President Hamilton Addresses Key NYU Issues

The event, titled “Afternoon Tea with President Hamilton,” was held in the Hayden Residence Hall Commuter Lounge and gave students an opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns, regarding any aspect of university life.

On Tuesday, Mar. 8, NYU President Andrew Hamilton held his very first Town-Hall with the student body of NYU in New York. The event, titled “Afternoon Tea with President Hamilton,” was held in the Hayden Residence Hall Commuter Lounge and gave students an opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns, regarding any aspect of university life. President Hamilton began the event by stating, “I’m really aware that the single most important thing I’ve set myself to do in these first months at NYU is to listen. To listen to the issues that are up the most in everyone’s minds, whether it is the Board of Trustees, whether it be the faculty, whether it be staff, or very much whether it’s the students.” Thus, this town-hall presented him with an opportunity to hear what issues students see as important for NYU in 2016. The town-hall was then led by moderator and five panelists to discuss issues such as affordability and the Global Network. Here are the main takeaways from the event:

The Global Network

When asked about the GNU, Hamilton stated, “...obviously this is something that has been a very significant part of NYU for quite some time, I do point out to everyone this isn’t an adventure of the last ten years or so. It was in 1958 that NYU Madrid was opened and it really has been a steady development with other sites opening in the subsequent 50 years...the GNU has been quite a remarkable achievement and universities around the world recognize that NYU has been a leader in its international engagement, in its outreach, its establishment of campuses and study away sites...It does have its issues and challenges of course, the world is a messy place, but NYU has very clearly stated a position that it needs to be in the world just as NYU is in and of the city, by being in these locations, by offering students the opportunity to study in many different cultures around the world, offering faculty the opportunity to develop research and collaborate in particular regions.” The global network is at its best when there is a flow among the sites: when students travel between sites to experience different cultures, when faculty at all sites is at its best, and finally when there is a flow of ideas so each site can influence, inform, and improve the others. One of the biggest aspects in this topic is clubs, where clubs from the three portal schools can work together as almost one club.

Academics

There is a big difference between NYU’s sites in terms of academic rigor as certain sites may be considered more academically challenging than others. Over the last few years, faculty and committee involvement has increased, and efforts to address this issue will continue to increase in the coming years. President Hamilton said, “I do think the global network is a project in progress, and we should always be looking for mechanisms to improve what we do in each of the sites. And, there is nothing more important than to improve the academic quality and the academic rigor of the offerings in sites and here in New York. No university should ever be content with where it is in any of its activities. We should always be looking to improve.” Academic consistency between sites and schools is also an issue, as certain subjects for a major in one college might not count in another college. While this conversation must be started in the university, inevitably individual departments and individual degree programs have certain constraints as some are accredited by outside organizations and must follow certain curricular pathways with different levels of flexibility. It is important for students of all majors to have the opportunity to study abroad, and hence the range of courses offered in the different sites must be worked on. One of the biggest constraint is science courses, however these can be found in all three portal schools. There will always be limits as not all sites can become as large as a portal school or as NYU New York and so there will always be a desire of variability; “but the option that students have at least two or three sites where they can take key required classes for their major is very important.”

