Another Cheating Scandal

Parents Forum
61

<p>I hope that all of you doing the math on what Barnard “nets” with a large course taught by a lecturer have taken the time to calculate the <em>average</em> tuition cost per student (hint: it’s around $25K annually), taking into account the ~43%+ of Barnard students who receive college grants in their financial aid packages; as well as the offsetting costs entailed in the many small seminars Barnard offers.
Those who want to do the math might find the 2012 data book helpful:
<a href=“https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_book.pdf[/url]”>https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/2012_data_book.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>At page 20 you will see that roughly 1% of Barnard classes have 100 or more students, compared with 22% with 2-9 students, and 51% with 10-19. </p>

<p>Page 50 gives you a lovely pie chart that shows you where all the money goes. </p>

<p>Page 53 has nice bar charts, which show you that basically Barnard has been operating at a deficit. </p>

<p>Barnard is a semi-independent college which is partner and subsidiary of a large research university. (“Subsidiary” because the large university retains significant control over its faculty hiring and tenure processes). It offers classes of many sizes, including large lecture classes as well as small seminars and colloquia. Students can see the class size at the time of enrollment and choose to avoid larger classes if that is their preference. Barnard profs who teach large classes can and do utilized TA’s to help with grading.</p>

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<p>I used average tuition costs in my calculation. I figured Barnard would be operating at a deficit, which is why they would love this course. But I don’t know why a lecturer (not a Barnard prof) who taught a large course (actually, at least two per year) wouldn’t have any TAs. (Not that I think that would be optimal…)</p>

<p>As to size of classes, if it is like my alma mater (Williams), that can be misleading too. Maybe only 1% of classes have 100 or more students, but the percentage of student hours in classes with more than 100 students is much, much, much higher. Every class with 123 students is the equivalent of 25 classes with five.</p>

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<p>Maybe Barnard didn’t have the money in the budget to give that particular teacher TA support. Or maybe there is a process for getting TA’s where some profs have priority over others. I don’t know. (I’ll see if I can find out more. My daughter worked for a couple of years as an administrative assistant for the Barnard English department so she knew most of the faculty, and probably had some sense of how things were managed on the administrative end. ).</p>

<p>As to overall percentage, my gut level sense is that if I calculated a median class size for my daughter at Barnard & Columbia over the years, it probably would be about 20 students. Most of the classes she took were small; but some of the larger courses were either taken to fill distribution requirements or taken because she very much wanted a popular course or professor. I’m not sure what is so bad about large classes anyway. When I was in law school, just about every class had 125 students, and that was the most challenging and demanding experience of my academic career. I had small classes of 6-10 students as an undergrad that were a total waste of time, with very little learning going on – and my son expresses similar frustrations with some of his classes at a small LAC. He had chosen a college on the assumption that small is better, but learned pretty quickly that “small” can mean spending hours on end listening to the same small group of students express the same opinions over and over in the presence of a not particularly gifted professor. My daughter is a strong verbal and auditory learner – that is, she tends to understand and remember just about everything she hears (almost verbatim), so a large lecture format can be very good for her. When I was an undergrad I preferred a mix of large and small.</p>

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<p>I believe that this one of the best and most concise presentation of Barnard and its relationship with Columbia. I happen to think that it explains the term “affiliate” much better than the alternative of “subsidiary” which intimates that Barnard has a direct dependency relationship with Columbia. In simple terms, Barnard is not like Fu, but more like that the other affiliated institutions such as the Jewish Theological Seminary that have interoperate agreements with Columbia. </p>

<p>And, fwiw, it appears that Columbia is enjoying relationships that fuels its love to play fast and loose with admission statistics, and report the numbers that are the most convenient.</p>

65

<p>It’s not a matter of large class versus small class. Like everyone, I’ve been in large lecture classes that were fine, and small seminars that were terrible. But in this case, the class configuration would seem to be getting in the way of student learning. Certainly in an English class, one should be expected to write, and organized one’s thoughts in writing, and learn from an experienced mentor how to make one’s writing better. Otherwise, just give the students the lectures notes for $3k and have them go do what they like. They don’t need the performance art. Hey, just sell the Columbia degree and be done with it.</p>

