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American Dreams and Challenges at Columbia
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 3, 2007
While the School of General Studies has one of the most exciting programs at Columbia, it doesn’t favor poorer students, especially international students. I have seen and heard a lot about dropouts. I have seen high school dropouts, middle school dropouts, college dropouts, and the Kanye West kind of dropouts. But I took the reality and causes of their situation for granted until I was on the verge of dropping out of school last week. My near-dropout had nothing to do with my wishes, destiny, reservations, personal inhibitions, or definitions of what the academic is about, but rather because of my poverty. Despite the constant assurances that there is a safe space and place for students from diverse backgrounds, poorer students are constantly sidelined from the Columbia experience.
When I entered the University in January ’05 and the school “forgot” to give me housing, I deferred for a semester. That situation complicated my status. I arrived on the assurances of old alumni—CEOs of banks and acquaintances through my TV and radio gigs in my home town of Accra. Friends from other Ivies convinced me there is no Ivy League school that does not have a financial aid program for international students and that these days, need-blind admissions make schools worth pursuing in America. They congratulated me on my admission, told me to stay warm, drove me to the airport, and encouraged me to enjoy my studies. I now wonder if my university has room for determined, hardworking, but needy students.
My lack of housing didn’t matter, because I found a distant relative to host me in the Bronx. But the community I lived in came with fresh challenges. The predictions surrounding my impending educational experiences were gloomy. Their logic was that I could become a taxi driver and make more than $1,000 a week and return home after a few years to live like a king, rather than give Columbia $46,000 a year. That makes sense, but the reality is that I can’t go home to represent the community whose contributions and support saw me through all my educational experiences with only a taxi-driving experience from New York.
I was told I couldn’t get on the radio like I did in Accra because I had an accent and was black. I didn’t budge. After calling many radio stations in NYC, I ended up presenting my poetry on the “Wake Up Call,” a community-based station on Wall Street. That experience confirmed my belief in the possibilities and opportunities in this country and great city. I was elated to start at Columbia.
While I have had some support from benevolent hearts and minds to keep me in college, Columbia doesn’t seem to have taken interest in the financial burden of a 12 credit minimum for international students whose counterparts can take fewer classes in addition to receiving support from the school, the state, and the country. Poor international students do not have that pleasure. In addition to not being able to take fewer credits or as many as we can afford, we do not receive the kind of financial backing that reflects the minimum cost of our education. I have raised money for school through friends, community, investors, and philanthropists, but that has happened each semester, and it is not fair or easy. After each effort, I believed Columbia would notice, open up, make the experience more about the quality education and fine opportunities than the money. But dropping out seemed to loom in my face each time I focused more on school and contributing to my community.
I joined my friends during the attempts by the FAiR coalition, the student group for financial aid reform, to advocate for the educational destinies of students whose parents earn less than $60,000 a year. The coalition succeeded in securing that move, but the opportunity did not extend to international students or students in GS. Some people insist the goal of the administration is to make money through its GS program, but I don’t believe that. Even if it’s true, I believe the administration has the courage to advocate for poor students whose efforts and hard work indicate their willingness and desire to make a better world for the next generation through a Columbia education.
Ishmael Osekre is a junior in the School of
General Studies.
Osekre’s Vibe runs alternate Wednesdays.
Specopinion@columbia.edu
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The arguments proposed by Sin-Ming Shaw and other commenters are as misguided and out of date as their information seems to be. After the creation of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the early 1990s, GS and CC students take the same classes and earn the same degrees. They are also allowed to talk to each other and become “pals” without the entire University being overhauled.
The distinction between GS and CC students is primarily administrative. CC students, although quite diverse in every other respect, are homogeneously young and thus easier to manage/cater to. They can all be stuck in dorms and forced to buy meal plans. Some GS students would like to live in dorms; some GS students have families and commute from New Jersey two days a week. The differences continue ad infinitum; expecting one administration to handle both types of students effectively is unfeasible.
Having two colleges does not confuse the world—it confuses people who appeal to authority by using the place where they went to school as proof of their argument. Such individuals are very often the sort who claim to know what the university is or is not “seeking,” or who, without citing any figures or displaying any knowledge of the intricacies of the ways in which Columbia allocates its funds, claim that a school is “grossly underfinanced.”
Individuals who value Columbia College for being a “highly selective institution”—rather than for, say, the education it provides—might find it helpful to take a statistics class. Selectivity refers only to the size of the applicant pool; if 20,000 people applied to GS every year, GS would be just as selective as CC.
CC is one of the elite colleges for traditional students; GS is the elite college for nontraditional students.
