Dive Summaries:
- Pioneering a new frontier in lavish compensation, New York University is revealed to have made loans to its executives and star professors for pricy vacation homes in locales including East Hampton, Fire Island and Litchfield County, Conn.
- It's not out of the ordinary for universities located in expensive locations--like NYU, Columbia and Stanford--to offer home loans to professors and executives, but providing funding for vacation properties is mostly unheard-of.
- According to NYU spokesman John H. Beckman, only a small fraction of the over 100 loans given by the school were for second homes, though privacy of the parties involved prevented him from commenting on the loans' terms.
- While these types of loans don't violate any specific compensation guidelines, they still ruffled lawmakers' feathers during former NYU Executive Vice President Jacob Lew's confirmation hearings as treasury secretary this year.
From the article:
... “That’s getting to be a little too sexy even for me, and I have a good sense of humor about these things,” said Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, a former president of George Washington University who has publicly defended high salaries for professors and university executives. “That is entertaining, actually. I don’t think that’s prudent. I don’t mind paying someone a robust salary, but I think you have to be able to pass a red-face test.” ...