66

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JTS has undergraduate joint degree programs with Columbia GS and Barnard, but is a separate degree granting institution. Barnard is not – its students have always received degrees from Columbia University, and faculty hiring and tenure has always been subject to Columbia’s ultimate determination. </p>

<p>The history is fairly simple: Columbia refused to accept women, but agreed in the late 19th century to award degrees to women who studied separately under their own faculty. Columbia resisted all efforts to allow women to enroll – in fact, Bard was once in very similar relationships to Columbia (essentially operating as an affiliate satellite college), but the Bard/Columbia ties were broken in the 1940’s when Bard wanted to accept women. </p>

<p>After Harvard, Yale & Princeton went co-ed, the Columbia trustees had a change of heart, but by then the Barnard administration was pretty happy with the environment they had created for their students so resisted merger.</p>

67

<p>I loved some of my TAs, and I had some wonderful lecture classes, including several with a guy I ended up having as my advisor for my senior thesis. (He insisted we discuss paper topics with him, and we also had to pick up the finished papers from him so he could comment in person.) I even liked some of my gut lecture classes. I didn’t need every class to be a small intimate seminar - though I liked many of those too. This class at Barnard however, seems to have been particularly sloppily run. That said, I can’t imagine having been quizzed regularly on the reading. It was assumed we did it, and we’d have been caught on the final if we hadn’t.</p>

68

<p>Barnard grants its students a diploma that has the name and signatures of Columbia University. It is not the same diploma granted to the graduates of Columbia who were admitted by Columbia. </p>

<p>Graduates in Harvard Extension Studies also get a … Harvard diploma. </p>

<p>The name of the university on the diploma does not change the college one was admitted to and graduated from. Penn graduates students with degrees earned at Wharton as well as at its nursing school.</p>

69

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<p>I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say Columbia “retains control” over Barnard’s faculty hiring and tenure processes. More accurate to say Columbia “acquired partial control” over Barnard’s hiring and tenure as part of the complex merger negotiations that took place in the 1970s. </p>

<p>I don’t know the whole tangled history, but as I understand it, Barnard wanted a couple of things in those negotiations (this was after HYP had gone coed, and Columbia wanted to join the parade). Barnard wanted the entire Columbia curriculum open to cross-registration by Barnard students, and they wanted their faculty to be recognized as Columbia faculty, perhaps partly for the prestige value, but also to get their faculty on Columbia’s benefits system because the per capita cost of providing health insurance, life insurance, retirement benefits, etc. is lower for a faculty of several thousand than for a faculty of a couple hundred. They also wanted to retain a separate identity and institutional governance structure, as has been discussed. Barnard got most of what they wanted on opening the curriculum–only a few Columbia College “core” courses are closed to Barnard students; but in exchange, the agreement requires Barnard to pay Columbia for every credit hour Barnard students take at Columbia. (Columbia also pays Barnard for courses Columbia students take at Barnard, and my understanding is this is now close to a wash). They also got their faculty recognized as Columbia faculty, but the price they paid for that was that Columbia now has a veto over Barnard hiring and tenure decisions, because Columbia was not going to allow anyone to claim the title of Columbia faculty without some level of control by Columbia. Barnard also succeeded in retaining its own administrative structure: it has its own Board of Trustees, its own President, its own Provost. As a consequence of these arrangements, a Barnard faculty hiring or tenure decision has to go through the same Barnard provostial approval process it always did. The only change is that on top of that, faculty hiring and tenure decisions now also need to go through the Columbia provostial approval process. So it gets complicated. But ultimately Barnard is responsible for crafting its own budget and raising the funds necessary to make that budget work; and it sets its own pay scales, and pays its faculty out of its own accounts. Columbia plays no role in Barnard’s fundraising or budgeting processes, or in Barnard’s administration of funds, or in Barnard’s admissions requirements and standards or in particular admissions decisions. Barnard students pay no fees to Columbia, and their Barnard student i.d. will swipe them into Columbia’s libraries and Columbia’s student center (privileges Barnard pays Columbia for), but not into Columbia residence halls because those are completely separate systems. Unlike the Fu School of Engineering whose facilities are owned by Columbia, Barnard’s buildings and grounds are owned not by Columbia but by Barnard College as a separate corporate entity. Columbia plays no role in appointing Barnard’s Board of Trustees or its President… Bottom line, there are numerous and complex contractual ties and cross-affiliations between the institutions, but they are ultimately separate entities. Barnard is not so much a subsidiary as a junior partner of Columbia.</p>

