As Columbia University President Lee Bollinger prepared to leave the college he ran for two decades, the board gave him a parting gift: a $6 million home loan.
The sum, disclosed in Columbia’s most recent publicly filed tax return, is the largest single loan given to an Ivy League administrator in fiscal year 2022, according to a Gothamist review. In February of last year Bollinger bought a three-bedroom apartment in the Beresford building on Central Park West for $11.7 million, property records show. The 10th-floor residence features a grand living room with marble-mantel fireplace, a library and powder room, among other amenities, according to The Real Deal.
Bollinger earned nearly $3.9 million in reportable compensation the year he received the loan, according to the same tax return, making him one of the country’s highest-paid college presidents.
Bollinger stepped down as Columbia’s president in June and did not respond to an inquiry. He’s not the only Ivy League administrator to benefit from the perk in which wealthy universities can serve as exclusive banks.
A Gothamist review of the school’s returns – which are public due to its status as a nonprofit, tax-exempt institution – found the amount of housing-loan debt owed by some of Columbia’s most senior administrators has steadily increased over the last decade. Five current and former administrators, including Bollinger, received a total of $9 million in home loans since fiscal year 2012. Only one administrator, David Madigan, the former executive vice president of arts and sciences, appears to have fully paid off his loan. The rest owe the university $9.3 million.
Many colleges and universities, especially more affluent ones, offer housing loans to administrators and faculty. They are frequently billed as ways to attract and retain talent, especially in more expensive urban areas.
Columbia said the competitive, high-priced New York City real estate market factored into its decision to issue home loans to the handful of administrators. But critics of the practice say it shields elite universities like Columbia from revealing how much top officials are actually compensated. The debt on the loans emerges as Columbia faces internal complaints over inadequate pay from faculty and staff. Postdoctoral students, for example, earn around $60,000 annually and often travel long distances to get to the Morningside Heights campus. The $9 million owed by the administrators could cover almost a year’s worth of housing stipends for the postdoc union’s 1,600 members, said Cora Bergantinos-Crespo, the union’s president.
“What it seems is that the priorities of Columbia University are to keep all these wealthy top administrators even wealthier while the workers that actually keep the university going cannot afford basic needs,” Bergantinos-Crespo said.
Columbia’s loan to Bollinger, a prominent First Amendment scholar, far eclipses the University of Pennsylvania’s $3.7 million home loan to its former president, Amy Gutmann.
Gutmann’s loan, which was disclosed in fiscal year 2021, appeared to be the largest to an Ivy League administrator that year, according to a review by the Daily Pennsylvanian. Her husband, Michael Doyle, is an international relations scholar at Columbia.
Gutmann revealed in disclosure forms for her appointment as U.S. ambassador to Germany in the Biden administration that the loan has an interest rate of .38% – far less than the current average interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage of 8%.
“You have to fundamentally ask, why are they not going to a bank?” said Dean Zerbe, a lawyer who served as tax counsel to the Senate Finance Committee for eight years. “It’s because it’s not a loan that you would get at a bank.”
Zerbe, who led several investigations into nonprofit tax abuses, called Columbia’s loans “pretty eye-popping.”
In a statement, Columbia spokesperson Ben Chang said all the loans the university offers are interest-bearing. He would not share the exact terms of the loans.
Columbia professors as well as professors who closely track finances in higher education criticized the loans.
“I have to say, this is disgusting,” said Rotua Lumbantobing, an associate economics professor at Western Connecticut State University, who leads a yearly review of faculty pay nationwide as part of the American Association of University Professors.
She said the loans are in keeping with a broader trend she called the “corporatization of higher education.”
James Finkelstein, a professor emeritus at George Mason University and an outspoken critic of college loan-giving, said Columbia “does not have an obligation after the president steps down to make certain that he continues to live a lifestyle that he was accustomed to while he was president.”
In fiscal year 2012, Columbia disclosed only one home loan – to dean-turned-provost John Coatsworth – for $1.475 million. In fiscal year 2017, Columbia disclosed a second home loan to Coatsworth for $525,000, filings show.
Coatsworth owes Columbia more than the principal on both loans. According to Columbia’s most recent filing, Coatsworth owes the university $2.129 million for the first loan and $607,974 for the second. He did not respond to an inquiry. Public records show Coatsworth also has an apartment on Central Park West.
Columbia expanded the issuance of housing loans beginning in fiscal year 2012, even as NYU faced controversy for the practice around that time.
A decade ago, it emerged that NYU gave then-President John Sexton a $1 million loan for a vacation home on Fire Island. NYU then announced that Sexton would step down and that it would only issue loans for primary residences going forward.
Columbia, like other universities, offers faculty members forgivable loans through a housing assistance program. Those loans are based on annual minimum-interest rates published by the IRS, according to the university. Meanwhile, the Board of Trustees approved the loans given to Bollinger and others under terms that are shielded from public view.
Patricia Dailey, an associate English professor and the vice president of Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said the college should be more transparent about the terms of employment agreements with senior administrators.
She noted that Columbia is issuing the loans “at a time when postdocs are struggling to pay their rent and afford daycare for their children.”
Michael Thaddeus, the Columbia math professor who exposed the university’s misreporting to U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings list last year, said the loans themselves weren’t “such a big deal” in the context of its annual expenditures of nearly $6 billion.
To him, the loans were more symbolic of out-of-touch, wealthy senior administrators.
“Someone who lives in a bubble like that is not going to be able to serve the institution in an effective way,” he said.
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