Among financial aspects of concern are Barnard’s sharply increased deficit spending, high overall debt and reduction in outlook by S&P to negative. Faculty and staff, who will be among those impacted, appear largely to have been unaware of any such crisis until recent months.
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Why on earth does Barnard need its own science facilities when they are next door to one of the planet’s most heavily invested scientific research universities? Are they Columbia undergraduates or not?
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Columbia is definitely not set up to serve all of Barnard’s science students - certainly not in terms of instructional space. Barnard also does want to continue to offer smaller class sizes/more personalized instruction in all their courses (preserving the SLAC part of their identity) and their faculty would not want to send all of their students across the street for science instruction.
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The new President, Rosenbury, was brought on specifically to fundraise large capital gifts to work off this debt.
Acknowledging that her start date of August 2023 did not give her much time to make an impression before the events of 10/7 gripped both BC and CU, Rosenbury has been a massive failure in the fundraising arena. And the climate at the school has worsened a hundredfold in the last year, so the prospect of her reeling in any large gifts anytime in the near future seems totally unrealistic.
The departments (and professors) that make BC famous - sociology, wgss, creative writing, history, foreign languages, theatre, human rights etc., - have been deprioritized in favor of science because of one particular donor family who have named and underwritten (much of) the new science building. Under their previous President, Beilock, the science programs really accelerated, though, particularly Cog Sci. My D is a junior, and her friends are split roughly 50/50 between humanities majors and science/Econ.
BC is a unique school and culture. Very few (if any) of the students are there because it’s a back door to Columbia. They value the differences btwn the two schools particularly in the core curriculum. Hoping they get their stuff together over the next few years and find a way out of their current financial cul-de-sac.
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Remember, that Barnard facilities (class rooms, libraries, dining rooms,…) are also used by the other undergraduate colleges at Columbia. Classes taught at Barnard are in Columbia’s course catalogue and Barnard faculty is Columbia University faculty. And Barnard pays a few million each year to contribute financially for also sharing University facilities.
Some courses are available as a Barnard class one year, and on the other side of Broadway another year.
Point is, the University has been already debating for years on how to possibly grow their undergraduate enrollment because they lack facilities for any growth. Their is no wasteful redundancy here - because even taken together, they are at their combined limit.
PS - just to clarify…
Not the “difference in” core curriculum, but the fact, that Barnard does not have one at all. Barnard’s elaborate distribution requirement has the opposite intention - instead of mandating very few specific core classes, it requires that students spread their studies across many fields from hundreds of suitable courses!
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