Henry Kissinger once said that academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low. In today’s NYT, Mark Taylor (who runs Columbia’s Religion Department) explains that the stakes are now actually rather high in NYC’s seats of learning:
Rather than learning to live within their means, Columbia University, where I teach, and New York University are engaged in a fierce competition to expand as widely and quickly as possible. Last spring, N.Y.U. announced plans to increase its physical plant by 40 percent over the next 20 years; this summer Columbia secured approval for its $6.3 billion expansion in Upper Manhattan. N.Y.U. is also opening a new campus in Abu Dhabi this fall.
The financial arrangements for these projects remain obscure, but it is clear that they will not be completed without increasing the universities’ already significant and perhaps unsustainable levels of debt. Last year Columbia reported $1.4 billion in outstanding debt against a $5.89 billion endowment. N.Y.U. had a staggering $2.22 billion debt with a relatively modest $2.2 billion endowment — one that had shrunk by more than 11 percent over the previous fiscal year.
This is worrying, especially if (like me) you earn your keep at NYU. So what does Professor Taylor propose we do about this ugly situation?
The competition between Columbia and N.Y.U. is an example of what educational institutions should not be doing. Universities should be looking for new ways to provide high-quality education to more students at a lower price. In today’s world, it no longer makes sense for every school to cover every subject.
For example, it is absurd for Columbia and N.Y.U. to be have [sic] competing philosophy departments at a time when there are few jobs for philosophy academics. Instead, they could cooperate by forming a joint graduate and undergraduate program, which would reduce costs by requiring fewer faculty members and a more modest physical presence, while at the same time increasing course choices for students.
Now, as soon as I read this, it rang true. If there’s one problem we have at NYU – and it must be the same up at Columbia – it’s the massive surplus of shockingly overpaid philosophers lolling about the campus. Wander through Washington Square Park any day of the week, and you have to fight your way past hordes of Gucci-shod, Prada-wearing, mink-coated, bling-laden philosophy professors, all weighed down with emerald-encrusted first editions of Kant’s Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy. It’s like Wall Street in the Eighties.
Or not (the only professor at NYU who seems to live like that is Nouriel Roubini). I know that the humanities are hard to fund these days but the idea that NYU or Columbia could much affect their debt burdens by rationalizing their cadres of philosophers strikes me as unlikely. I wonder if Professor Taylor would be as keen on mergers if NYU had a religious department (rather than a smaller program) that could be melded with his own base at Columbia, with staff cuts for both sides?
More seriously, there is an unquestionable advantage in having different universities rubbing up against each other in NYC. For example, Columbia is home to Jeffrey Sachs while NYU houses William Easterly – one of the greatest thinkers on development aid and one of its greatest critics respectively. It’s hard to imagine that, if the two were suddenly housed in one department, a coherent intellectual agenda would emerge… sometimes institutional competition is necessary for debate.
