<p>Isn’t anybody else here sick and tired of these stupid arguments? Some people are always going to think that Barnard is a part of Columbia “proper”, and some people will always disagree. What the hell is “Columbia” anyways? If you think about it, it’s a mosaic of different schools that are integrated to highly varying degrees. The College of P&S is so far uptown and wasn’t even a part of Columbia for quite a long period in the University’s history. How many Columbia College students know very much about, or have good friends in Teacher’s College, School of Social Work, SIPA, Journalism, Art School, Mailman School of Public Health? etc. etc. etc. There are many other ways in which I could probably argue that “Columbia” is a huge network of schools rather than a singular and perfectly integrated whole. If students that have virtually no interaction (or minimal interaction) with other Columbia students can still be considered part of Columbia, then why can’t Barnard students that have far more interaction with us?</p>
<p>Anyways, Columbia benefits from having a large, college-aged, female student body right across the street. If they want some of Columbia’s prestige to rub off on them, who really cares enough to argue that they have no right? I personally think it’s a little sad for Barnard girls to say that they go to Columbia, but I can see how it’s somewhat true if there’s an overlap in educational resources between Columbia and Barnard, and Barnard girls are making use of those opportunities. Barnard is a great school as well, and I dislike how some Barnard students and Columbia students generally take their fortunes for granted.</p>
<p>At this point in time, I can see how Barnard and Columbia both benefit more from keeping the status quo rather than forcing a merger or forcing a complete separation of resources and access. One imperfect analogy I like to think of when it comes to this is Taiwan and China.</p>
<p>If Barnard rejected Columbia’s proprosal to buy them, then Columbia should’ve just cut all the ties with Barnard, and see how much longer Barnard can rely on its own “prestige”.</p>
<p>Columbia didn’t propose to “buy” Barnard. Columbia wanted to merge with Barnard, and Barnard’s leadership rejected the merger proposal. The primary issues at the time were concerns over faculty tenure; however, other factors might have been that Columbia was facing severe financial difficulties of its own at the time, and Columbia was not then a particularly selective college (Columbia was then accepting roughly 50% of all applicants). So it wasn’t a particularly attractive offer to Barnard.</p>
<p>The current arrangement is mutually advantageous to Columbia University and to Barnard. Columbia gets the advantage of a fourth undergraduate college without having to bear the full expense of maintaining it. It gets the benefit of about 2400 additional students attending classes who are paying for their use of resources via the terms of the affiliation agreement, without Columbia having to subsidize any of those students via its own financial aid system, or having to provide housing. It gets the benefit of 255 FTE Barnard faculty available to its students for undergraduate and graduate courses, without having to pick up the costs of salary and employment benefits of those teachers. </p>
<p>Barnard is a robust and highly selective institution – it is by far the most selective of any women’s college in the country – so basically Barnard is a highly successful college that is financially sound – so no worries on the Columbia end that Barnard will continue to pay its bills. Meanwhile, Columbia can focus its own resources for expansion elsewhere.</p>
<p>It is very expensive for any college to maintain academic departments where enrollment is light. It is always a difficult proposition to consider hiring a new faculty member if one cannot guarantee that a a given number of paying students will enroll in the classes the professor teaches. So a university always benefits if it can expand its offerings without having to pay for the full cost entailed in those offerings. So Columbia University gets the benefit of 6,600 spots in courses available each year to its students without having to pay for the faculty which teaches those courses. This is particularly advantageous when you consider that Barnard classes on average are smaller than Columbia classes, and that many Columbia classes are taught by grad students — so the Columbia students who attend classes at Barnard may be attending the types of classes that are more expensive to offer (class taught to small group by professor vs. class taught to large group by prof / class taught to small group by grad student). </p>
<p>I find it quite naive on your part to think that Columbia would want to sever ties when it is such an advantageous arrangement for them. The only issue back in the 1980s was that Columbia clearly could not survive as a male-only institution – merger with Barnard would have been an easy way for them to go co-ed without having to admit a bunch of women on their own. The Columbia trustees mistakenly believed that Barnard would face difficulty from the competition – but history proved otherwise.</p>
<p>“The Columbia trustees mistakenly believed that Barnard would face difficulty from the competition – but history proved otherwise.”</p>
<p>From what I recall reading, everyone was concerned that Barnard would face difficulty, including members of the Barnard community. They were not mistaken, necessarily, they just deliberately structured the deal to reduce the impact, by making sure the university’s connection with Barnard would be maintained.</p>
<p>“The Columbia trustees mistakenly believed that Barnard would face difficulty from the competition – but history proved otherwise.”</p>
