowery? and there are gentiles in brooklyn?
amazing how places can change over time. except for detroit. that place continues to suck.
Calling someone an "NYU Student" happens to be derrogatory. That's just the way it is. Sorry, kids.
John, nobody is opposed to things changing, but the way NYU operates the change is too much and gives back too little.
Sure, the Village needed to be cleaned up a bit after the 1970s and 1980s, but does that mean tearing down whole lots of buildings and just building monstrous skyscrapers?
Why is it that "cleaning up" in this city always gets equated with building huge glass buildings that serve very few and alienate the community?
There are other options you know.
but thankfully, calling someone a "New School Student" just makes people chuckle while shaking their heads.
and calling someone a "Pace student" happens to be a confusing statement. cause seriously, who really knows where Pace university is? Unicorns and leprachauns live there.
but making "nyu student" derogitory? it so fits. those damn nyu kids are always praising satan, kicking babies and pissing on the sidewalk at Bar None with the rest of the path kids.
yep. i feel proud to be a derogitory term.
as a student at nyu, i have to agree that NYU is leaning towards the evil side. for me, it has been an overpriced waste of time, and frankly, it seems to me that a lot of the nyu kids are rich and spoiled. nevertheless, i do agree with the other posts that pointed out some of nyus positives. also, much of the city has become consumed by gentrification and corporations over the last few years- nyu, perhaps, is not so much a cause, as a sign of the times. but its just my opinion.
NYU undergrad isn't all that bad. It depends on what school and department in which you study. You can get most of the amazing graduate professors if you try. In fact you can even get into some grad classes if you have the will and motivation. Unfortunately the vast majority of kids do not, they are just rich kids doing whatever it is you do after high school on daddy's dollar. Most do just enough to get by but that is no different than any other school.
NYU is run like a corporation but that is because they are trying to establish themselves like Columbia did many years ago. In order to create that kind of establishment you have to be aggresive and by the looks of it that aggressiveness has paid off in the last 20 years.
For example, just this last semester NYU's College of Arts and Sciences had to raise their GPA level for academic honors because so many kids were getting high scores. Now, NYU is in line with all the Ivies as far as academic honors go. This is a reflection of the growth NYU has seen in attracting brighter students and brighter faculty and this will only continue. NYU is on the up and up and in order to continue its progress it will no doubt be devouring more historical buildings.
Like the rest of the city, NYU is catering to the new New York "tourist/resident". They want to be able to say they live/go to school in New York City, but without all the negatives that used to accompany living in New York City: weird food, interesting stores, strange movies at the theaters. And minorities. God forbid parents send their lily-white precious to New York if she's going to be living next to THOSE people.
Making New York safe for white, middle class people, one chain store at a time.
NYU=evil corporation, if for no other reason than the fact that they're refusing to renegotiate the LANDMARK graduate assistant union contract, which expires this August. Sexton is anti-union, anti-labor, anti-student, and anti-education as far as I'm concerned. It's all about the "bottom line," and grad student labor comes much cheaper with no contractual workers' rights. Shame on Mr. Sexton!
http://www.2110uaw.org/gsoc/
Yes, agreed, there are many horrible things NYU has done to the Village, and the city as a whole; in fact, I'll go as far to say even the treatment of their students, specifically involving finacing is unethical--then again, with a majority of them coming from such wealth, who notices outside of us few, the proud, the poor. Yet, I believe attacking the students as a whole, well, that redfines the term unjust.
A breed of self-righteous pricks have diffused from NYU, pissing off everyone from Tribeca to Carnegie Hill, though that ignores many students that own a passion for the city, kids who've worked fervently to call it their home. Perhaps what irks me, that has really pinched the nerve are the comments that express the feelings that NYU represents a tourist haven, safe and free from such things as sexual diversity, and minority. Those comments represent such hypocrisy (being said by people criticizing "self-righteous" NYU kids) that I simply can't take it. How ostentatious must you be? Is it not possible that maybe we have worked so passionately to get out of white-wash communities, knowing NYU to be our only portal to do so, that as Freshmen many, including myself, lived in crammed, over-priced triples with *GASP* african-americans, and even "the gays" (Surely that's what you msut expect us tourists see them as). We work day and nights in little-to-no pay jobs to ease our loans; not all of us have parents paying for our educations.
