The NYU housing system has a long history of limited campus space. Compared to Columbia, NYU offers half the academic square footage per student. Compared to Yale, NYU provides less than one-fifth. This shortage is most obvious in housing. 

For the past seven years, NYU has exceeded the number of applicants from the year prior. During the same period, the admission rate has remained steady. How can the university celebrate its increasingly large applicant pool and its improved desirability to prospective students when it is struggling to house currently enrolled students? 

This semester, students have been placed into three Affinia hotels in Midtown due to the temporary closure of Hayden residence hall. While the hotels provide housekeeping twice a week, a television set with cable and other amenities, the students are alienated from campus. NYU provides monthly MetroCards to these undergraduates in place of a shuttle service. In addition, students who chose to live in the hotels for the fall semester are given priority placement in the study abroad program of their choice next semester, which served as the main attraction for its current residents. NYU has fairly compensated students willing to move out of the area, but housing shortages have been a long-standing issue within the university. In 1985, NYU placed 350 students in the Seville Hotel. More recently, there was a severe housing shortage in 2002 and small numbers of students have been placed in hotels every year since. 

This reflects a consistent pattern that needs a more permanent solution. In order to provide more housing for students, NYU has to either bid on buildings or construct new ones. Although decreasing the admissions rate would lower tuition revenue and endowment, reducing the admissions rate would also allow the university to operate with significantly lower expenses. While the NYU administration has made a noteworthy investment in building renovations, it comes at an implicit cost. In order to invest in dorms for incoming classes, current undergraduates must bare the brunt of renovation — either being displaced in off-campus housing or competing for dorms that have noticeable disparities in quality. As such, having fewer students would likely lead to better housing opportunities for active undergraduates. Supporting campus growth by admitting more students is not feasible without a tradeoff in square footage per student. 

While the housing shortage presents a major challenge to the NYU administration’s ability to cater to its students in the midst of university expansion, it is also indicative of its inability to find a better solution to the recurring problem. The strategies that the administration has employed unacceptably prioritize future growth over current students and this short-sighted fix does not address the crux of the issue. NYU should attend to the needs of the current student body, not compromise its housing situation in the name of an ongoing expansion plan. 

A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, Sept. 2 print edition. Email the WSN Editorial Board at [email protected].