<p>And, of course, the Trustees could not foresee that New York would once again become a cultural mecca over the next years and sound leadership would make Columbia one of the premier colleges in the world, greatly increasing its (and Barnard’s) selectivity, such that there is no shortage of women who want to apply to Columbia, Barnard, or both.</p>
<p>Well actually, a good deal of the leadership credit goes to a former President of Barnard, Ellen Futter, who not only helped set the terms of the affiliation going forward, but also set the strength for Barnard’s growth as a residential college:</p>
<p>“And, of course, the Trustees could not foresee that New York would once again become a cultural mecca over the next years”</p>
<p>Good point, great leadership has its place for sure but the rise and fall of NYC has a significant tidal effect that is not to be ignored while everyone is patting themselves on the back. The institution that has risen the most in relative selectivity, from when I applied to colleges, is NYU. I don’t think Columbia’s fortunes had much to do with that. The area around Morningside Heights has a different reputation now than it did then, which effects all the schools there. Frankly the extent of Columbia’s rise in selectivity is a two-edged sword for Barnard, I think it may actually deter some applicants at this point. Some people probably would prefer not to share their Spanish class with the charming wifey99999999, et al.</p>
<p>In any case, it probably is quite rare for Barnard students to enroll in graduate level engineering classes (although technically those courses seem to be open to Barnard students) – so it’s not all that likely that the Barnard students will run into wifey in any case.</p>
<p>I’ve read books from the late 80s about New York City, and it’s amazing how everyone just expected it to be a hellhole for the foreseeable future. As I was born in 1991, I’ve never personally known the city to be anything more than an increasingly-popular and safe cultural and economic center. My generation sees the New York of “Taxi Driver” the same we see “Gangs of New York”: as mere history. We probably identify more strongly with the pre-war New York of “The Great Gatsby” or the immediate postwar New York of “The Catcher in the Rye”.</p>
<p>Re post #49 – what I remember from the 70’s and 80’s is that the crime rate in NY was very high, and I don’t think anybody really anticipated the gentrification that would occur in many urban areas, including NY. </p>
<p>There are a lot of things that have changed, including perceptions as to private education, and the focus on prestige. I doubt anyone was thinking about prestige or rankings back when the merger issue was being considered.</p>
<p>To people addressing facebook issues with Barnard students in Columbia network, my sister goes to Barnard and they actually don’t have a network, rather Barnard is like a subset of Columbia on there, just saying</p>
<p>Barnard isn’t a subset of Columbia on facebook; they simply don’t exist. You can list Barnard College under your education info, but not as a network. Of course, facebook has been trying to phase out networks for the last 2 years, so this isn’t terribly surprising. Most people on campus don’t care much about the facebook networks issue (though it’s come up in the past); it’s really swipe-access that causes the most headaches!</p>
<p>@62ayyy: Really? Is that necessary? Gay marriage is legal in many states and countries and is just as legitimate, if not more so, than Vegas weddings that end in divorce less than a day later. Anyway, I won’t hijack this thread too much.</p>
<p>But when Facebook was built around networks, then all Barnard students on Facebook were listed in the Columbia network (and those whose facebook entry dates from that time still show up that way.) Back when my d. started college, you couldn’t even get onto Facebook unless you had a *.edu email. Barnard students have dual emails – that is, they will get an email that looks like –> <a href=“mailto:xy1234@barnard.edu”>xy1234@barnard.edu</a> that will work equally well if addressed to <a href=“mailto:xy1234@columbia.edu”>xy1234@columbia.edu</a> – so they used to sign onto Facebook that way. So it wasn’t that Barnard “didn’t exist” or that it was a “subset” – in the world of Facebook, it was merged into Columbia.</p>
<p>Under the way Facebook was originally set up, that made sense. It used to be that people could see others on their own network automatically, but only “friended” people on other networks. The idea was to provide a tool for enhancing real world social connections – so that students could easily find others at their own school. Given that Barnard & Columbia have shared student activities & organizations, as well as shared course enrollment – it made sense in that context to set up one unifying network rather than several.</p>
<p>One thing Barnard proposed (but facebook rejected) was setting up interlocking Columbia and Barnard networks the same way that the Claremont colleges each have their own facebook network but are also part of a supra-network of all the Claremont colleges. For whatever reason, facebook refused to do this for Barnard and once they moved away from the school network model, there was no need for them to revisit it. It’s almost impossible to see what network you’re in on the new profile page layout, for example, and that’s deliberate.</p>
<p>That’s why this “affiliation” thing is so stupid… Barnard students can get Columbia email account, but Columbia students can’t… If Barnard is officially part of Columbia, then Columbia students should also be able to get a Barnard email, right?</p>