Even $35,516 Will Not Ensure That They Won’t Mix Their Metaphors

NYU raises its tuition beyond the cost of inflation, giving new meaning to the concept of “Ivy League or equivalent”:

Already one of the most expensive schools in the country, NYU plans to boost tuition another 5.9 percent starting with the next academic year.

That translates into a $2,081 increase over this year’s tuition of $35,283, according to the financial aid department.

Students are outraged.

“It’s definitely putting a damper in my parents’ pocket,” said Emmanuella Durandisse, a 19-year-old freshman from Nyack. “I’m definitely mad. Maybe the teachers are overpaid.”

The school’s president, John Sexton, blamed the hike on the size of the college’s endowment.

“Many colleges and universities against which we compete to attract faculty and students have endowment resources per student many times larger,” he wrote in an e-mail to the faculty.

The school is not insensitive to the financial strain. It plans a 12 percent financial aid boost for the neediest students.

But that’s still not as much help as other private colleges, such as Harvard, are giving out. The Ivy League school plans to actually cut tuition for low-income students.

“We are not in a position to match these institutions, as much as we might wish that all endowments are created equal,” Sexton wrote.

The cost of NYU certainly puts it in league with Ivy-level tuition. Columbia University charges students $35,516, while Harvard charges $31,456.

Both Ivy schools also plan to hike tuition next year, Columbia by 3 to 5 percent and Harvard by 3.5 percent.

Meanwhile . . .

A commitment to efficiency in state government:

Horace Mann School, the $29,000-a-year preparatory school in the Bronx, and dozens more New York educational and cultural institutions just got stuck between the collapse of auctionrate bonds and an expired New York law.

Rates on $60 million of the securities sold by Horace Mann in 2002 rose to 5.4%last month from 3.4%. At nearby Riverdale Country School, where tuition is $35,250 for grades six through 12, interest jumped to 11% from 3%. Interest costs almost doubled for borrowers in the $330 billion auction-rate bond market this year after banks stopped buying unwanted securities for the first time since they were created in the 1980s. Unlike local governments across the country, the New York institutions can’t convert the bonds into other types of debt after a state funding law expired January 31.

. . .

More than 800 YMCAs, libraries, hospitals, universities and prep schools in the state sold socalled civic-facility bonds, including auction-rate debt, through industrial development authorities, according to the Albany-based New York State Economic Development Council.

Auction rates for some of these borrowers have risen as much as fourfold.

. . .

Civic groups in New York lost their ability to borrow using development agencies as state lawmakers battled over rewriting the law that governs industrial authorities. Assemblyman Sam Hoyt of Buffalo, a chairman of the local governments committee, refused to extend debt-issuing authority.

The Hippocratic Oath Of Food Service: Jack Up Prices For Stuff Like Alcohol And Dessert, Not Sprite And Coffee

Restauranteurs, although it may seem strange that you can charge someone $8 for a beer and no one will flinch but try to get $5 for a soda and people get all in a snit, trust me, it’s not worth it:

They don’t call it “The Five Spot” for nothing — because this otherwise reasonably priced Myrtle Avenue soul-food restaurant is now charging $5 for a soda.

Yes, $5 for a large Sprite, Coke or root beer — the same price as about a gallon and a half of gas; two and a half shares of Bear Stearns or a Barnes and Noble classic copy of “Macbeth.”

That’s also 50 cents more than a Coke will cost you at The River Café, one of the most-expensive restaurants in Brooklyn.

Surprised?

So was Kate Myers, who dined with her husband and 5-year-old son at the Five Spot on Sunday, March 9.

The family walked into the restaurant, at Washington Avenue, at about 3:30 pm, and ordered two notably reasonably priced entrees: the Clinton Hill Crispy Chicken Fingers ($6.90), and the Five Spot Fish N Chips ($7.95).

And they ordered three drinks: one vodka tonic ($8), one Brooklyn Lager ($8), and a Sprite for little Joe ($5).

Lest you think the high price for soft drinks stems from a bottomless mug, think again. There are no refills — which Myers discovered when she ordered her son a second soda.

“The bill came and we saw there were $10 worth of Sprites,” said Myers, still in disbelief. “If it had been $3, I would have thought it was too much. I travel a lot for my job, and for room service, I don’t pay ever $5.”

Offer Not Valid In Alaska, Hawaii Or Manhattan Between 34th and 59th Streets

New economic indicator — the cost of doing business in Manhattan outstrips fast-food value meals:

Luan Sadik and his sister, Elizabeth Sadik, charge in court papers that [Burger Kings’s] 99-cent menu and the more recent dollar value menu were forced down their throats.

They said they were required to sell food at “rock-bottom prices” that didn’t keep pace with the escalating cost of rent and other expenses in pricey Manhattan.

Burger King sued the Sadiks in federal court in Florida last year after the Albanian immigrants closed the doors at two restaurants without the company’s permission.

Then six weeks ago, Burger King shuttered the Sadiks’ remaining fast-food restaurants at 485 Fifth Ave. and 129 E. 47th St. for breaching their franchise contract. The Sadiks have responded with a suit of their own in Brooklyn Federal Court.

“The essence of our complaint is that greed is dictating [Burger King’s] decision-making, not fairness,” said lawyer Oliver Griffith, who represents the Sadiks.

Griffith summed up his clients’ plight this way: If a Whopper hamburger costs $3.50 in Manhattan and a customer can buy two Whopper Juniors for $2 with a value meal, the restaurant operator eats the $1.50 difference.

Their monthly rent at the Fifth Ave. restaurant was $9,000 and $18,000 at the E. 47th St. location. The company also collects a royalty based on gross monthly sales.

“The value meal may be a wonderful thing, but with the cost of doing business in a market like Manhattan, the franchise cannot sustain itself,” Griffith said.

The Everything Bagel Theory Of Fare Collection . . .

. . . take all the crap-ass burnt bits and cobble together a fare:

On its first business day, the MTA’s fare hike yesterday baffled mass-transit travelers — who had conniptions over the higher costs — as discounts dropped from 20 percent to 15 percent on MetroCards.

“I was kind of confused. I didn’t read the question right,” said Alana Chitty, 21, who mistakenly bought a $20 card from a Grand Central Terminal vending machine when she only wanted a $7 card.

“I put $20 and got no change back,” she said. “I’m pissed. I want my money.”

The clerk at the nearby booth would not refund her money.

So Chitty, from Rye, was stuck with a $20 card that will leave her with a $3 bonus credit on the card. If she refills it for another $20, then she will have three “free” rides.

Had she got the $7 card she sought, she would have four rides because it comes with a $1.05 bonus — enough to pay for the fourth ride with a useless 5 cents left over.

She wasn’t the only one ticked off by the new transit tabulations.

“I was very annoyed that I didn’t get an extra round trip with my $10 card. Now I [have] $11.50 and I’m sure bits of money will be left on the card I won’t use,” said David Buckley, 48, an executive recruiter from Maplewood, NJ, at the Rockefeller Center station.

Another rider, Garian Giscombe, 25, felt the same about the $10 cards that used to provide one free ride.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do with the $1.50 bonus,” he said.

But at least the cost of a single ride hasn’t gone beyond that of a slice of pizza, the usual indicator . . . after all, it’s important to keep up appearances.