This year, NYU Abu Dhabi has once again admitted its largest first year class in history. Nearly seven hundred first year students have arrived amid scorching heat to help provide a revenue stream to whoever decided 180 USD for a set of linens was an appropriate price. Since Aug. 19, the student body has spent a substantial portion of their waking hours waiting in line for a tiny piece of chicken and a few vegetables at the dining hall. The rapid increase in class size seems to have deteriorated the quality of some parts of campus life that we take for granted. Or has it?

Absolutely not, according to the incredibly wealthy new Director of Admissions, Enlarged Odor. “Our Core Curriculum rapidly losing relevance in a changing educational landscape? Students graduating with years of debt at a university built on the opposite principle? Saadiyat sinking into the sea? No big deal,” he said in his introductory speech to a suite of university administrators. “A collapsing population is the biggest threat facing NYU by far,” he added.

Concerned student Klaus Trophob, Class of 2023, presented evidence showing that more students than ever before could not make it to class because of crowds of first years walking side by side at the speed of a slug.

“If there aren’t enough people for every square inch of Saadiyat, there definitely won’t be enough people for our new campus on Mars,” Odor said.

“Our what?,” Trophob asked in confusion.

“The Global Network University is a very 20th-Century concept. We’re going to reach for the stars and open the fourth campus and fifteenth global site, making the Universal Network University,” continued Odor as he slammed the door closed.

Like any project spearheaded by NYUAD, however, NYU Mars is likely to come in over budget and drastically behind its scheduled opening. Planned to open in 2028, it is nonetheless likely that the first email surrounding its delay will arrive in student inboxes in 2029. Year after year, students’ “resilience” and “community” will be praised as the spaceship breaks down over and over again. Students on the Saadiyat, Washington Square and Century Avenue campuses will still need a space to sleep until then.

Residential Education employees are drafting solutions to the housing crunch that will worsen every single year, but it remains unlikely that any will be implemented. Saadiyat Island being taken over by sterile villas that cost no less than five million dirhams is not helping matters. The current contingency plan, according to the Vice Chancellor Marinate Eastmann, is to build the A7, A8 and A9 Residential Colleges. Where, one might ask?

“We’ve considered converting our underground storage units to dorm rooms, to foster community and intimacy in an unprecedented way,” she said. Due to concerns about increasing dropout rates, however, this plan was scrapped. Instead, incoming students will be banished to a newly constructed artificial island off the Saadiyat Marina. “New students will be able to authentically immerse themselves in an artificially constructed bubble immediately,” added Eastmann.

Among new policies intended to increase students’ sense of financial ownership are the BYOB rule, effective starting in the 2023-2024 academic year — Bring Your Own Bed. Beds, desks and other furniture will no longer be included in students’ financial aid. As a package or à la carte, they must be bought from the university at a rate equal to the cost of furniture at any reasonable outlet multiplied by 2.027 in the spirit of the next incoming class.

The future of NYUAD will be radically different. But students are already having mixed reactions to the rapid pace of growth and reduced amenities on campus.

“It is not the easiest task to avoid someone on this island,” admitted Trophob. “If there are more students, the chance that the next person you see will be someone you need to avoid is lower. Simple math,” he confidently said.

However, his first few days since moving into his isolated A4 studio proved him wrong. Referring to the people who scammed him out of his bedsheets and crypto investments, he added that he had managed to run into them at unprecedented rates of 20 and 26 times in one academic week, respectively. Indeed, the qualities that make NYUAD feel like a surreal simulation of a university will continue regardless of the freshman class size being four hundred or four thousand.

Faced with the prospect that unchecked growth could correct itself by reducing applications, the new Dean of Admissions elaborated in an oddly threatening tone that he is doing his part. No matter the trials and tribulations, students will probably remain attracted to a cosmopolitan liberal arts education at the crossroads of the world for years to come.