<p>I say this not to be critical of Barnard. I think it’s a very good college, and I admire its gumption in retaining its separate identity and corporate governance structure. I know a number of students who have gone there, and most had terrific experiences; most have also gotten a lot out of the arrangements Barnard has made with Columbia. I also know a number of Barnard faculty; I like them as people and I respect them as scholars, and most are fiercely loyal to the school. Some are a bit resentful at times that Columbia faculty salaries are much higher for essentially the same work, but Columbia doesn’t decide what Barnard faculty salaries are; that’s on the Barnard administration and Trustees. (For the record, the average assistant professor makes $99K at Columbia and $72K at Barnard; associate professor $125K at Columbia and $102K at Barnard; and full professor $198K at Columbia and $142K at Barnard, but that’s not atypical of the disparity in pay between major private research universities and LACs).</p>

<p>Interestingly, according to AAUP, the average “instructor” makes only $62K at Barnard–well below the pay scale even for a Barnard assistant professor–while at Columbia the average “instructor” makes about $130K–more than the average Columbia associate professor. I assume that’s because Columbia is sufficiently well resourced to use “instructors” sparingly, and only when they bring some highly specialized expertise.</p>

70

<p>The TA’s are for grading exams - they’re not teaching anyways. It can be very helpful for students to have someone less intimidating than the professor to help with a class anyways.There is no reason this class should not have had TAs, or at least grad student paid graders.</p>

71

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<p>You are mistaken – Barnard does not grant a diploma. Rather, the Barnard faculty recommends and requests conferral of the diploma by the University. This is true of each other college and school. Each diploma is signed by the President of the University and the President or Dean of the respective college or school. </p>

<p>You are correct that the Barnard diploma is different than the one granted to students from Columbia college, which is in turn different than the ones granted to students of SEAS or GS or any of the various graduate schools. All diplomas are granted by the University, but the printed appearance differs for each school. </p>

<p>There is a video of the 2012 ceremony here:
[2012</a> Columbia University Commencement Ceremony - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sVDnoO2T4U]2012”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sVDnoO2T4U)
The part where the respective leaders of each college & school come to the podium and request the granting of the degrees starts at around the 45 minute mark – the Barnard Pres. is at the 50 minute mark. </p>

<p>Maybe if you watch the ceremony you will get idea. You will notice that all students are wearing identical caps and gowns. You can tell which students are from Barnard as they are the ones wearing sunglasses.</p>

72

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<p>Ah, but here’s where it’s not so simple. Barnard didn’t want to remain quite so separate, solely responsible for instructing women exclusively with its own faculty–especially when places like HYP were going coed, creating fierce competition for the top female applicants. Barnard wanted a tighter relationship with Columbia, one that would open the Columbia curriculum and faculty to Barnard women, and also would grant its own faculty status as Columbia faculty–while yet retaining a separate identity and governance structure. It more or less got what it wanted, I assume because Columbia thought these were steps toward the more complete merger Columbia wanted. But once Barnard got what it wanted, it wasn’t prepared to budge. And once Columbia recognized that Barnard had essentially snookered it in the negotiations and was content to stand pat with the new status quo rather than continuing to move toward the merger Columbia wanted, Columbia threw up its hands and decided to just admit women on its own.</p>

<p>That left Barnard in an awkward position. It immediately lost its exclusive franchise as “Columbia’s women’s college,” because now Columbia itself was a coed college, where women could apply and be accepted directly as full-fledged Columbians, rather than arm’s-length quasi-Columbians. And although Barnard students still got the Columbia name on their parchment, it soon became apparent to everyone that women who were admitted to Columbia College had gotten through a more demanding admissions process, thus further (in the minds of some) debasing the value of the Barnard-Columbia degree relative to the pure Columbia degree. In short, Barnard won the tactical bargaining, but lost the strategic war.</p>

