
NYU Eats World: An alumna laments the rise of an imperial university - benbreen
http://chronicle.com/article/NYU-Eats-World/148979/
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wdewind
I can't agree more with this piece. Having recently (5 years ago) been at NYU,
I can tell you the NYU the author remembers nostalgically is completely gone.
It's a shell of a school, massive and well funded, yet intellectually just
going through the motions. If you are not going to Stern you are absolutely
wasting your money.

~~~
isamuel
NYU's law school has been an elite institution for some time. The same is true
of the philosophy and Italian studies departments.

~~~
larrys
" The same is true of the philosophy and Italian studies departments"

If I may ask what kind of job can one get graduating with those degrees that
will pay for the massive tuition bill? What is the expected pay for having a
degree in those two majors?

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cookrn
I've been interested in the ITP program [0] for awhile and would be curious to
hear any graduates' responses to this article...

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisch_School_of_the_Arts#Intera...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisch_School_of_the_Arts#Interactive_Telecommunications_Program)

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johndoze
This article is yet another thread in a long line of people complaining about
NYU's rise. My personal favorite comes from the local rap group, Ratking:

    
    
      Seems random, like Stanford transplanted to the fountain and the arch
      Infecting the apple, a cancer in its heart
      Why'd you make a campus out the park?
      If it keeps spreading, It'll be deaded
      Panting and parched.
    

([http://rap.genius.com/Ratking-snow-beach-
lyrics](http://rap.genius.com/Ratking-snow-beach-lyrics))

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dfc
A giant satellite campus is sufficient condition to say a university "eats
world"? Does this expression mean something less grandiose than I imagine?

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cpwright
I think the Abu Dhabi campus is just one symptom of the greater problem the
author is making. Grand real estate ambitions in lower Manhattan cost a lot of
money; what many consider over-the-top perks for professors (or
administration) also cost a lot of money. The school has a small endowment
compared to what it would like to consider its peer group; therefore the cost
of all these things, which, in the author's opinion, do very little to improve
a student's education all fall onto the students as increased tuition.

I tend to agree wholeheartedly with the author, and see symptoms of the same
thing at my alma mater, which feels the need to rebrand itself as Stony Brook
University instead of SUNY Stony Brook, because it doesn't want to sound as
much like a state school.

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dfc
All of what you mention can be true and I still find it comical to say "NYU
eats world." The British Empire "ate the world." Many people have wrote
"Google eats the world." Grand real estate ambitions in NYC and a giant
satellite campus in Abu Dhabi is not eating the world.

~~~
akgerber
Ah, but for a certain breed of New Yorker, downtown Manhattan constitutes the
world.

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santaclaus
While human rights violations by a major US university's satellite campus are
certainly concerning, on the topic of professor salaries, so what? NYU has top
programs in a number of areas (The Courant Institute, for instance), and
Manhattan, especially lower Manhattan, ain't cheap. If you want to compete
with the Stanfords and the MITs and the Harvards of the world for top talent,
you are going to have to spend some bread. I don't see the problem here.

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wdewind
Courant is getting better, but when I was there the faculty was lackluster and
was so heavily based on mathematical theory that it was getting smoked by more
modern programs like CMU's or Stanford's. I would not recommend Courant to
anyone looking to study CS, but it may have changed. Evan Korth was doing a
lot to make moves, but a lot of the faculty was antiquated and it looked like
he was fighting an uphill battle. During one of my lectures I literally had a
TA stand behind a professor as he lectured and wave his hands frantically as
the professor taught us incorrect things. The TA would stay behind for a few
minutes and explain what the professor, in his senility, had gotten wrong.
Another class I had a teacher cancel literally 2 weeks in a row of class, as
well as probably 4 or 5 other individual classes throughout the semester
(nearly half the semester was canceled because he was "sick"). Of course the
tested material remained the same...

All that for the bargain price of just $55,000 a year. I dropped out 6 months
later and have never looked back.

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magicalist
> _so heavily based on mathematical theory_

er, that would be the Courant Institute of _Mathematical Sciences_ , and while
the CS department is within it, it's not really surprising that they would
have a focus on mathematics. And they are indeed very well respected,
especially in applied mathematics (and to a lesser extent, pure mathematics).

Not sure why this comment bothered me so much, but there are important things
outside of CS :) I'm not very familiar with their reputation in computer
science circles, however.

~~~
wdewind
Sorry, you're absolutely correct, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. As a
math institute I have no problems with it, and it has a great reputation. I
have a number of friends who felt the program was good.

Regardless, the main problems with the place are the people teaching in the CS
program, not the material being taught (although that could use an update as
well).

