(link should work for all as I “gifted it” from a paid account)
From the University’s quotes within, it seems the reason they avoided releasing CDS data until last year and are now refusing to participate in the US News data go-forward is their General Studies (GS) undergraduate program would negatively impact some of the stats US News weights versus their more traditional the Columbia College (CC) and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) undergraduate schools. When they finally did release CDS data last year, they treated GS separately from CS/SEAS and released a primer on how to interpret it. Their argument seems to be that holding GS stats against them discourages institutional priorities that favor non-traditional students.