When Barnard history professor Owen Gutfreund, the popular, long-time director of the school’s urban studies program, was denied tenure in December 2007, many students and faculty argued that he deserved better. But in fall 2008, Gutfreund received news suggesting his fate had been rewritten.
Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and Faculty of Arts and Sciences offered the specialist in urban history a joint appointment. Yet as proof of the blow the financial crisis has dealt the University, FAS announced this spring it could not afford to pay its half of the appointment. Instead, Gutfruend is slated to take a position at Hunter College of the City University of New York this fall.
Gutfreund’s story is not unique. Even as Columbia stays afloat in a market where universities flounder, financial concerns caused departures and prompted arrivals this year, and are now pervading the University’s pursuit of its long-term academic goals. Some developments from the 2008-2009 school year, like the newfound autonomy of the School of International and Public Affairs, are not tied to the economic downturn. Others, including initiatives begun in previous years to globalize and refine bureaucracy, point to Columbia’s constant awareness of the harm the current crisis is doing to higher education inside the gates and across the country.
Making the cuts
Data released this year suggests that as domestic and foreign financial troubles persist, students should expect to see fewer international and Ph.D. students on Columbia’s campus next year. The American Language Program, whose English language instruction reaches vast South Korean, French, Chinese, and Japanese populations in Columbia’s undergraduate and graduate schools, received fewer applications.
“Economic changes and fluctuations in currency rates have had a significant impact on Asian clientele,” Peter Awn, dean of the School of General Studies where the program is housed, said in February.
According to Nicholas Dirks, vice president for arts and sciences, the University is admitting 10 percent fewer doctoral students due to the high costs of operating doctorate programs, and the diminished job market for aspiring professors.
Going global
Amid reductions in international students, the University has sought to expand its horizons in the world platform in other ways.
In March, the Columbia Global Centers in Beijing and Amman, Jordan opened. They are meant to serve as research offices as opposed to the satellite campuses some peer institutions have opened.
University President Lee Bollinger told Spectator in February that the research held at these centers aims to “expand our global understanding and to make a contribution to the world but to do it in a way that’s not local or regional, but linked globally.”
Many view the openings as a tangible realization of Bollinger’s “global university” initiative. According to Kenneth Prewitt, professor of public affairs at Columbia and director of the Global Centers, by establishing the centers Columbia is taking connections it already has established around the world turning them into “a global network.” The bond between China and Columbia, for instance, goes back 100 years to an era in which Columbia became one of the first American schools to accept students from China.
The University is just beginning its global expansion and hopes to “cover every world region,” including South Africa, South America, and Central Europe, according to Prewitt. He added that the next global centers will launch in India and Paris, the latter likely in conjunction with Columbia’s Reid Hall for the study of French language and culture.
While administrators traveled to Beijing for the opening in March, Barnard held its first ever symposium there, titled “Women Changing China,” featuring panelists such as English professor and women’s advocate Wu Qing, novelist Geling Yan, Chinese-American filmmaker Ruby Yang, and media entrepreneur Yang Lan. This ties into Spar’s mission to increase the international student population found at Barnard.
Curricular reforms
Undergraduate education received its dose of globalization as well.
After last year’s hunger strike demands capped an ongoing discussion about a change to the Major Cultures requirement, the Global Core premiered in mid-August to replace the old requirement. The Global Core was created to help solve the disunity of Major Cultures, which consisted of an array of courses ranging from broad introductory courses to language classes.
The Global Core requires Columbia College students to take two courses from one vast list of courses, which predominantly deal with examining cultures comparatively or examining one civilization in depth across time. This requirement is different from Major Cultures, which had students choose two courses from three different lists of classes. Many introductory courses which previously counted toward Major Cultures courses have been adopted by the Global Core, while only some specialized courses carry over to new requirement.
The Global Core aims to have students focus more on broad world cultures instead of only learning about one civilization.
The focus on broad introductory courses has increased average class size for these courses by eliminating some of the smaller, specialized courses from the requirement. In the future, Patricia Grieve, humanities professor and chair of the Committee on the Core and the Committee on Major Cultures, said she hopes the Global Core will achieve “parity with Contemporary Civilization and Literature Humanities” in regard to academic rigor and seminar format.
Presently, the class of 2011 and older classes may still elect to fulfill the Major Cultures requirement, while the classes of 2012 and younger must complete the Global Core instead.
Columbia is not the only one to have endeavored to make undergraduate education more relevant to the times. Barnard faculty is currently reviewing the Nine Ways of Knowing, Barnard’s general education requirements, which have not been reviewed in depth in more than a decade.
According to Muzna Ansari, representative to the Office of Academic Affairs and BC ’10, professors have called several areas into question. One is the “Reason and Value” requirement—some, for example, want to ground it in more “moral and ethical reasoning.” The courses that would fulfill this mandate would be more focused on urban studies and philosophy.
Sorting out the Columbia bureaucracy
Although the Faculty of Arts and Sciences responded to financial conditions by tightening its budget in a number of areas, two major efforts to streamline contained no direct link to economic downturn. Administrators revealed plans this year to demystify the bureaucracy that supervises 29 departments—or 650 professors.
A faculty-run review, begun in spring 2008 and brought to speed in the fall, seeks to address a culture of discontent among professors who express concerns that the labyrinth of governance committees decreases effective responses to their complaints.
“The faculty who have been involved for a long time largely agree that our current ... system relegates academic planning to a secondary role rather than a primary role, and leaves the faculty out of decision-making,” astronomy department chair David Helfand said in an interview in January.
The current review seeks to make more effective use of the tangle of committees whose advisory status and lack of mutual communication has diminished faculty participation.
The Executive Committee of the Faculty of the Arts and Sciences, which is conducting the review, exemplifies the way governance has historically disheartened faculty, recycling a small group of unusually dedicated professors. Complaints range from minor inconveniences with faculty ID cards to administrative neglect to update professors on office relocation.
“Ultimately, the idea is to make people realize that the faculty committees do do important work, and that more people should volunteer to be involved,” Dirks said in January. “It has to be a broader group.”
As the committee considers alternative models—including one that filters all proposals through a central body of faculty representatives—it is unclear whether major changes will be made to FAS’s decentralized budget.
On the other hand, Dirks’ office, which currently chooses how to allocate SIPA’s funds, is to hand that responsibility over to the SIPA administration in the fall.
As 27 professors in SIPA are jointly appointed with other departments, SIPA dean John Coatsworth has said that freeing up the budget will increase transparency for donors while upholding significant curricular and research links. This comes at a time when SIPA revamps its degree programs, reducing the number of concentrations and offering regional specializations for students.
“SIPA will maintain close ties to the Arts and Sciences, but will have the financial and academic independence to develop in new and exciting ways,” Coatsworth wrote in an e-mail to SIPA faculty in March.
Even so, SIPA is grappling with the issue of University expansion. Though administrators have stated that SIPA will resettle in a building on the Manhattanville campus in 2015, jointly appointed political Science and economics professors are torn between staying in their Morningside home departments and accompanying SIPA uptown.
“The links between political science, economics, and SIPA are very, very deep,” political science professor Robert Jervis, who teaches at SIPA, said in April. “If econ and poli sci do move, that will, over the long run, change the intellectual nature of SIPA.” His colleague, political science chair John Huber, has voiced his fear that a spatial disconnect could force SIPA to build its own specialized faculty.
No formal decisions have been made about office movement. In an interview in April, Coatsworth said that “over the course of the next 12 months, we’ll know a lot more than we know now.”
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