In a stressful and uncertain time, New School students are scattered around the world, trying to stay motivated enough to get through the remainder of the semester. Faculty are working to organize their courses through Zoom and online, which comes with its own unique challenges. The New School community receives frequent email updates from either Provost Tim Marshall or President David Van Zandt about new policy updates, grading scale changes, refund policies, housing updates, and more.
Around the country, university administrators are facing increasing pressure to respond to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, including calls for partial tuition refunds, improved student resources, and clarity on institutions’ plans moving forward. The dean of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Allyson Green, posted a much-derided video of herself dancing and shrugging her shoulders, attached to an email explaining why students would not get any tuition refunds. Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, recently reopened the university and resumed classes, leading to a spike in COVID-19 cases on campus.
We spoke with President Van Zandt last Thursday. Here are some key moments from the interview, touching on the university’s handling of this global crisis, the state of The New School’s finances, the decision not to refund any part of students’ tuition, the move-out and refund policy for students in dorms, and plans for graduation, thesis, summer session, and Fall 2020.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length and was conducted via ZOOM on March 26, 2020. The interview was conducted by editors Siri Chilukuri and Martin Kaff, with Editor-in-Chief Kurt Burger, university spokesperson Amy Malsin, and the President’s Chief-of-Staff Deborah Bogosian present. To read a full transcript of the conversation, click here.
The New School’s Approach to Handling the Pandemic
In what ways do you think the university was well prepared for this, and what things would you wish you had done differently?
Did we have a process in place to deal with a pandemic? No, no we didn’t. We have to rely on public health officials and that kind of thing. What we do have is a very resilient set of leaders and directors around the university. Faculty played a big role in this. We’ve had to come together to make decisions quickly, more or less ethically, and have communicated pretty effectively.
My sense is that we will probably postpone or defer at least the early [summer courses] at this point. There should be an announcement soon.
I understand a lot of decisions [the university] made were in a kind of crisis situation. Are there specific things that you wish you had done differently?
Maybe it’s a character flaw, but I never like to look back at decisions. I do think that maybe if we had more clarity on closing the dorms, or if we had more clarity even now on getting a pass/fail thing done quicker, we would do it.
You can never get them all right, but it is sort of at the heart of our decision process, I think, knowing who you are and what you want and what you’re working towards.
What is the university’s plan if this crisis does continue into summer sessions and even if it does continue to fall?
My sense is that we will probably postpone or defer at least the early [summer courses] at this point. There should be an announcement soon. I think it’s going to be hard to run something in June.
Specifically for the fall, if the semester did begin online and look like it was going to be online for the entire semester, would there be changes such as tuition getting adjusted, professors/faculty paid differently? What is the financial calculation if the fall looks different than normal?:
There are so many different individual scenarios. We could come back in for a face-to-face mode. We could come back during the first five weeks online, and then people come back. Or we could end up online for the entire semester. There are lots of different ways to deal with that. One of the ways might be to do it all online or to push back the start of the semester. Just push things forward. I think here would be tough decisions, if it looked like some of the shortfalls were permanent. Then it’s a question of the apparatus we built to provide a particular kind of education. I can’t maintain it, there’s just no way to maintain it. I think we get about $100 million each fall in tuition, and if you lost half of that, there’s no way we could keep employing people in the way we are right now. You would have to have a pretty dramatic shift in what we do.
Specifically about Student Health Services, what is their current maximum capacity? Are they able to test for COVID-19? What services are currently available?:
Amy Malsin, assistant vice president of communication and public affairs stepped in to reply:
They are operating virtually as everyone is, but there is no one to serve at this time.
I think we get about $100 million each fall in tuition, and if you lost half of that, there’s no way we could keep employing people in the way we are right now. You would have to have a pretty dramatic shift in what we do.
The last time we spoke was in anticipation of the transition between yourself and incoming President [Dwight A.] McBride. Right now is kind of a unique moment that nobody anticipated. What’s going on with the transition? Is that still happening as scheduled?
It’s completely on schedule, still transitioning, Dwight [McBride] has been here for at least a number of days every month and he just moved into an apartment on University Place he had intended. It was last weekend that he started moving in. And he is, like all of us, doing a lot of it by Zoom. He’s not met with people physically. He’s been involved in all of our calls. We had a Board of Trustees conference call this morning he was involved in and he’s doing the things he would have done in the ordinary course, and this is a way of easing himself into that position.
