The board at Brooklyn’s 154-year-old Polytechnic University approved its merger with New York University last night. While NYU says it wanted to acquire Polytechnic because it lacked an engineering department, critics said the Manhattan school was just looking for a land-grab and didn’t have Polytechnic’s academic interests at heart. The state must approve the merger, by no means a given as the state Senate investigates charges of conflict of interest leveled against several Polytechnic board members. Polytechnic has a 650,000-square-foot campus in Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center and holds air rights that developer Forest City Ratner could be interested in buying.
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