<p>My own view is that Barnard has suffered from something of an identity crisis ever since. The question is always, “Is it Columbia, or is it not?” And the answer is always, “Well, it’s complicated.” </p>

<p>In fairness, though, the other Seven Sisters haven’t fared so well since HYP went coed, either. For all practical purposes, Radcliffe ceased to exist, except as a box Harvard women can check to elect to have their degree say “Radcliffe,” though one suspects it’s now a vanishingly small fraction who do. Vassar went coed, but despite three decades of trying has never come close to gender parity. The other four–Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Mount Holyoke–are still outstanding LACs expressly dedicated to educating women, but they struggle to attract enough applicants, in part because their women-only admissions policies automatically exclude half the potential applicant pool, and in part because many qualified women would prefer to be at a coed institution.</p>

<p>All these complications notwithstanding, I think all 6 of the surviving Seven Sisters are still excellent colleges with outstanding academic values.</p>

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<p>Re post #69 – With respect to Columbia’s influence over Barnard faculty, I’d recommend the book “Stand Columbia”, starting at page 189 (about how Seth Low secured funding for Barnard’s first three professors) and at page 519:</p>

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<p>Columbia’s power to formally approve all tenured appointments dates back to the 1973 agreement, which also included an understanding that the schools would cooperate to avoid unnecessary redundancy in faculty and academic programs (at p. 525).</p>

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<p>That is historically inaccurate. In the early 70’s Columbia was getting less than 2000 applicants for an entering class of 750 students. Obviously they had to accept well over half of those applicants in order to fill their class every year. Columbia’s decision to admit women was largely driven by its continual decline in application numbers.</p>

<p>Columbia’s situation obviously changed when it went co-ed, but it also expanded at the same time. It did not become particularly selective until the 1990’s. In 1993, the admit rate was 30% – 10 years later it was 15%. When Columbia went co-ed it obviously also had an impact on Barnard’s applicant pool – but as of 1999 Barnard was the most selective women’s college in the country. So there’s not much of a time frame for a qualitative difference.</p>

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<p>Calmom, correcting my Barnard grants a diploma is a silly use of semantics and hairsplitting. What is not such an issue of semantics is that the various schools under the Columbia loose and complex umbrella are quite different, and that a couple of the colleges are less prestigious and less selective than Columbia College or SEAS. Something Columbia recognizes as it NEVER includes the GS or Barnard data in its released numbers. </p>

<p>It is well known that the CC students have been, for the most part, annoyed by the implication that all Columbia and GS cum Barnard students are equal. </p>

<p>I also happen to think that Barnard students who present themselves as Columbia and Ivy League graduates might shoot in their own foot. </p>

<p>HR. I see you graduated from Columbia. Was that SEAS or CC?
Applicant. Well my diploma is from Columbia University but I attended Barnard, and you know, it is the sam…
HR Thanks for your time. </p>

<p>Playing the semantics and obfuscation games might be an art form around Morningside Heights, but it ultimately does not fool anyone. Columbia is playing admissions games, and its lower college students feel compelled to go along with the charades and games. But perhaps it represents a price well worth paying to be part of a university and an athletic league they could never be admitted without the backdoor entrance.</p>

<p>My main point remains that anyone who picked Barnard for Barnard and not for the Columbia paper should be proud enough to be a Barnard grad first and foremost.</p>

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<p>“That is historically inaccurate. In the early 70’s Columbia was getting less than 2000 applicants for an entering class of 750 students. Obviously they had to accept well over half of those applicants in order to fill their class every year. Columbia’s decision to admit women was largely driven by its continual decline in application numbers.”</p>

<p>There are students at Barnard who WANT to be at Barnard, not Columbia. The cross GPA/SATs of admitted students is very, very substantial. Even if that wasn’t the case, the students at Barnard receive an education that is in no way inferior to that at Columbia (since they can take all the same courses), and in some areas, probably superior (that used to be the case for writing, theatre, chemistry, dance, and a few others). So what’s the deal?</p>