I don’t think we should be in a situation where there are two presidents around. So the handover will happen and I think it’s really important for Dwight, too, to get into my seat and begin to make his own decisions. He’s a wonderful person. He’s probably going to have a different style than I have, but I think people are really going to enjoy him. He’s very personable, very empathetic. He’ll be great.
Were there any discussions of postponing that, on your part or on the incoming president’s part? Was there any discussion about changing any of that, or everything was always anticipated to be on schedule, even with the crisis?
No, we haven’t had any discussions about changing the date at all. He’s not raised it, I haven’t raised it with him. I don’t think the board leadership, as far as I know, hasn’t had any discussion about that. The difference is that we basically took what we were doing, planning on doing, face-to-face and converted a lot of it to Zoom.
COVID-19 in The New School Community and Access to Dorms
Van Zandt spoke at the beginning of the interview about the importance of the health and safety of The New School community members.
“You know, we’ve had a number of infections already in the community, not a large number,” he said, “we’ve only had one hospitalization that I am aware of, one of the facilities people.” But he added, the crisis hadn’t peaked in New York yet. “There will be more infections,” he said.
Where is the university taking its cues from? The Department of Education, New York City, Department of Health?
Frankly, there was a point, because of the volatility of the situation, where we were thinking, ‘Isn’t it the safest for the students who are in the dorms now not to leave those dorms?’, but that was sort of quickly overruled by the city and the state wanting as many people out as possible. We’ll probably have a little less than a hundred students who for one reason or another couldn’t go home or couldn’t go back, couldn’t leave. They’re all in Kerrey Hall and they’re all spaced out; we’re using all 8 floors of Kerrey Hall to space them out. That’s a good example where something we thought would be a good idea got changed pretty quickly listening to both health authorities and to government agencies.
What precautions were taken as these students were moving out of 92Y, The Alabama, and 20th street into Kerrey Hall? What precautions were taken to make sure those students weren’t exposed?
I don’t think you can ever be completely sure, but we certainly didn’t have people there who were not feeling well. I don’t think you can say, or anyone can say, you won’t get exposed. I think once you’re in this situation, what you want to do is get people to make the change you’re going to make as quickly as possible, at least in a very close contact, and you don’t want people who already have symptoms doing that work.
Online Education Experience, Graduation, and Refunds
What would you say to students who are concerned about this [online semester] being a disruption to their experience in university?
I don’t think that there will be many places where it’s going to be that much different. I suppose maybe New York City will be different, but if anything, I think we would be more of a leader in this. I think other students are going to be better off here. The commitment we’re trying to make, for all of our continuing students as well as for our new students, is that one way or the other, we will provide a decent education for you in the Fall when we come back. If you join us for the first time, we can’t promise that it will be identical to what we’ve done last fall, but we’re doing the very best we can. And frankly, we are in no way different than any other university. It’s going to be hard, depending on the conditions, for any university to do anything but that: do the best they can with alternative ways of delivering education.
Specifically about students who need shop access, in Parsons, or studio access for CoPA, what is happening for students who are graduating, who are doing capstone or any kind of thesis who need physical access?
Yeah, as I said up front, that’s probably the toughest one to resolve. Our goal is to get everybody who was to graduate this June or May to graduate. And whether that involves trying to do something virtually, which maybe it would be a change to the nature of the projects, to do it virtually. Or maybe simply look at the physical work that people have done up to this point and base the final determination on that.
We did make a decision very early on, which was to say to all employees that we would, for the foreseeable future, keep paying them. And that includes not just the full-time salaried people but it also included part-timers.
According to Goldman Sachs, we are entering a global recession due to the coronavirus outbreak. There are so many students who are about to graduate in a few weeks, what kind of advice do you have for them?
I would say to someone, at least ride it out knowing it’s going to be a couple months. Just try to be patient. The fact that you’re not getting a job now or internship now has nothing to do with you, it has to do with public health and the economy right now. Just try to wait it out. I am very concerned about international students who are trying to get OPT [Optional Practical Training] visas. I think the rule is you have to have a job within a certain period of time and have your visa extended. I’m hoping this will all resolve before many people hit that crunch time, but that is a concern and I don’t know what our government will do about it or what we can do about it.
