Penn vs Columbia

PennCAS2014
Thu, 29 Dec 2016 15:22:45 +0000

@juillet perhaps things have changed since you got your phd at Columbia? According to Columbia’s student newspaper and my several friends who were undergrads there, what you described is not the case. The vast majority of core classes are actually not taught by full professors, unfortunately.

“Limited faculty engagement with the Core also remains an obstacle—despite monetary incentives offered to faculty to teach Core classes, participation remains low, and the majority of classes are taught by graduate students or lecturers.”
http://columbiaspectator.com/news/2016/10/13/core-seminars-constrained-class-size-space-limitations

And even with new incentives, participation remained low. Only a quarter of Core classes were taught by full faculty members: http://columbiaspectator.com/news/2016/09/22/despite-new-incentives-few-senior-faculty-teach-core-0

And further development of the Manhattanville campus has only had unfortunate consequences on the ability of Columbia College to provide its students with a quality, personalized education. http://columbiaspectator.com/lead/2016/05/05/unfunded-mandate-columbia-college-arts-and-sciences-and-bollinger-era#chapter-5

And again, columbia students generally lack faculty advising which makes it very challenging to build relationships with professors. Additionally, when core courses are taught by graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, those connections weaken because those two categories of instructors have higher turnover rates and they more frequently leave the university within 2 years, leaving students without the connections they may have otherwise cultivated with a full professor.
http://columbiaspectator.com/news/2016/02/04/lack-faculty-advising-limits-student-faculty-relationships-columbia-college-and

And anecdotally, friends of mine who participated in the core said that they often had graduate students teaching their classes who admitted having read only one text on the syllabus. Perhaps they were exaggerating but the feeling was not a good one.