http://www.columbia.edu/cu/vpaa/docs/TFUE2009.pdf
Thoughts? Especially about the report starting on page 56.
This is a 7 year old report, and emphasizes the improvements CU needs to make to attract more STEM students. Seems quite reasonable. What in particular were you worried about?
“We are continually frustrated by the relatively small size of our endowment compared to our aspirational peers, whose endowments and commitments to science grow at a dizzying pace over the past decade. We are especially disadvantaged by the fact that maintenance in our buildings is so badly deferred that experimental forefront research is not practically possible for many of our disciplines, and never an outside review of our science goes by without a scalding mention of this challenge, and indeed the Review of the Sciences conducted in 2001-2002 makes a strong point about this particular challenge.”
“Opportunities for supervised research are likely to be a very important component of our science program, but are in short supply. The SURF (summer undergraduate research fellows program) hosted by the Biology department is heavily oversubscribed every year (~170 applicants for ~65 slots), despite the fact that the students are not provided housing and must identify faculty financial sponsorship for a nominal stipend. Anecdotally, there appears to be a big gap relative to opportunities afforded by our peer institutions. Put together with the overall poor quantity and quality of research space on campus, this presents a deterrent for the undergraduate student who wants to take advantage of the key advantage of science education in a research university.”
“The challenge of low numbers of science majors clearly can be combated at the stage of the entering class, a proof of principle for which is the Rabi scholars program. In the physical and mathematical science there have been remarkable faculty efforts to enhance the pool of potential majors for the past 16 years, through the Rabi scholars program. Talented potential science majors are selected by a faculty group; from a large (~400+) pool of students stating interest in a science, and with nearly perfect SAT scores and strong letters, approximately 100 are selected primarily on the basis of clear interest in science and some research experience as seen from their essay and letters of recommendation. They are courted by phone calls etc. and ultimately 10 Rabi scholars matriculate, all of whom are funded for research every year to a total cost of $8k per head. In addition, 30 “Special Research” Students (non-funded) matriculate. Curiously, the Rabi program is not openly advertised, and no visible recruiting for this program to actively enhance the pool has been carried out. A strong preponderance of the Rabi and SR students are Mathematics majors (see appendix item 6) and overall more than 85% remain in science or mathematics to graduation. Both Rabi and SR students typically have both more points and better grade point averages than the rest of the science majors. Approximately half of our recent valedictorians are Rabi scholars.”
It also seems like any science student who is not a Rabi scholar here would be disadvantaged while the scholars are favored.
To clarify a somewhat abstract term, whom does Columbia consider its peers to be?
I know what broad group I put them in – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Chicago, Penn, Duke, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, and Northwestern… maybe Johns Hopkins.
Do they consider their peer group to be that deep?
If they are only looking at, for instance, HYP… then, yeah, that’s going to result in some potentially stark contrasts and bitter pills.
Defining whom they consider to be their peers could lend some context to this.
For what it’s worth, I think Columbia is a fantastic school. And being hard on yourself – seeing strands of grey when they aren’t wanted – is the first step to fixing the perceived problem. Let’s hope in the last several years, Columbia has made (or is making) the improvements they saw as necessary.
The Columbia campus is indeed aging, and is in need of more space, updates and a lot of other things. The items outlined in the report are fairly well known. Its good that Columbia recognizes this and is taking steps to address it.
Hopefully the new Manhatanville campus will alleviate some of the issues related to space and modernization:
http://manhattanville.columbia.edu/
@prezbucky Honestly Columbia’s peers are Penn, Duke and Chicago, all considered research powerhouses, with good names, amazing grad schools and very strong undergraduate programs, but lacking the star quality of HYPSM. I guess here they meant HYPSM though because they say aspirational peers, not peers. So of course Columbia is lacking relative to HYPSM in terms of endowment, general resources, strength etc. If it didn’t it would actually be considered a peer of these schools.
@Penn95 An argument could be made for including Cornell because of the strength of its grad programs but I agree with you if we’re restricting ourselves to the undergraduate level.
I think from the standpoint of having a ton of highly ranked programs, Northwestern belongs in that group too.
That is, if you believe the US News grad school rankings should also vaguely be applied to undergrad programs.
I do think the graduate students’ experience and knowledge can benefit undergrads somewhat when both are in the same classes. And if a school has a top grad program, chances are they also have top grad students.
But then how would we explain Brown and Dartmouth? You don’t see those two highly ranked (Top 20…) in a great number of programs, yet they are considered to be elite in undergraduate ed.
@prezbucky Brown and Dartmouth are lacking the research powerhouse/super strong grad school component but hold their own for undergrad because they are essentially hybrids of a LAC and a research university. Considerable research going on there, quite a few good grad schools, but a lot of focus on undergrads. Also they benefit hugely from being Ivy league and that gives them a big boost.
Northwestern has many highly ranked programs overall its grad schools are not as prominent as those of Columbia, Penn, Chicago, Duke and for undergraduate too it is perceived to be just a notch down generally (lacks a bit of luster, not part of ivy+ etc).
@NerdyChica Cornell has strong grad schools (although if you look across the board not quite as strong as Penn, Columbia, Duke, Chicago) but is lacking in terms of undergraduate prestige/desirability/quality relative to the other ivies.
So in my opinion Hopkins, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell are in a peer group together.
@prezbucky I see what you’re saying and NU can definitely make the case for inclusion but if there is a difference it is this.
All of these schools: Columbia, Chicago, Duke and Penn have been ranked in the top 5 by US News and in the top 15 by the Times-QS ranking of global universities at some point in the last 20 years. NU has never quite broken through. Even though it’s been consistently good it hasn’t peaked in the way Duke peaked in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Those things make sense regarding Brown and Dartmouth – hybrid LACs/research U’s.
Northwestern has among the top MBA and Law programs. They’d also have to be considered to be among the top 15-20 Engineering schools overall (the Big Ten is very strong in Eng, and NU is no exception). Is it relative lack of research output holding them back in terms of US and international prestige maybe? Because they seem to have the “quality of ed” part licked.
These small differences in mission/priorities/research expenditures and the effect on rep and rank are fascinating.
It sounds like Columbia knows what they need, and would like, to do: make STEM programs stronger overall, namely by increasing STEM-related capacity: more and better labs and lab/research space, more seats available for related academic pursuit, etc. Good stuff.
If you’re curious to know what kinds of grades and GPA’s STEM students get at Columbia, the campus magazine The Eye just published a piece with a bunch of student interviews on the matter (with student GPA’s included):
http://features.columbiaspectator.com/eye/2016/04/13/what-do-we-do-when-we-talk-about-grades/