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This morning, thanks to the Sun, we're very much reconsidering our decision not to go into academia.

We knew that city schools like NYU and Columbia provide rent-subsidized housing for many of their faculty and staff members. (We died a little bit inside the day NYU's student-affairs veep, formerly dean of students at our alma mater, showed us around his three-bedroom place — with terraces on three sides and a kitchen bigger than our mother's in the suburbs — on lower Fifth Avenue.) But we didn't know this particular unit — a two-bedroom on the 19th floor of the freakin' Pierre, currently occupied by an NYU economist and his wife, a vice provost there — was an option:

According to a floor plan obtained by the Sun, from an oval entry gallery, a visitor can either turn left into a 33-foot-by-18-foot living room or head down two hallways that lead to a 15-foot-by-16-foot library with built-in wood-panel bookcases. The library is connected to a 20-foot-by-16-foot master bedroom, adjacent to a 14-foot-by-12-foot dressing room. The living room, library, and master bedroom all look out onto Central Park from the Pierre's Fifth Avenue perch.

We could still go back for a doctorate, right?

NYU Professor Enjoys Peak Perk: An Apartment at the Pierre [NY Sun]