7 ms·

Some thoughts on undergraduate expansion (2021)

45 points by luu 5y ago

softwarebeware 5y ago
The point of the essay is buried deep within after a long preamble: facility space at Columbia is an emergency situation. It should rather start out with that fact.
tengbretson 5y ago
> Improving the reality of life at Columbia will cost money, lots of it. Well I hope they manage to find it somewhere.
la64710 5y ago
From TFA : The shortage of classroom space is an emergency situation. Of course, athletic facilities can be considered a luxury, but the same cannot be said of classrooms With an average tuition fees of 50k wtf are they doing? The world is moving on and this is no way to stay competitive in the education market.
- flowerbeater 5y ago
  Seeing the amount 50k written out like that today, it seems like a pretty good deal. It looks like less the amount of annual equity that an entry level software developer makes. It's the price of a used truck, a kitchen remodel, a really nice family vacation for a month, etc.
  - eggsmediumrare 5y ago
    Wtf kind of entry level software jobs are you talking about lol? 50k is 11k more than the median family income here in Canada. You're right, though, it's still less than a new truck.
    - hansvm 5y ago
      The median family isn't full of software developers.
- BigRedDog1669 5y ago
  They have to build up their endowment to compare to other elite schools, they can't spend it on students.
sdenton4 5y ago
I could see a good argument for making an ivy league school with an enrollment of 100k, simply to break the ivy league elitist bullshit. This complaint is about reaching one tenth the size of a good UC. (Berkeley: 41k, Davis: 35k, UCLA: 45k) Berkeley's student faculty ratio is 19:1, while the article is complaining about fluctuations between 7.1:1 and 7.5:1. Yes, larger facilities are needed to handle growth to UC size, but capping student population at 19th century levels even as population grows is its own kind of pathology.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Showing up in person is its own kind of pathology. If they offer masters online, why not undergrad? There's a lot of threads here with amazingly tone deaf people who are just "go to school" or "get a masters" when the gating factor is magicing up 4 years of potentially repeat credits to get your undergrad after already being a working professional.
  - gumby 5y ago
    That kind of masters is just credentialism, like the corporate certs people pay for. They are a good moneymaker for the universities. There are other kinds of masters, like one attached to an extended bachelor’s (more classes, a project and/or do-op) or as a consolation prize for dropping out of a PhD program. These are more academic.
- Animats 5y ago
  even as population grows What population growth? The US college age population is flat, and the US grade school age population is dropping. US population growth is mostly old people living longer.[1] New York City's population is declining. Not the whole metro area, just the city. [1] https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/population-data/population/ https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-a...
  - mjmahone17 5y ago
    New York City grew by 700,000 people between 2010 and 2020, while the metro area grew by 1.15 million. I’m not sure where you’re getting the declining figures from?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nonrandomstring 5y ago
Why? The article clearly objects to mindless growth. It talks about measuring growth and the effects of growth, over-filled classrooms, student stress, stretched resources and the strain on teaching staff. But _nowhere_ do I see a single word on _why_ growth is desirable? It just doesn't get discussed. It's so baked into the assumptions behind the article that in fact the word "why" does not even appear in the text. This is an ivy-league university falling into the tragic abyss of modern unreason - the reckless pathology of blind management.
- voidfunc 5y ago
  Money.
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    > Money. Well no. In this case the universal answer fails. > Yale Provost Ben Polak told the Washington Post, "At no point in the expansion did we think we'd do it to raise money for the university. This is about access." That's Yale. But the the article properly deals with the simple tradeoff between "access" and quality at Columbia. It's a bad deal. Nobody benefits. > President Bollinger in an interview says, "We have to have growth as the institution evolves." No we do not! This a bare, unqualified, ideologically rooted and - in the current milieu - frankly insane statement. Give me a single good reason why, when all factors considered growth leads to poorer student and staff experiences, we "have to have" it?
    - voidfunc 5y ago
      Growth increases alumni network. Bigger alumni network increases chance you have more big fish who donate more. It's all money regardless of what they say.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  Educational institutions are the rocks on which the endless waves of ignorance crash and are broken. Educational capactiy thus needs to grow with the overall population. And if you don't grow the elite schools - or build new elite schools - you lock the society into oligarchy, as the relative size of the 'elite' grows smaller and smaller, educating the Sackler children while locking out increasing proportions of talented kids from less advantaged class backgrounds.
daxfohl 5y ago
Couldn't embracing remote learning have solved most of these problems? I took a few classes over the last two years and loved remote learning. I don't get why it was so quickly cast away.
next_xibalba 5y ago
Peter Thiel has a fascinating perspective related to top universities and their enrollments: > "You could say that it's an investment good, where you're investing in the future, or a consumption good, a four-year party. I think that most parents and students think of college as an insurance policy, this ever more expensive insurance so that students don't fall through the growing cracks in our society" > "It's not an insurance policy at all. It's a crazy tournament. It's a zero-sum tournament. If you were the president of Harvard or Stanford and you wanted to get a lynch mob of students, alumni, and faculty to come after you, what you should say is something like this: We live in this much larger, more global world. We offer this great education to everybody. So we're going to double or triple our enrollment over the next 15 to 20 years. And people would all be furious, because the value of the degree comes from massive exclusion. And what you're really running is something like a Studio 54 night club that's got an incredibly long line outside and a very small number of people let inside. It's branded as positive sum, everybody can learn, but the reality is that it is deeply zero sum."
- andreyk 5y ago
  This is an absurdly cynical view. For one, Stanford admissions are growing over time (even if admit rate is dropping) - https://ivyleagueprep.com/stanford-university-class-of-2024/ https://ivyleagueprep.com/stanford-university-class-of-2024/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-... Two, growing class size this much is not easy, as additional housing is required. Three, part of the value proposition of elite schools is to be surrounded by smart ambitious people, and to have the prestige associates with the school to be more competitive in the future. Thiel is right this is partially bad, but realistically competition is inherently part of capitalism. The same is true of top tech companies - their value proposition is not just an absurd salary, but the prestige of working at eg Google and having that on your resume. And fourth, Stanford offers a lot of online certificates, and has SCPD admissions. Georgia Tech has a whole online Masters degree that has had thousands if not tens of thousands of admits. The trend is for education to be more accessible, not less. Granted, I'm biased as someone who went to Georgia Tech and Stanford. But this take by Thiel is entirely reductive, even if it does have a grain of truth to it. Much of life is zero sum (what is job hunting if not that) and while it's not ideal, it's silly to single out elite colleges as being bad for it.
jaqalopes 5y ago
I graduated from Columbia College in 2014. Everything about the overcrowding of dorms, classrooms, dining halls, libraries and especially the gym made my undergrad experience far more painful than it should have been. There was, strictly speaking, enough space. But the space was often low quality: dark, windowless hallways; dorm rooms in old high rises whose windows faced inner air shafts rather than the street. It was comical. I always assumed it was just a New York problem. But as this article explains, the actual problem is investment in the campus. There would be absolutely no problem academically or culturally with Columbia expanding (doubling, tripling?) undergrad enrollment (obviously this assumes they could find enough new teachers--huge assumption of course). It's already so big you will go through your four years and never meet most of your classmates. What is there to lose? I don't think Columbia is as worried about prestige or exclusivity as peer schools. What they're worried about is placing as many graduates as possible in high paying jobs in Wall Street and Silicon Valley. As they rightfully should be. I don't think this goal would be harmed by raising enrollment, if the commensurate investments were made. All of that being said, I personally think the ideal college is something like a Deep Springs, with a low double digit enrollment of students living and learning together in the middle of nowhere and spending a large amount of their time not just studying but working. If I could wave a wand and dissolve the Ivy League and replace it with 1000 Deeps Springs scattered across the rural Northeast, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But universities are big businesses (someone once said "hedge funds with schools attached") so this will most likely never happen.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  I recently spent time on Columbia's campus. If you are complaining about the facilities, you might visit some other schools, including community colleges.
  - jaqalopes 5y ago
    Totally fair, I definitely would consider it in context of the other top Ivies. Community colleges are criminally underresourced in most places.
graycat 5y ago
Ah, any such "expansion" would need more money, and the main job of the President of a university is to raise money. Soooo, we can conclude that the President of Columbia is trying to raise money. We ever expected something else?

