New York University attracts figures of international stature with the promise that the university is a rewarding place to work. Less well known is how rewarding it can be to leave.

That fact came into view after President Obama nominated Jacob J. Lew, a former executive vice president of N.Y.U., to lead the Treasury Department. (The Senate confirmed his nomination last week.) In 2006, the university acknowledged, it awarded him a $685,000 bonus as he was leaving to take a position at Citigroup, an unusual payment for someone who was leaving voluntarily, especially at a nonprofit institution.

But Mr. Lew is not the only one who received a sizable parting gift.

According to an N.Y.U. tax return, Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, a psychiatrist who had served as an executive at N.Y.U. Medical Center and founded N.Y.U.’s Child Study Center, received a payment of $1,230,000 in the 2009-10 fiscal year, around the time he left to found the Child Mind Institute, a competing organization.