The latest in for profit education

The New York Times reported yesterday that Stanford University abruptly dropped out of the bidding process to build an applied science campus in New York City, leaving Cornell Universty's $2 billion proposal for Roosevelt Island as the clear front-runner for what is seen as a prime opportunity to help reinvent higher education.

By Carlos Gonzalez

Commuting from Roosevelt Island to Manhattan in the rush hour is a challenge. The F train and the Roosevelt Island Tram are the main direct options for public transportation into the city.

Yet, Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to broker a multibillion-dollar research facility for the city may have a huge impact on the south end of the island, where Coler-Goldwater Memorial Hospital is located. First opened in 1952, the hospital is scheduled to close operations in December 2013. And Bloomberg, who is seeking proposals for a high-tech campus somewhere in the city, will make a decision on which university will get rights to build, and where.

Though the initiative is welcomed by some Roosevelt Island residents, particularly for the economic benefits, commuting may become dreadful.

Maria Casotti, a photojournalist and a long-time resident of the island, believes there should be a commitment to upgrade public transportation.

“They recently built a condominium project, and the infrastructure didn’t change,” she said. “We still have the same bridge, the same subway station and the same tram to the island. With a new campus it will be a nightmare.

“They should really think on this. From 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., everything is jammed.”

Mayor Bloomberg has offered a $100 million grant and land to partner with a school that would build an applied science campus. Seven of the country’s leading research universities met the Oct. 27 deadline to submit a proposal. The city is trying to replicate the long-term partnerships Stanford University has with Silicon Valley or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Boston. Stanford and Cornell University are the only two competitors that offered to build the multibillion-dollar campus at the hospital site on Roosevelt Island.

The New York City’s Economic Development Corporation estimates that, over the next 35 years, the initiative would lead to $6 billion in economic activity across the five boroughs, while generating close to 30,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in direct and indirect taxes for the city.

Roosevelt Islanders hope that some of the taxes will be allocated to speed up an upgrade for the commuting infrastructure to and from Roosevelt Island. After 34 years in service, the tram was recently reopened as part of a $25 million project to modernize the system, after numerous incidents in which the tram lost power and commuters got stranded for hours.

Erica Spencer-EL community relations manager at the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp. (RIOC), which manages the island, said the tram was recently upgraded as part of a process to improve transportation.

“The new one is more reliable and has the capacity to transport two million passengers a year,” she said. Still, the tram can be overwhelmed with morning commuters.

Mathew Hernandez, who works for the RIOC at one of the tram’s platforms, says commuting in the morning is difficult enough already.

“Between the people that commute every day and tourists, the thing gets jam-packed. And if the F train is down, this thing just gets crazy and gets overcrowded,” he says.

The tram takes up to 110 commuters on each trip from the island to 60th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.  It runs every 7½ minutes during the morning and evening rush hours and every 15 minutes during other hours. According to the MTA’s web site, the F train stops every 5 minutes on the island’s station on its way to Manhattan, but it has problems of its own.

 Doug Cloyde, a 28-year resident of the island, says the subway infrastructure is unreliable.

“The station is about 10 floors underground and you have to take three long escalators down, and sometimes one, two or even all three are broken,” he says.

Once in the station, it doesn’t get any easier. The F stop on the island is the last before crossing the East River into Manhattan. The run starts at 179th Street in Queens and makes 10 stops before Roosevelt Island.

“Sometimes you have to wait for up to three trains to finally board,” he says. “They are coming so packed that you can’t get on.”

The station, which opened in 1989, served 2.58 million riders in 2010, according to the MTA’s web site, or 37 percent higher than the previous year. In 2009, the number of riders decreased by 2.81 percent. Nobody was available at MTA to comment on the rise, and Spencer-EL at RIOC was not aware of it.

Potential problems with the new campus don’t stop there. Building such a massive project on an island with limited infrastructure may prove difficult. Main Street is the only main road on the island. It is a two-lane street that stretches for a mile from the Roosevelt Island Bridge in the north to the hospital site in the south. It crosses the island center, which is packed with condominiums and businesses. Street parking is allowed in some areas. Buses sometimes have a difficult time getting through as it is; it would likely be worse if the same road were to be used to transport construction equipment and material to a new campus.

Gina Enock, a teacher assistant at Legacy High School, said that during the development phase of a recently finished condominium project, traffic became a serious problem.

“Materials had to be transported to the site all day through Main Street,” she says. “This project seems to be much bigger and will take longer to develop so it will be a hassle. They should think of shipping the material in somehow and avoid using Main Street.”

Spencer-EL says that the possibility of having a campus this size on the island will eventually require negotiations. The construction phase will be a critical touch point.

“We want to avoid at all cost 18-wheelers on Main Street, as this island was first envisioned to be car-free. The most probable solution is to ferry in the materials for construction,” she said.

For now the stakes are running high. Residents know that Roosevelt Island is competing with other destinations in the city, such as West Harlem, the Brooklyn Navy Yard or Governors Island, to host the project. But with a slow economy, the campus would be an economic boost.

“It is a multimillion dollar project that will create a lot of job opportunities for our residents,” says Matthew Katz, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association.

