Yeshiva University Will Sell Off Buildings, Cut Programs To Relieve Budget Crisis
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Josh Nathan-Kazis December 12, 2013
Yeshiva University announced sweeping budget cuts on December 10 in a sign of the deepening financial crisis at the beleaguered school.
The cuts, first reported in the Y.U. Commentator, the school’s undergraduate newspaper, include drawbacks on programming and the sale of real estate.
The university has also withdrawn a commitment to partially restore previous cuts in their contributions to faculty retirement accounts. In an email to faculty, university president Richard Joel apologized for the decision, but called it necessary.
Joel also announced that the he would cut his own salary, which was $855,000 in 2012, by $100,000. The school will also freeze the salaries of senior administrators.
Joel’s tenure has been troubled since 2008, when the university lost $100 million in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme and hundreds of millions more in the overall economic crisis.
A lawsuit filed by men who allege that they were victims of sex abuse at Y.U.’s high school in the 1970s and 1980s also threatens the university’s fiscal wellbeing. In October, the bond rating agency Moody’s downgraded the school’s credit rating in October.
The email to faculty Joel sent on December 10 described the cuts in general terms. According to The Commentator, a senior administrator spoke in more detail at a faculty meeting the following day, announcing that the school would sell 11 properties at its Washington Heights campus.
Joel asked that schools and departments within the university “identify areas for both immediate and long term budgeted expense reductions.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
