More Students, Less Space: How Katz’s Growth is Reshaping the Beren Campus

“This is a record year for YU’s undergraduate and graduate fall enrollment. The limited space on our campuses is posing logistical challenges as we work to accommodate all of our students,” Provost Selma Botman wrote in an email to the Beren Campus community in August 2023. “This issue is especially acute at the Beren Campus, shared by Stern College for Women, Sy Syms School of Business women, and temporarily the Katz School of Science and Health. We are working hard to ensure the quality of the student experience for both our undergraduates and our graduate students. We ask for your patience and will provide updates on our progress on the long-term plan which assigns the requisite spaces for each of our schools.”

In August of 2024, YU updated its website to include the Katz Graduate School as operating on the Beren Campus without notifying students. As of March 2025, the administration has not provided any further updates about any long term plan. It remains unclear whether Beren is to permanently house Katz or if this move is still temporary. When asked by The Commentator, the administration has refused to give a clear answer as to if Beren is set to permanently house the Katz school. In response to repeated requests by The Commentator, a YU spokesman only told The Commentator that the “university is acquiring additional space for our Katz students. We expect to have that dedicated space by Fall 2025.” It is unclear where this space will be, and whether it will be on Beren Campus.

Given that the Katz School of Science and Health is made up of almost as many men as women, many students have expressed concern to The Commentator about Beren’s status as an all-women’s campus. Many have also expressed frustration over the space constraints arising from housing both an undergraduate school and a rapidly growing graduate school with hundreds of students in the Beren Campus’s two buildings.

Figure 1. Data from Office of Institutional Research. Katz Graduate School Growth. In spring 2023, there were 466 total attending Katz students. As of fall 2024, total attending students increased to 1,028. (Students don’t all necessarily attend classes on Beren.)

Figure 2. Data from InsideTrack. In spring 2023, there were 46 Katz Graduate courses offered on the Beren Campus. As of fall 2024, the number of Katz courses offered on the Beren Campus increased to 93. (Numbers of courses include internships and capstone projects which may not physically take place on the Beren Campus.) 

According to an article published by YUNews in August 2023, “Enrollment at the Katz School of Science and Health, home to 12 STEM and health-related master’s and doctoral degree programs, has skyrocketed nearly 400 percent since 2017, over 200 percent since 2019, and over 50 percent since 2022.” In the fall of 2024, the Katz school had 1,028 total attending students while Stern and Sy Syms (women) combined had 1,003 total attending students. At this point, Katz has outgrown Stern in enrollment. 

Due to the lack of communication with the student body, many questions are left unanswered. Many students and faculty interviewed by The Commentator expressed confusion with YU’s decision but speculated that it may be motivated by financial considerations. In an open faculty council meeting in January 2024, which The Commentator attended, Provost Botman mentioned that YU loses money on undergraduate students, and that expenses increase with additional enrollment.

The rapid increase in the number of attending graduate students and an increasing number of their courses being offered on the Beren Campus limits the amount of space available for undergraduate students. One of the most apparent places is in the libraries. The two libraries on the Beren Campus were always packed during midterms and finals, even before the Katz school’s presence on campus. However, with an increased student population, space has become more of an issue. “I didn’t care that we shared a campus with Katz, until I couldn’t find a space in the library to study,” a junior at Stern College told The Commentator.

Emily Apterbach, the research and instruction librarian at Beren’s Hedi Steinberg Library, is happy to see undergraduate and graduate students taking advantage of their resources. She told The Commentator, “I personally love it when the library is being actively used, and the Katz students seem excited to use the space.” 

However, it seems that this arrangement can cause some discomfort for Katz students in addition to Stern students. According to Apterbach, “Katz students have reported that they try to avoid or decrease the amount of time they spend at Hedi Steinberg Library because they have come to learn that their presence on campus and, by extension, the library, has caused some undergraduate students’ discomfort.”

According to Apterbach, this puts the library in an awkward position “because the library’s primary goal is to be a welcoming and hospitable space for all patrons.” However, “limited space and lack of study room availability irritate students.” Apterbach also shared that perhaps this wouldn’t be an issue if the Beren library was the same size as the Wilf library. “The library is currently going over remodeling plans, which, once executed, should alleviate some of the tension felt by both the undergraduate and graduate students.”

Breindy Berger (SCW ‘26) is currently enrolled in a class offered by the Katz school and sees benefit in Beren housing both schools. “Because there are so few math majors at Stern, Katz’s presence on Stern’s campus offered me the opportunity to take classes that could not have been available to me otherwise,” she told The Commentator. “I appreciate the element of diversity that Katz adds, because Stern can often feel like a fun house of mirrors.”

“One major drawback to the shared campus that I can attest to is the lack of space on Beren in the evenings,” Berger shared. “In previous semesters, Stern students made use of empty classrooms and upstairs hallways during evening hours. Now, the classrooms are used for Katz classes, and the hallways can be very loud and distracting. Moreover, sharing the library and lounge spaces infringes on the already more limited resources available to Stern students.”

The issue of space extends beyond the library’s walls. According to one professor, it is difficult to plan large events on campus because of Katz classes that occur in Koch Auditorium and other classrooms. “The needs of the Katz School often seem to be prioritized over those of the undergraduate students on the Beren Campus,” the professor told The Commentator. “[A]nd this becomes an ever greater problem as the Katz school expands.”

