<p>Columbia didn’t propose to “buy” Barnard. Columbia wanted to merge with Barnard, and Barnard’s leadership rejected the merger proposal. The primary issues at the time were concerns over faculty tenure; however, other factors might have been that Columbia was facing severe financial difficulties of its own at the time, and Columbia was not then a particularly selective college (Columbia was then accepting roughly 50% of all applicants). So it wasn’t a particularly attractive offer to Barnard.</p>
<p>The current arrangement is mutually advantageous to Columbia University and to Barnard. Columbia gets the advantage of a fourth undergraduate college without having to bear the full expense of maintaining it. It gets the benefit of about 2400 additional students attending classes who are paying for their use of resources via the terms of the affiliation agreement, without Columbia having to subsidize any of those students via its own financial aid system, or having to provide housing. It gets the benefit of 255 FTE Barnard faculty available to its students for undergraduate and graduate courses, without having to pick up the costs of salary and employment benefits of those teachers. </p>
<p>Barnard is a robust and highly selective institution – it is by far the most selective of any women’s college in the country – so basically Barnard is a highly successful college that is financially sound – so no worries on the Columbia end that Barnard will continue to pay its bills. Meanwhile, Columbia can focus its own resources for expansion elsewhere.</p>
<p>It is very expensive for any college to maintain academic departments where enrollment is light. It is always a difficult proposition to consider hiring a new faculty member if one cannot guarantee that a a given number of paying students will enroll in the classes the professor teaches. So a university always benefits if it can expand its offerings without having to pay for the full cost entailed in those offerings. So Columbia University gets the benefit of 6,600 spots in courses available each year to its students without having to pay for the faculty which teaches those courses. This is particularly advantageous when you consider that Barnard classes on average are smaller than Columbia classes, and that many Columbia classes are taught by grad students — so the Columbia students who attend classes at Barnard may be attending the types of classes that are more expensive to offer (class taught to small group by professor vs. class taught to large group by prof / class taught to small group by grad student). </p>
<p>I find it quite naive on your part to think that Columbia would want to sever ties when it is such an advantageous arrangement for them. The only issue back in the 1980s was that Columbia clearly could not survive as a male-only institution – merger with Barnard would have been an easy way for them to go co-ed without having to admit a bunch of women on their own. The Columbia trustees mistakenly believed that Barnard would face difficulty from the competition – but history proved otherwise.</p>