GREEDVILLE SIGHTING - - NYU Dental School

NYU dental school bitten in former student's quota lawsuit
By KIERAN CROWLEY
Last Updated: 5:33 AM, October 15, 2012
Posted: 1:08 AM, October 15, 2012

EXCLUSIVE

They’re extracting more than teeth at NYU’s dental school.
A former honors student says she was forced to meet a $38,000 quota in clinical work for the school — and then had to buy a whole other education after it pulled her two degrees on graduation day over a $2,000 shortfall.
“I was devastated . . . It was horrible,’’ said Katie Kikertz, now 28 and a licensed dentist in Illinois.
She recently won a suit to have her BA and dental degrees from NYU honored.
The Manhattan appellate court decision said the school’s treatment of her “shocks the conscience.”

Kamil Krzaczynski

Katie Kikertz

Gabriella Bass

THE TOOTH HURTS: Katie Kikertz says NYU pulled her degrees after she failed to meet a quota.

“Katie was tortured and tormented by NYU for 2 1/2 years,’’ said her lawyer, Jeffrey K. Brown of Carle Place, LI. “This case is about standing up to bullies, and Katie was bullied by NYU.”
Brown said Kikertz was blindsided in 2009 when NYU brass withheld her degrees because she was $2,000 short on what she raked in for the school at a clinic in its Kriser Dental Center. NYU dental students — already on the hook for well over $70,000 a year in tuition and other costs — are obligated to generate a total of $38,000 for the school in their last two years. The school took in about $13 million from the practice in 2009.
Kikertz said NYU officials told her of her shortfall on graduation day — the day before she was due to start dental grad school for a specialty in pediatrics at Boston University.
“They told me, ‘If you want to graduate and get your diploma, you’re going to have to give us the money,’ ” she told The Post.
Kikertz said faculty advisers encouraged her to simply make up the difference. She made a credit-card payment to the school.
But hours after her payment, school officials deemed it an ethical breach, canceled it, and ordered her to return to work off the debt, Kikertz said.
NYU denies telling her to pay and will appeal the court’s decision.
Kikertz said she spent the next month cajoling relatives and strangers to come to the NYU clinic. After meeting her quota, she returned to grad school, she said.
But she soon got a letter telling her NYU had nullified her degrees and she had to quit.
“Professionally, I felt I had wasted my entire life,’’ she said, adding she contemplated suicide and had a breakdown.
As her court case continued, she got a BA from Purdue University and a dental degree from Illinois University. She got her license last week and plans to practice in Illinois.
Kikertz is suing NYU for millions of dollars in a separate suit over the ordeal. Her suit claims NYU charges patients for unnecessary procedures.