General-Studies

Saidiya Hartman, professor of English and comparative literature, has been appointed to University Professor. Only 17 other faculty members hold the distinction—Columbia’s highest academic honor—that allows them to set their own instruction schedules and teach across schools and departments.

It is time we hold the administration of the School of General Studies to its word. If administrators truly mean that their primary goal is to make General Studies as affordable as possible, they must change their transfer credit policy to accept online classes from other accredited colleges and universities. It would save General Studies students tens of thousands of dollars in student debt.

A School of General Studies student by day, Christina Clark straps on her pointe shoes by night to perform with New York City Ballet, one of the nation’s premier ballet companies.

The School of General Studies should not recruit or accept students from low-income backgrounds if it cannot financially accommodate them.

Jay-Z was met with a standing ovation upon entering The Forum on Columbia’s Manhattanville campus. While Beyoncé—yes, you read that right—slipped inconspicuously into her seat in the audience, Jay-Z sat down to speak on topics ranging from his musical influences to prison reform to his controversial partnership with the National Football League to his historic role in the landscape of hip-hop.

Columbia is the only Ivy League institution with an undergraduate school dedicated to fostering a community of “nontraditional” students from diverse backgrounds who have delayed their educational experience for a year or more. Named the School of General Studies, it promotes “experience and maturity” as prime features of the school’s community.

A select number of low-income students at the School of General Studies will now have access to subsidized meal plans, according to an email sent to students from the General Studies Office of Educational Financing.

Starting fall 2020, students entering the School of General Studies with under 30 credits will be required to take Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization if they have not already fulfilled their literature/humanities and social science requirements. According to administrators, the effort comes as part of a broader move to slowly integrate General Studies students into the Core Curriculum.

For Aaron Stout, GS ’21 and a veteran, Columbia offered a unique opportunity through the School of General Studies to integrate and interact with the larger undergraduate student body both socially and academically, something other universities often do not offer for students in continuing education programs.