How Kerrey Gave New School Growth and Its Own Éclat

The president of the New School, Robert Kerrey, who is considering mounting a bid to return to the U.S. Senate, has overseen a major expansion during his six-year tenure that has helped transform the alternative university into a destination for students across the globe.Enrollment has increased by almost 30% since Mr. Kerrey was appointed to his post in 2001, climbing to upward of 9,300. The Greenwich Village university’s endowment has risen to $232.2 million from $93.8 million. Mr. Kerrey brought in about $46.7 million of contributions this year, up from $15.7 million in 2001, with more than 90% of contributions coming from donors who are not university alumni.Mr. Kerrey has helped raise more than $198 million to fund scholarships, capital projects, research, and conferences, and to hire faculty at a breakneck pace.“The most important thing that’s happened over the last several years were the attacks of September 11,” Mr. Kerrey said during a telephone interview yesterday. “The city came back stronger than before. I’m not responsible, but I’ve benefited enormously. New York City’s hot.”Mr. Kerrey said that improving the university’s undergraduate liberal arts college, Eugene Lang, has been his priority. More than 50 full-time faculty have been hired at the college since 2003, and the college plans to hire another 175 by 2010. This year, 1323 students are enrolled at Eugene Lang, an increase of 125% since 2000.Freshman applications have increased by 60% since 2002. The number of New School dorms has more than doubled since 2000, and undergraduate tuition has risen to $30,660 from $21,530 six years ago.“We have more applicants, and we’ve grown,” the dean of Eugene Lang, Jonathan Veitch, said. “We’re no more or less selective than three or four years ago, but we’re more than twice as big. We hired as many faculty in five years as a university of more than 40,000 hires. That’s transformative.”The undergraduate college is also in the process of developing new programs in finance, communications, and environmental studies. “My belief is that we should be known for things that make sense in New York City,” Mr. Kerrey said.With about 5,000 undergraduates, 4,000 graduates, and about 12,000 continuing education students enrolled in its classes, the New School is also growing physically. Its main building, on the corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, could be torn down as earlier as next summer. The university is planning to replace it with a $160 million high-rise of up to 16 floors.Founded in 1919 by a group of scholars, including John Dewey and Charles Beard, the New School for decades operated outside of the traditional higher education system. It did not grant degrees and had no course requirements, but was considered a laboratory that bred social consciousness and independent thinking among its left-leaning students.The university, which now grants undergraduate and graduate degrees online and on campus, has grown to include eight formerly independent colleges: Parsons The New School for Design, Eugene Lang The New School for Liberal Arts, The New School for Social Research, The New School for General Studies, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy, The New School for Drama, The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, and Mannes College The New School for Music.While the school has become competitive with some traditional universities, the student body projects an image of itself as an activist group of freethinkers who are dissatisfied with the world and want to change it.In the 2008 edition of the Princeton Review’s “Best 366 Colleges,” Eugene Lang was ranked second to Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C., for having “students most nostalgic for Bill Clinton.” The school ranked sixth in the category of students who “Ignore God on a regular basis.” It ranked first for “Best College Town.”In a new Kaplan college guide due out this year, the college is named as one of “25 Cutting Edge Schools with an Eye to the Future.” U.S. News & World Report has a somewhat different perspective on the New School, ranking it as a Tier 3 university this year. Tier 3 means the school was ranked in the bottom 50% of American universities.A university that uses New York City as a focal point of its curriculum, forgoing a football team and emphasizing trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New School is also internationalizing under Mr. Kerrey’s watch.In 2005, Mr. Kerrey helped found the New School’s India-China Institute, a research center that fosters a three-way conversation between India, China, and America on social and political issues. The school has also made a push to attract more international students, and to encourage its American students to study abroad.Mr. Kerrey, a lifelong politician who has served as the governor of Nebraska and as a Democratic senator, is more outspoken on political issues than most university presidents. As a vocal supporter of the war in Iraq and one of the original sponsors of the Iraq Liberation Act, Mr. Kerrey has drawn fire from the ultra-liberal student body.“In higher education, it’s hard to find a president willing to speak out on the issues of the day,” Mr. Kerrey said. “It’s a healthy symptom that the president is taking a position on issues and willing to confront opposition in the community.”In the past, students have also branded him as a “war criminal” for leading a Swift Boat raid on a peasant village in Tanh Phong, which was classified as civilian territory, during the Vietnam War.Mr. Kerrey has said that he would consider a bid for the Senate seat if Senator Hagel, a Republican, chose not to run for re-election in 2008. Mr. Hagel announced earlier this week that he will not seek re-election.With the university is in the middle of a major capital campaign, Mr. Kerrey admits that now is not the best time for him to be thinking about leaving. “The university will survive with me leaving,” Mr. Kerrey said. “It’s better if I leave in five years than today, but we’re much stronger financially and academically, and I think the university could do a lot better than me.”

How Kerrey Gave New School Growth and Its Own Éclat

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