NYU nixes loans for faculty vacation homes

NYU President John Sexton
NYU President John Sexton

New York University faculty members will no longer receive loans from the school to buy vacation homes, the New York Times reported.

The move comes as part of changes aimed at reducing tensions between university leaders and professors, the Times said. In addition, NYU President John Sexton — who in many ways has become the face of the school’s much maligned expansion plan — will step down when hs terms ends in 2016.

“This is a matter of extreme importance to us,” Martin Lipton, the chairman of the board of trustees, told the Times. “No university can prosper if there’s disruption, if there’s unhappiness in the family.”

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NYU’s board defended its loans for second homes until now, insisting they were a crucial tool for hanging on to top talent. But as details came forward about the sizes and terms of the dealings, the loans increasingly became a point of contention.

A spokesman for Sexton, who was provided with loans for a home on Fire Island, an apartment in Washington Square, plus a salary of nearly $1.5 million, was not immediately available for comment to the Times. [NYT]Julie Strickland