Here’s how:

Columbia University, in a never-ending search for a larger campus, has long had an outpost
for faculty housing at 455 Central Park West — 53 apartments in an
26-story tower attached to the French Renaissance chateau at West 106th
Street.

So it was something of a surprise when a foundation associated with New York University
bought a large condominium in the complex. The unit, which cost $5.2
million, is built into one of the huge turrets of the chateau….The duplex apartment has a round living and dining room with 37-foot
high ceilings and Central Park views, along with three more
conventional bedrooms….

Columbia paid $45.4 million for the 53 apartments in 2004, or an
average of about $860,000 per unit, a move that helped save the
once-struggling development.

And Catherine M. Sharkey, a Columbia law professor, lived in a
2,000-square-foot two-bedroom on the second floor of the tower
building.

But last June, the New York University School of Law announced that
it had recruited Ms. Sharkey, an expert in product liability law and
empirical legal studies, from Columbia. A month later the New York
University School of Law Foundation signed a contract to buy the nearly
4,000-square-foot apartment in the same complex for use by Ms. Sharkey.

The property records show that the foundation spent $4.2 million two
weeks ago to buy an 80 percent interest in the turreted apartment. The
foundation had $155 million in assets at the end of 2006 and it is
dedicated to supporting N.Y.U.’s law school, including the hiring and
retention of faculty members.

Ms. Sharkey and her partner, Ina Bort, who practices commercial and
maternity law in New York, bought the remaining 20 percent interest in
the apartment for $1.05 million, but the foundation provided them with
a mortgage to cover $650,000 of their share of the purchase price for
up to 30 years (unless Ms. Sharkey leaves the university before then).

John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said that the university and its
law school provide housing for a “very large percentage” of faculty
members, but he could not recall the purchase of such an expensive
apartment for other faculty members.

In recent years, the foundation paid $3.5 million for an apartment
at 99 Jane Street in Greenwich Village and $2.35 million for a condo on
Pacific Street in Brooklyn.
In 2005, records show the foundation sold a faculty member a half
interest in a 20-foot-wide house on West 12th Street for $1.6 million.
It provided an $800,000 mortgage.

Mr. Beckman said the law school foundation generally charges rent to
faculty members for the use of apartments it owns, which remain the
property of the law school foundation….

Somehow I think the appearance of this story in The New York Times is going to result in more than a few visits to the offices of Dean Revesz at NYU.   ("If Professor Sharkey got X, surely I am worth X+!")