Kats added that those working on the campus would be reverse-commuting. “People would come to the island in the morning and commute back to Manhattan in the evening, opposite to traffic,” he said.

By Carlos Gonzalez

As he drapes his next piece at the sewing lab at the Art Institute of New York City, a for-profit college, Andrew Flynn, 21, ponders how will he repay his $115,000 student loan. His 6-month grace period ends in December, and his monthly loan payments will begin thereafter.

Flynn graduated four months ago with an associate degree in fashion design after a 28-month program. His initial plan to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design, ranked 6th in the country according to Fashionista, a fashion blog, ended a few years ago when he received a last-minute call from a school official that he wouldn’t receive the promised financial aid.

“I was ready to leave that day. I had everything packed in my car when I received the call,” he says. “There was no money left.”

The problem he said was that the school’s endowment wasn’t generating enough income to fund his scholarship. That was common at many universities amid the financial crisis.

It was late August 2009 and Flynn didn’t have a back-up plan. Traditional colleges and universities rarely accept students at that time of year, so he needed to turn to a for-profit college as his only option. He didn’t understand the implications from an academic or professional perspective, but he knew that high debt was clearly on the horizon, as financial support from his family was not available.

Flynn’s family emigrated from Jamaica in 1986 and settled in Hartford, Conn. He was born in 1990, and says that while he never missed anything at home, he didn’t have it easy.

Concerned about living conditions in Hartford, Flynn’s family applied to live in an affordable housing project and eventually got approved for a community in Simsbury, Conn. Shortly after settling in their new home, Flynn started attending pre-kindergarten, and an event at school helped shape his career.

One morning, the mother of a classmate brought chocolate to a school event. Flynn knew he was allergic to peanuts and declined the offer, rare for a kid of his age. His teacher forced him to accept one, thinking he was being rude.

“She tried to teach me a life lesson that it was bad manners to decline a gift, but she almost got me killed,” he says.

He had an immediate allergic reaction. His mother arrived a few minutes later with medicine, and he recovered.

“My mother immediately pulled me out of school,” he says. “I didn’t go back until primary school a couple of years later, and in the process I learned to socialize with adults. I was hanging around them all the time.”

In high school he had a difficult time interacting with his classmates. He found their conversations uninteresting and foolish. His looks didn’t help either.

 “I was disgusting and almost a health hazard. My weight was 82 pounds. I was not even allowed to play football,” he says.

He decided he wanted to be involved in fashion when he was 13, while watching the Disney classic 101 Dalmatians. That movie led him to start sketching and drawing, and he hasn’t stopped since.

Flynn started at the Art Institute in October 2008, a couple of months after his plans at the Savannah College of Art and Design were toppled. He had to work throughout college, serving as a sales representative at a TJ Maxx store. But even so, he would take on more debt each quarter, as tuition of $13,000 came due.

“I hated work but was very pragmatic about it. They had the money and I needed it, so let’s make both of us happy,” he says, as he needed to buy a computer.

Flynn eventually graduated from the Art Institute, and his collection at the school was awarded the Most Editorial. Jennifer Moore, a full-time faculty member at the Art Institute, says this award is one of a number of awards given by the school every year to promote a competitive environment.

“This is an important award,” she says. “The competition creates a lot of expectations throughout the year.”

Three months later, Flynn landed a job as a sales representative at the men’s department at Bloomingdale’s. He started working last week and is looking forward to his professional life. But he knows money will be tight for the next few years.

“My job is commission-based and I’m starting at a great time with the Christmas season approaching,” he says.

He has a fixed hourly wage. Flynn wouldn’t disclose the amount, but the New York Department of Labor sets the minimum wage at $7.25 an hour. The minimum commission he will get paid on sales is six percent, but higher-ticket items may pay substantially more.

Flynn is also hoping for some relief. He has been reading about President Obama’s recent proposal to help college graduates with high debt. If eligible, his payments on his student loan will be a percentage of his disposable income, as opposed to a fixed amount as with traditional loans.

The president’s plan would cap a graduate’s required monthly payment on a student loan to 10 percent of the individual’s discretionary income for 20 years; after that, the balance of loan debt would be forgiven, according to the White House’s blog. It is calculated based on gross income, family size and state of residence.

According to the Department of Education’s income-based repayment calculator, Flynn would pay $110 a month in a scenario in which he would make $25,000 a year, or $235 a month if he’s compensation package was $35,000 a year. On a typical 30-year student loan with a rate of 6.8 percent, Flynn would pay $749.71 a month on his $115,000 debt.

By Carlos Gonzalez

President Obama will announce yesterday a new program to lower monthly loan payments for students graduating next year. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is already reporting the default rate on student loans at 10.6 percent.

By Carlos Gonzalez

Jeff Selingo, Editorial Director of the Chronicle of Higher Education, argues that 70 percent of college leaders completed their studies in either education, social sciences or the humanities and fine arts, while only 2 percent of college presidents are engineers.

Higher education is facing some tough issues: rising costs; low completion rates and delivery systems, curricula, and teaching methods that show their age. So what if engineers tackled those problems?

by Carlos Gonzalez

By Carlos Gonzalez

by Carlos Gonzalez

By Carlos Gonzalez