Are you aware of students’ reactions on social media? Do you have a response?
Well, I’m certainly very aware of them. They’re hard to miss. We are refunding dorms and related meal plans. We are refunding proportionate to that. We thought on tuition, you know, we made a commitment to try to complete these courses. It won’t be perfect but provide people with credit towards their academic progression and graduation. And we want to focus on that and do that.
But once you get into tuition refunds, it’s a very difficult place for almost any university in the country other than the ones that have got a gigantic endowment. We have people hired through the academic term, the money we collect from tuition goes towards paying those people through that. We did make a decision very early on, which was to say to all employees that we would, for the foreseeable future, keep paying them. And that includes not just the full-time salaried people but it also included part-timers. Our commitment for anybody is that you’ll— the income you would have expected whether you are salaried or hourly worker, we want it to continue for as long as we could.
We’re really looking to finishing this semester and actually being ready next fall to welcome continuing students back and a whole new crop of new students. If I had to say the biggest worry of the leadership, as well as the Board of Trustees, is — we’re not alone, again, every university that’s tuition-based has to worry about this — but what’s going to happen this fall?
I’d think we’d rather look at it with emergency funds and other [methods] to help support individual students depending on their circumstances. And not base it on what program they’re in or what course they were taking.
On studio-based colleges and refunds
Van Zandt acknowledged that the colleges are not all the same and said as much at the beginning of the interview: that the online learning set-up will impact particular kinds of students much more than others.
Our goal this semester is to get everybody done so they get credit for the classes. And if you have a seminar class at NSSR or Lang it’s one thing, Zoom is actually fairly good for that. On the other hand, if you’re trying to make something physically as part of a project at Parsons or you know you need equipment to practice if you’re at Jazz or Mannes or something like that, it’s harder. It’ll be harder to replicate that. But the faculty have been busy at work this week trying to figure all that out. So it’s an interesting time.
Has there been any sort of consideration of a case-by-case basis refund for students? Particularly for studio-based or performing arts disciplines or Parsons, really anybody who’s not going to have access to physical resources that they’re going to need?
I’d think we’d rather look at it with emergency funds and other [methods] to help support individual students depending on their circumstances. And not base it on what program they’re in or what course they were taking.
Finances & Costs for The New School
You mentioned the emergency fund. You had said that the decision was made not to refund any of our tuition. Can you talk about how the emergency fund money specifically is being used?
What we want to focus on is our individual students who are in situations where they actually need immediate emergency support.
Nobody owes tuition right now generally until August. What we’re really concerned about is students’ ability to live, to continue on. That’s where the emergency funds come in.
If we had even a 5% decline in international students next year that would be a multi, multi million dollar hit to the budget.
And how much is in the emergency fund?
We have different dedicated funds for that. We have something called the [Carroll and Milton] Petrie [Foundation Emergency] Fund, which probably has anywhere over 100,000 (dollars) or so. We’ve done a couple collections among faculty, staff, alumni and the board, which has probably put another couple hundred thousand away. When I talk about emergency fund, it’s not one discreet thing. We make a decision about helping the students individually.
We want to be sure that we’re being fair to the entire student population when we hand out the source of funds.
How much of tuition revenue would you say, percentage-wise, is due to international students paying tuition?
If we had even a 5% decline in international students next year that would be a multi, multi million dollar hit to the budget.
Is there any discussion of anyone in the administration possibly taking a pay cut to cover other university expenses?
$240 million out of the $400 million budget comes from personnel costs. That comes from faculty, staff, the vast majority of people… everybody’s in the same position. Students are in this position, faculty, and staff are in terms of their own personal situation. They’re looking at, how are they going to make ends meet? So, we’re looking at all the different levers we might have.
Have you considered taking a pay cut?
Sure, I think about it all the time. You know, I have done in the past. Other times, I’ve decided not to do it. It’s very symbolic because the amount that’s paid at the upper level is a very small portion of the total expenditures. But, people very well paid are in a much better place to take a pay cut.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length and was conducted on March 26, 2020. To read a full transcript of the conversation, click here.