Really, all I'm trying to say is let off. Yes, NYU is a big, bad corproration, but let go of the student bashing. Perhaps we want help out NYC as much as you, because you know, some of us had to work to live here.
NYU is the best thing that ever happened to the area. Before NYU took over, the area, esp. Wash Sq. Park was horrible and simply filled with filth. Now, Greenwich Village is one of the most exclusive and sought after neighborhoods in the city...where's the down side? I frankly don't see it. Call me crazy, but having a world class university in the area instead of crackheads is a good thing.
I wish the city had more institutions like NYU.
Obviously NYU and the surrounding community have divergent interests at times, but some good has been done. How many of you complaining about the gentrification of the East Village lived there before this occured? Mull over that on your way to the Union Square green market...
I think some of the people who complain about all this gentrification are yes, the people who are currently enjoying the benefits of the safer, suburban-style living, but also the type of person who found refuge in the city when they had nowhere else to go.
Where's a starving artist or weirdo to go these days? Everything in New York is like suburban New Jersey with a flair of Princeton - when you be yourself, you get stared down in every neighborhood like you're some alien. Unless you can afford a particular neighborhood uniform and the twice-yearly updates, it's tough.
I remember somebody said it right: no self-respecting artist or creative person would ever live in New York City these days. What reason is there? Unless you like shallow scenesters or getting the dirt kicked out of you for being mistaken for a shallow scenester who's taking over a particular neighborhood, it just doesn't seem to be worth the money or struggle.
Listen up, gentrification=awesome. NYU should be credited for gentrifying Greenwich Village. Thank God the trash that pervaded the Village pre-Rudy G. are now gone. With every new building that NYU puts up, the area gets nicer. Gentrification is taking over and we're not going to be stopped!
Btw, the Bottom Line was a piece of garbage that deserved to be put out of its misery. The Bottom Line was a private business that wasn't profitable because it wasn't good enough anymore, and thus it was inefficient to have it there. You don't make money to pay rent, you can't stay in business, that's how a free market economy works. It's not NYU's fault that the Bottom Line was too weak nor does NYU owe the place any duty to help it survive.
If you're going to insult an entire student body, please spell "derogatory" properly. Some of the smartest, most accomplished people I know when to NYU undergrad - please stop with the ridiculous obsession with U.S. News and World Report rankings. NYU has lots of excellent professors and some of the strongest graduate departments and professional schools in the world. It's as much a part of this city as any other institution. And, no, I'm not an alum.
Sexton's a supercilious ass, though.
I think it is a disgrace for a) making NYU kids all seem to be spoiled brats which have their parents foot the bill and b) calling an "NYU student" a derogatory term.
I am a proud NYU student, having returned for my graduate degree after completing my UG. I am involved, pay for my own education, and feel it is worth every penny. I will never work with the wonderful professors I do again, and it has motivated me to pursue things i never would have.
I'm sorry...what's this about NYU undergrad being crappy? Last I checked the acceptance rate was 7% and shrinking...that's starting to look like the current ivy league rates...
i find it very ironic that many people seemed ticked off by "white rich NYU kids". NYU has one of the largest minority populations of all the high-ranking private universities, especially in the northeast. and one of the reasons my alum friends and i are sick of NYU is that we received negligible amounts of financial aid and every single one of us worked one or many jobs during college to afford living at school. now we're swamped with student loans for the rest of our lives. and that was our fault for choosing to go there but calling us either all-white or all-rich is nonsensical. hate the institution as much as you want but it's hard to make a broad generalization that encompasses 50,000+ students. what do you want to preserve about your beloved village - your attitude of racist judgmental hate?