<p>But I would have thought one of the areas to be greater personal attention, smaller classes, more student support. The scandal here places that in question.</p>

<p>(Back in the dark ages, there were bunches of students at my high school who used Columbia as a safety. The same, from other high schools, was not the case for Barnard, which was smaller and more “elite”.)</p>

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<p>??? Because Barnard happens to have some large classes? Anyone who is considering attending a college can easily get a breakdown of class sizes. </p>

<p>Barnard has small classes. Columbia also has many small classes. Barnard has medium size classes. Columbia also has medium size classes. Barnard has some large classes. Columbia has more, even larger classes. Part of that is a matter of facilities: more big lecture halls available at Columbia. </p>

<p>It’s not clear who was cheating in the particular English class involved. The BWOG comments say that there were a substantial number of Columbia students enrolled, and when the students were given the option of either dropping the class or continuing with the added requirement of a final, the Columbia students opted to drop while Barnard students stayed on. BWOG is a far cry from a reliable source, but Barnard has an [Honor</a> Code](<a href=“http://barnard.edu/dos/honor-code]Honor”>http://barnard.edu/dos/honor-code) and Columbia does not. Apparently the situation came to light because a Barnard student reported it to the administration. I can see a potential motive for reporting if some non-cheating Barnard students were upset by what they saw. (If the cheating was blatant, students may have felt that they would get in just as much trouble for failing to report it as for participating). </p>

<p>One difference between Barnard and Columbia is that Barnard students tend to have close relationships with many of the faculty and with their school administration. That creates a lot of avenues for a Barnard student to seek advice from or confide in a faculty member. </p>

<p>I’d note that BWOG reports another Columbia cheating issue – apparently a LitHum instructor passed a partial answer key to students in advance of an exam. (The context is not altogether clear - that is, it might have been a mistake or accident rather than intentional act of cheating). I wouldn’t write off the entire Columbia core simply because of one instructor’s mistake – why do you draw conclusions about an entire school based on a report about one class? </p>

<p>I think it’s fairly certain that cheating goes on at all colleges and universities at some level, but that it unusual for a large number of students to be caught in some sort of concerted effort. It has happened at Harvard, and I am sure it happens at the local public community college – that is, I don’t think the prestige or selectivity of the institution has anything to do with it. However, the elite universities probably have a higher number of extremely competitive students enrolled, some of whom come with a long standing practice of cheating to get ahead. That’s not saying that all students are cheaters – just that the stakes are high enough to incentivize cheating. </p>

<p>But I remain rather puzzled at the conclusions you have drawn about the overall school environment, as if you think the “scandal” is that the school has some classes with 120+ students. I find that very odd.</p>

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<p>The scandal is NOT that there are large classes. I already said that large classes can be just fine. The scandal is that there are English classes with no TAs (and apparently that has been true for a long time), no writing assignments (from what we can tell), quizzes instead of papers, no writing mentors. We used to do a lot better than this when I taught at the community college. </p>

<p>And the students are being cheated.</p>

<p>(And, as noted, the data do not give a realistic picture. That’s true virtually everywhere.)</p>

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<p>Not to be disagreeable, but you seem to contradict yourself here. If there is no incentive to cheat (i.e., at a non-competitive CC or collaborative LAC) why would anyone do it?</p>

<p>On a macro level, the “incentivizing” of cheating is pretty disturbing. You have kids at competitive Long Island high schools cheating on the SAT by having college students sit for their tests (with some parents rationalizing the cheating as a necessary way to give their kids an edge). You have the scandals and Harvard and Barnard and other highly competitive environments. And those are the ones who have gotten caught. Students in many elite schools go on to influential positions in business and government, with some of them already operating under the mindset that they have to “do what it takes” to get ahead. The lack of an internal moral compass in some of the most ambitious students should concern all of us, because it will affect others down the road.</p>

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<p>Are the circumstances similar at Harvard and Barnard? We know that the reaction at H was swift and drastic. Reports also blamed a horrible instructor for having manufactured the problem, perhaps by incompetence or plain spite. Is that the parallel here? I am not sure I see much rellevance between the two cases.</p>