Becoming a 'Global University' in Truth

Columbia by all rights ought to be a great, world-renowned institution, yet it continually settles for mere excellence. I’ve probably just angered a few people in the admissions office, but it’s true. Don’t get me wrong—Columbia is and always has been a highly successful and influential institution, and its claims to fame aren’t shabby at all: the original home of the Manhattan project, the first educational institution to offer degrees in political science and anthropology, the first school to offer the MD. Its alums go on to highly successful careers in the elite echelons of society, both in the US and internationally—Madeleine Albright got her Ph.D. here, for example, while Barack Obama attended CC. Yet we feel a continual sense of disquiet when it comes to our alma mater. Obama is a prototypical case—he hardly mentions his time here, and few except CC students and politics buffs know he attended. Why?

Some impute this situation to a confluence of historical forces in the latter portion of the 20th century that, the claim is, did in Columbia’s prestige. The activist spirit of the 1960s took hold at Columbia far more than at many other schools, leading to the famed riots of 1968 and attendant student takeovers of classroom and administrative buildings. Alumni were disgusted at what they perceived to be a rabble that had roused itself to foment discord over a seemingly inconsequential affair—the construction of a gym—while a number of respected faculty departed post haste for other institutions of higher learning (others, of course, supported the protesters).

At the same time, New York City’s fortunes were on the wane—crime was up, tourism was down, and the city’s economy, often robust in the past, was faltering. While it’s not fair to say that Columbia’s fortunes are inextricably tied to New York’s—more on that subject in a later column—Columbia does owe some of its appeal to its Manhattan location. Parents didn’t want to send their kids to a crime-ridden city (some parents, mine included, still worry about this today). Kids, meanwhile, didn’t want to go to a New York City that lacked the vibrancy and bustle of old.

Yet the unrest and economic decline of the 1960s are not the whole story. Fortunes of major institutions wax and wane, but the intuition many here can’t shake—admittedly one unbolstered by any statistical data I’ve seen, yet reinforced by examination of such crude metrics as the number of U.S. presidents who went here—is that Columbia launches its alumni into the stratosphere of achievement less often than it should. Columbia has an age advantage over almost every school in the country, including most of the Ivies, yet (for example) Stanford has shot up in the last century to surpass it in nearly every field.

It’s easy to explain these facts away via contingent circumstances—e.g., Stanford happened to be situated on the west coast right on time for its development boom and, more recently, was able to capitalize on and co-opt the technological innovation in Silicon Valley—but that’s a cop-out. Blaming it all on history might be sensible in an academic disquisition, but it won’t help us achieve our goal. The question we must ask is, what can we do now to get to where we want to be?

On Nov. 1, 1999—now nearly a decade ago—the New York Times published an article saying that Columbia was “on a roll” and that over and above New York City’s return to prosperity, Columbia had been “particularly blessed” by increasing alumni donations, increasing application rates, and a significant number of Nobel Prize awards to current faculty. These trends continue today, and they are pleasing. Most interestingly of all, however, the article makes another observation. George Rupp, the University president at the time, wasn’t just a public blusterer—he was “an attentive manager,” “a careful strategist,” “a nonstop fund-raiser,” and even more importantly, someone who aggressively sought “to be excellent in every area” in which he was involved. Under his aegis, Columbia began to rise once more.

What we need now, simply put, is the pursuit of greatness, the sine qua non of any institution that seeks global leadership and prominence. We current students ought to be proud that we attend. Alums ought to be proud of their alma mater. But we can’t just magically become proud—we and Columbia the institution must work to make it a place where we are compelled by its virtue alone to be proud. This is my claim. Further support, as well as some specific ideas on how we can achieve our objectives, coming soon.

Mark Holden is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science and philosophy. If It Ain’t Broke... runs alternate Mondays.
Specopinion@columbia.edu