Affordability

In his first two months in office, President Hamilton has focused on affordability as one of his key issues: “It was the single most common issue that was raised for me as I met with students, as I met with faculty, as I met with staff...I wanted to begin a process, to begin a focus on the issue of affordability, a focus that would be immediate and short-term in one hand but also long-term on the other.” A key development in this issue is for the next academic year, the rise in tuition has been decreased from a 3.5%-3.9% to a 2.9%, the lowest rise in tuition in over 20 years. One of the other biggest problems related to affordability is the cost of board and food, and a current proposition being worked on freezing the cost of housing in New York. Moreover, NYU will soon be adding 600-700 low-cost bed options for the next academic year, which is an important start to decreasing the rate of housing. Students can also possibly consider housing at the Brooklyn campus as it is cheaper than most Manhattan-based dorms. Finally, from the next academic year, NYU will begin to remove the student fees for exchange students, which is usually $55 per student. One of the biggest challenges NYU faces in reducing its cost of attendance is it has a much smaller endowment than universities like Princeton and Yale. Looking at only the undergraduate side, NYU has 25,000 undergraduate students while Princeton has 5,000; therefore, if we wanted Princeton’s financial aid package, we would need five time’s Princeton’s endowment, which is about 120 billion dollars. NYU’s endowment, in comparison, is a mere 3.5 billion dollars. Despite this difference, NYU does have a very aggressive financial aid system; the university has an annual 4% spend rate, therefore only 120 million dollars are available per year for financial aid from endowment income. However, last year, NYU spent 300 million dollars on financial aid, demonstrating the university’s commitment to supporting low income students. Increasing financial aid is also an incredibly high priority at NYU. NYU is currently in the middle of a large, one-billion dollar fundraising campaign called “Momentum to Increase Financial Aid”, which is now past 550 million dollars, indicating progress in the right direction. Another option being considered by the university is the exploration of alternative ways of delivering education; President Hamilton has set up a steering committee to begin working with different departments and schools to answer questions such as degrees in a shorter period of time and a more flexible approach for gaining college credits elsewhere e.g. at a lower cost institution, AP classes from high school, etc. Thirdly, another option is exploring the role of technology, for example introducing an option for online classes. All of these options to lower the cost of tuition require deep, academic analysis in order to ensure the maintenance of academic quality. One of the problems with decreasing the cost of tuition is how it will affect the budget for programing and other activities on campus. As a non-profit institution, there is the zero-sum issue budget for all activities part of the university are raised through tuition, and pursuing one program or initiative reduces the available funding for another possible program. Currently, the Affordability Task Force, which is part of the SSC is working towards more transparency over university budget, and will soon also begin to work with the steering committee led by faculty. On this topic, Hamilton added “I think that is a deeply academic issue; in individual schools it must be the faculty, the students, and the academic leadership working together to be sure that in any approach that we pursue, academic quality is not reduced.” He also gave the example NYU’s medical school’s 3-year MD degree, which is usually 4 years long but has successfully been reduced to 3 years at NYU; not only does this reduce an entire year’s cost of tuition, but also possibly adds another year of employment and therefore salary for students.

Other Issues

Tandon School of Engineering:Pres. Hamilton believes “...arguably the single most significant academic development NYU has had in the last decade was the return of engineering”, by acquiring Brooklyn Polytechnic University (now renamed NYU Tandon School of Engineering). “...I remember this as a university that has had no engineering for 50-60 years, and the idea that a leading university would go into the 21st century without technology, without engineering, is unthinkable.” The presence of NYU Tandon does two things: first, because of the role technology plays in so many different aspects of life, we begin to see collaborations and new program between Tandon and other NYU schools, such as the Center for Cyber Security which is a collaboration between Tandon and the NYU Law School, collaborations between Tandon and the School of Nursing, and, one of most important, the collaboration between Tandon and Tisch, which has resulted in MAGNET (Media and Game Networks), which teaches gaming technology. Secondly, it provides not only an academic and research space for NYU students but also incubator space: “...in the 21st century a university located in the city of New York, we have a role to play in helping out students and faculty develop their ideas.” All of these allowed the integration of Tandon into NYU, despite the geographical separation over the Hudson River. Integration of online students:On the question of the integration of online students into the NYU community, Pres. Hamilton commented, “[this] speaks to an inevitable development that all universities are exploring and indeed experimenting with; the extent to which online classes should be expanded, the extent to which they are working, the extent to which they should become part of the future of the university.” Online courses are supposed to be taken at a distance, hence a prevalent question is how to use social media to manage online community. One key idea for dealing with this is the existence of a virtual college. President Hamilton would like input from students, especially online students, on what the university can do to make them feel less distant and alienated from the university. Veterans at NYU:Hamilton enormously supports the continued involvement of veterans and attendance of veterans at NYU, but has not been exposed to several of the issues they face including funding. He has promised to look into the issue and try his best to address it. The session ended with the question of how students can help the President and NYU, to which Hamilton replied: “I think you have been doing a great job already over the past several years … the reason I came and took this role was because I saw an institution that was incredibly talented, that had really travelled a great distance in a very short time, and it was quite remarkable what NYU has done in it academic programs. I am here because this is an exciting place to be and I know the students have very much played a role in that progress, so I would just say that I hope we can continue a free flow of discussion and engagement.” A live stream of the event can be watched here.This article was written by Lathika Chandra Mouli. Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: NYU Student Government