Columbia is considering expanding undergraduate enrollment in Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science by up to 20 percent, according to an Oct. 31 email to faculty from the policy and planning committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences obtained by Spectator.
The University anticipates finalizing its decision before releasing early decision admissions results mid-December, according to the email. Its consideration is part of a wave of policy proposals responding to recent shifts in higher education and growing programming concerns within the University.
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Maybe it’s a way to raise revenues that are seemingly disappearing in the current environment.
More kids, potential economies of scale…although I’d imagine they’d have to invest in infrastructure too.
That would be a crazy money grab. It took Yale years and huge amounts of money/construction to increase class size by 5%.
And Rice is doing now - I wonder how that works? Does it dilute the admission standards and inevitably brand - or the endowment - can they stay need blind?
I wonder of all these things.
Columbia has the lowest per capita endowment of the Ivys. It has the highest ratio of federal government funding of the Ivys and the highest ratio of international students (its graduate engineering school is majority international). All things that make it exceptionally vulnerable to recent politics and changes in higher education landscape among its T20 peers. They survived so far largely through capitulation but need to change the business model in the current climate. They already have milked cash cow masters degrees so much that master students now exceed undergrad and PhD students. But many are international who are now at risk of being arbitrarily denied Visas in the future. And PhD’s students don’t generate revenue. So undergads are the next logical source.
What will be interesting if the change the class size as they appear to be likely to do is what affect it has on full need blind admissions over time. It doesn’t help their finances if they admit more students who require substantial aid. There’s probably many ways they can steer away from high need students while remaining allegedly need “blind.”
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