NYU: As Students Become Debt Serfs, “Star Professors” Buy Homes in East Hampton with University Money

The article below is just another sad example of the almost nonexistent moral base evident within the privileged elite of America today. While one graduating class after another is churned endlessly through the debt serfdom assembly line we call “higher education,” their “star professors” and university leaders are purchasing vacations homes in luxurious locations such as East Hampton.  Of course, it’s merely a symptom of the rot and corruption institutionalized at the top of the military-indsutrial-Wall Street complex flowing downward and infecting the entire culture, but it is an untenable social dynamic that will snap back with a vengeance upon all of us sooner rather than later.  From the New York Times:

Follow one of Fire Island’s quaint footpaths away from the ferry dock, past modest cottages and better-appointed vacation homes, to an elegant modern beach house that extends across three lots. A composition in bold, unadorned planes, it has a perimeter of green and two separate entrances, each outfitted with the long ramps that are the local custom. 

The house, which is owned by John Sexton, the president of New York University, was bought with a $600,000 loan from an N.Y.U. foundation that eventually grew to be $1 million, according to Suffolk County land records. It is one of a number of loans that N.Y.U. has made to executives and star professors for expensive vacation homes in areas like East Hampton, Fire Island and Litchfield County, Conn., in what educational experts call a bold new frontier for lavish university compensation.

Richard Revesz, who recently ended a decade as the dean of New York University Law School, lives with his wife, an N.Y.U. law professor, in a handsome West Village town house that was financed by N.Y.U. They also have a home on more than 65 acres near the Housatonic River in Litchfield County, also helped by an N.Y.U. loan, according to land records in both locales. According to the university’s most recently available tax return, they owe the university $5.7 million altogether.

He declined to comment on the terms of most of those loans, like interest rates and any provisions for forgiveness, citing the privacy of the parties.

The board of trustees has raised his salary to nearly $1.5 million, with a $2.5 million “length of service” bonus to come in 2015, and has guaranteed him retirement benefits of $800,000 a year.  The university also provides him an apartment by Washington Square.

But many faculty members have bristled at both his pay package and what they consider a top-down management style more fit for a corporation than a university. The faculties of five N.Y.U. schools have passed votes of no confidence in him this year. (The law school voted to support Dr. Sexton.)

In 2007, however, N.Y.U. had extended him another loan on the property, a 10-year mortgage for $600,000. That loan was modified twice, both times lowering the interest rate. The loan is now due in 2015, two years sooner.

The second time, the rate was changed to “the current short-term applicable federal rate.” The university declined to elaborate on what that meant, but the Internal Revenue Service’s short-term applicable federal rate at the time was 0.19 percent.

“Universities are tax-exempt to educate students, not help their executives purchase vacation homes,” he said in a statement on Monday. “It’s hard to see how the student with a lifetime of debt benefits from his university leaders’ weekend homes in the Hamptons.”

Oh lighten up.  Who cares if an entire generation of Americans is relegated to indentured servitude as professors snap up vacation homes with university loans.  This is America dammit!

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

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2 thoughts on “NYU: As Students Become Debt Serfs, “Star Professors” Buy Homes in East Hampton with University Money”

  1. When suckers stop paying for expensive private universities this will stop. When the money is flowing like it has been for decades then people will try and get as much as they can. Amerika! Amerika!

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