Faced with budget problems, some colleges want to sell the president's house

The president of Manhattan's New School is about to lose an extraordinary asset: a five-story townhouse in the West Village that has served for decades as the official residence of the university's head.

The school, which projected a Budget deficit of $52 million is asking for $20 million for the home in fiscal year 2024 as it tries to stabilize its finances. The sale comes as shaky student enrollments, inflation and other forces threaten smaller colleges in New York City and across the country. To stay healthy, some have tried to sell real estate to shore up their balance sheets.

The New School building, in a residential block on West 11th Street, is especially valuable. It has also become a symbol of administrative bloat and arrogance for some at the university, a historically progressive, century-old institution with about 10,000 students.

Nearly 90 percent of the New School's faculty are part-time adjunct professors, some earning only about $6,000 per course, union leaders said. Dwight A. McBride, who resigned As president of the university last summer, he earned a total of $1.4 million a year, according to the federal government tax forms.

“We can't even imagine what it would be like to live in a $20 million house,” said Annie Larson, a labor leader who is also a knitwear designer and adjunct professor at the Parsons School of Design, the largest of the several colleges of the New School. “The inequality is unbelievable.”

When news was announced at a recent faculty meeting that the house would be put on the market, those in the room erupted in applause, said Sanjay Reddy, chair of economics at the university. He independently analyzed the school's finances and welcomed the decision.

It was quite a shift from the resentment that erupted during a grueling strike by part-time teachers for better wages in 2022, which saw classes halted for three weeks, and the anger that accompanied the school's decision to dismissed 122 administrative and other staff in October 2020.

“It's mostly symbolic,” said Dr. Reddy on selling the house, 'but I think it's still very important because every million counts. As they say: a million here, a million there, and soon you'll be talking about real money.

In New York City, major, well-funded research universities such as New York University and Columbia have expanded their real estate portfolios and transformed blocks and neighborhoods. But as the number of students attending college has dropped in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and as the New School and other less wealthy institutions fight for students, more and more students have turned to real estate sales as a way to close budget deficits and encourage donations. .

A sleek new building of 34 floors rent apartment complex recently opened on a former playing field on Long Island University's Brooklyn campus, built through a university deal with a private developer. St. Francis College in Brooklyn sold its campus on Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights for $ 160 million in 2023 and moved to new quarters in downtown Brooklyn.

And while the City University of New York still owns hundreds of buildings, it also recently decided to sell the homes of some university presidents.

Last year, CUNY sold the president's home at the College of Staten Island for $1.3 million, and in 2022 it sold a $2.3 million apartment used by the president of Medgar Evers College. It is now in the process of selling similar properties in Queens College and Lehman College.

A CUNY spokeswoman, Kathleen Lucadamo, said the sales “were driven by CUNY's decision to relinquish presidential residences as part of presidential recruitment packages.”

Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at NYU, said the steps made sense for the schools.

“Their job is to provide facilities for students to learn, not for presidents to live in,” he said. “We are well past the age of afternoon tea at the president's mansion.”

The New School for Social Research was founded in 1919 by a small group of leading American intellectuals and educators who wanted to study the social problems of the 20th century in a different way than was possible in traditional universities.

The school has since grown into several colleges, including the Parsons School of Designits most financially successful university, the Mannes Music School and the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts.

In the absence of a large endowment, the New School is heavily dependent on tuition revenue. Located in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country, it charges at the top end of U.S. schools, with an estimated total annual cost of $85,000 for a full-time student living on campus last school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Almost all students receive some form of financial aid.

To keep its classrooms filled, the New School has been less selective than some of its better-known neighbors, admitting 57 percent of those who applied for fall 2022, compared to 12 percent at NYU, the report shows. statistics. More than a third of the students in 2022 were International.

Half of the students who came to the school in 2018 did not graduate within four years, as the statistics show.

The university has also spent heavily on paying down debt, after borrowing more than $300 million to build a building new flagship building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street. The school had high hopes that it would generate significant revenue from student dormitories, but that did not go as well as planned, said Dr. Reddy.

Several students interviewed at the school said Wednesday they were frustrated with the way the university seemed to be handling its money. Despite the fancy new building and tuition of just over $50,000, students were asked to pay for things like art supplies and tickets to concerts in music criticism classes.

They said some dorms suffered from mold and other classrooms also needed work. Many sympathized with the professors who had gone on strike.

“There's an interesting priority of, you know, a lavish building rather than paying employees,” said Sawyer Strain, 20, a sophomore studying strategic design and management at Parsons.

Dr. McBride, who is now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, was replaced this summer by an interim president, Donna Shalala, a former Clinton Cabinet official. Dr. Reddy said Ms Shalala had expressed interest in curbing costs that had not previously been considered, including the sale of the house where she lives.

As they search for a new president, the school is looking for someone with “financial acumen” and “a track record of continued fundraising success,” the school said. public vacancy. The salary range is between $750,000 and $1.1 million.

A New School spokeswoman, Amy Malsin, said the school had a plan to overcome the current problems. “We are confident in our ability to stabilize the university's finances and are taking all necessary steps to ensure that outcome,” she said.

Camille Baker reporting contributed.