"Columbia College is a highly selective institution. It is much more difficult to get into the College. GS is basically open to anybody who can pay the tuition. That is the reality. Merge the College and GS and the College loses its lustre as an elite institution. The real answer is to phase out GS. Columbia's mission is not to be all things to all people. GS is basically a money maker for the university; in that respect the university is not seeking academic excellence. Rather it is seeking revenues. And the point isn't that 25 year old GS students can perform as well in the classroom as 19 year old College students. It is about preserving the reputation of Columbia College as an elite institution."
How reassuring to see that the kiddies of Columbia College are as insecure as...well, they've always been. Waaaah, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton turned me down (and gave MY space to some undeserving minorities)! Waaah, waaah, I want my mommy!
Sun rises in the east, news at eleven, and all that.
It's at turns sad and hilarious. But mostly sad.
Columbia College is a highly selective institution. It is much more difficult to get into the College. GS is basically open to anybody who can pay the tuition. That is the reality. Merge the College and GS and the College loses its lustre as an elite institution. The real answer is to phase out GS. Columbia's mission is not to be all things to all people. GS is basically a money maker for the university; in that respect the university is not seeking academic excellence. Rather it is seeking revenues. And the point isn't that 25 year old GS students can perform as well in the classroom as 19 year old College students. It is about preserving the reputation of Columbia College as an elite institution.
It's terribly presumptuous to assume that you-or anybody for that matter- is 'entitled' to a Columbia education, or even the assistance towards one.
Columbia's goal is to educate, not to cure the world's social inequities, and certainly not to provide "fine opportunities." These "fine opportunities" are a happy consequence of having received a Columbia education, but they may be more due to the social weight placed on a Columbia education than anything Columbia itself claims to provide.
It is even more disappointing to see that students who could have ended up i other elite institutions with more opportunities are locked up in a system that doesn't cater properly for them. Ishmael isn't the first African student in the US. There are so many African students in undergraduate schools especially in Ivies who are getting a better deal. For once we shd learn to be good hosts to people we invite into our country.
The time is long, long overdue to combine GS and College. I know, I know. GS students are older with "unorthodox" background and all that. So what? Many CC students also have "unorthodox" backgrounds. The only real difference between the two classes of students is age. So what?
If a person is qualified to be accepted to attend GS, s/he should qualify for the College. It would benefit both age categories to sit side by side. Each has something precious to offer. It confuses the world to have two undergraduate colleges and two separate degrees. By merging the two institutions, it eliminates the confusion, eliminates the "separate and unequal" status of GS and perhaps more important, the merger would offer qualified students such as Mr Osekre access to financial resources of the College that GS does not have. As a college graduate cc67 I think I would have benefited greatly from having older students as my pals. Wouldn't you? I can understand why the Engineering School may have to be separate, though Princeton, Harvard and others do not do such silly things, but GS is a liberal arts institution. Some wise Board Trustees, with a big push from GS administration and students, College administration and students, faculty, should give this merger idea serious consideration. sin-ming shaw cc'67.
Mr. Osekre's financial predicament reflects a fundamental flaw in Columbia's past ambitions under Murray Butler and later Dwight Eisenhower. Their visions were never unsupported by a corresponding rise in financial resources. Both presidents didn't raise much money for the university.
The idea of GS was a wonderful one -- to provide a quality education to those who didn't fit the usual college kids profile. However, it takes money to do a job properly. GS is grossly under-financed and has always been an "orphan" institution at Columbia. If you compare Columbia with Harvard whose endowment at one point in the distant past was not much bigger than Columbia, you will find Columbia with a $6 billion endowment has as many departments as Harvard which has $35 billion in endowment. However, Columbia has several more thousands students than Harvard.
You don't need a degree in financial analysis to figure out Columbia has taken on more than it can chew. And Mr. Osekre is yet another victim of Columbia's poor management over many years. On this point, Columbia has few peers. It was a lot worse in my days under Grayson Kirk and the then Board of Trustees who never lifted much of a finger to raise money for the university. sin-ming shaw GSAS 69, 72
"Their logic was that I could become a taxi driver and make more than $1,000 a week and return home after a few years to live like a king".
If the perception is true, there should not be any strikes of taxi drivers, and thanks God you did not take the chance to be one of them.
The question is not what drive us "nut", but when we are going to refuse of beeing driven "nut".
Life is not gamble. The way of thinking, "mindfulness", will keep us all strong, and the answer is within our heart.
Please support the taxi drivers' strike on October 22 in NYC.
Thank you!
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