For many, the expansion of the Katz school has also called into question Stern’s status as an all-women’s campus. Undergraduate students who applied and enrolled in Stern College for Women because of its nature as a Jewish all women’s campus are frustrated that this isn’t the case in reality. “As a 20-year-old who chose a single-sex institution for their higher education, it feels uncomfortable when a 24-year-old man sits next to me in the library at 10 p.m. I used to study there daily, but now it’s unsettling,” Minna Katz (SCW ‘26) told The Commentator. 

Figure 3. Data from the Office of Institutional research. Proportion of male versus female Katz Graduate School students as of fall 2024. 

“I really don’t blame the Katz students for any of this. I think that it is very reasonable that they would use the facilities of the institution they are studying [in]. I think that makes sense and I really don’t blame them and I also understand where the administration is coming from,” a senior shared. “When you walk into a building of Stern College for Women which is part of Yeshiva University you expect to be surrounded by other Jewish women and not by non-Jewish men and women and it changes the atmosphere and environment of our college when it is filled with Katz students.” 

For seniors who recall what their experience was in their first year on campus, it is a striking change. However, for some students who are younger, mainly first-time-on-campus students or sophomores, the Katz school presence is perhaps “part of their landscape” and not questioned as much. 

“Coming in, I didn’t know what to expect,” Liela Silbiger (SCW ‘27), a first time on campus student, stated. “I knew it was all women and then I guess I heard that Katz Graduate school is also here, so I was like, ‘Oh, it’s normal.’ This is just what I came into, so why would I know any different?”

Additionally, there is a large contingency of Stern students who remain indifferent. “I don’t think it’s an issue and it doesn’t impact me,” Yakira Starr (SCW ‘26) shared with The Commentator. 

Some students feel more comfortable with the Katz School taking place in 215 Lexington as opposed to 245 Lexington. As Berger voiced, “I do feel more comfortable with the Katz takeover in the 215 Lexington building, maybe because 245 is the ‘Torah’ building, but all in all, Katz has as much of a right to be here as we do.” 

Beren’s 245 building is known as the Torah building because that is where an overwhelming majority of Judaic classes occur and where the beit midrash is. It’s been noted more than once that Katz students have accidentally used the beit midrash space as a library, study room or lounge, which has made Stern students uncomfortable in the past. Additionally, for unknown reasons, at least one Katz course is offered in room 718, which is right beside the beit midrash. It has happened on enough occasions that signs went up specifying the beit midrash as a religious space only.

“I twice have had to kindly tell a Katz student that the Beit Midrash is really not a hangout space or a library,” former TAC President from 2023-24 Gaby Rahmanfar (SCW ‘24, GPATS ‘26) told The Commentator, “but that it’s a religious space for Stern students only or for GPATS students for Torah study specifically, and in both instances it was very uncomfortable.

“The thought that there would be non Jewish students coming into Glueck [Wilf Campus’s main beit midrash] thinking that it’s a hangout space would be inconceivable, and the fact that this has been an issue for months and months expanding over a few years at this point is crazy, and I know that it’s [been] brought to the administration’s attention and the fact that it has not been dealt with is absurd.” 

Rahmanfar provided her quote on March 16. As of Tuesday, March 25, a sign was put up outside of the beit midrash labeling the room as the The Beren Campus Beit Midrash for undergraduate women only in addition to faculty and staff.  

Bringing a largely non-Jewish graduate school onto an Orthodox all-women’s campus has also raised questions of kashrut and yichud. 

Historically in Stern College for Women, the question of yichud has not typically arisen. However, since Katz students are present on the Beren campus during most hours and in both buildings, and some Katz classes are offered as late as 7:45-9:00 p.m., this has become an issue for some students. 

Berger also shared with The Commentator that “In my most recent [Katz] class, our TA picked up a mezuzah and used it as a pointer. While I don’t blame anyone for this episode, it illustrates the fact that the Beren Campus is no longer the exclusive property of Stern College, and we should adjust our mindset to reflect that.”

Some professors also feel Beren’s shift to a coed campus is an infringement on YU’s original ideals. One professor shared that “[i]t seems antithetical to Yeshiva University’s mission of providing single-sex education at the undergraduate level — and the very rationale for having Stern College and Yeshiva College (and men and women in Syms College) separated — to have the coed Katz School sharing space and facilities with the SCW and Syms students on the Beren Campus.”

The fact that Beren is currently operating as a coed campus is not made known to prospective students. YU’s visiting campus website states that “prospective students are encouraged to explore the Women’s Beren Campus.” It is described as an all women’s environment. However, anyone who passes through the building recently will most likely conclude it is not. 

The concept of a Jewish all women’s college is what earns YU’s undergrad colleges the nickname of being a “bubble.” Sometimes lauded and sometimes derided — it is what YU advertises and it is what YU undergrad students chose: “One of the main reasons students choose Stern is because it’s an all-Jewish women’s college — that’s a big part of what makes it unique,” a professor told The Commentator. “The school has a responsibility to uphold that identity and deliver the experience students signed up for.”

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Photo caption: 215 Lexington building of the Beren campus

Photo credit: Hadassah Reich / The Commentator