45 points by luu 5y ago

The point of the essay is buried deep within after a long preamble: facility space at Columbia is an emergency situation. It should rather start out with that fact.

tengbretson 5y ago

> Improving the reality of life at Columbia will cost money, lots of it. Well I hope they manage to find it somewhere.

la64710 5y ago

From TFA : The shortage of classroom space is an emergency situation. Of course, athletic facilities can be considered a luxury, but the same cannot be said of classrooms With an average tuition fees of 50k wtf are they doing? The world is moving on and this is no way to stay competitive in the education market.

flowerbeater 5y ago
Seeing the amount 50k written out like that today, it seems like a pretty good deal. It looks like less the amount of annual equity that an entry level software developer makes. It's the price of a used truck, a kitchen remodel, a really nice family vacation for a month, etc.
- eggsmediumrare 5y ago
  Wtf kind of entry level software jobs are you talking about lol? 50k is 11k more than the median family income here in Canada. You're right, though, it's still less than a new truck.
  - hansvm 5y ago
    The median family isn't full of software developers.
BigRedDog1669 5y ago
They have to build up their endowment to compare to other elite schools, they can't spend it on students.

sdenton4 5y ago

I could see a good argument for making an ivy league school with an enrollment of 100k, simply to break the ivy league elitist bullshit. This complaint is about reaching one tenth the size of a good UC. (Berkeley: 41k, Davis: 35k, UCLA: 45k) Berkeley's student faculty ratio is 19:1, while the article is complaining about fluctuations between 7.1:1 and 7.5:1. Yes, larger facilities are needed to handle growth to UC size, but capping student population at 19th century levels even as population grows is its own kind of pathology.

R0b0t1 5y ago
Showing up in person is its own kind of pathology. If they offer masters online, why not undergrad? There's a lot of threads here with amazingly tone deaf people who are just "go to school" or "get a masters" when the gating factor is magicing up 4 years of potentially repeat credits to get your undergrad after already being a working professional.
- gumby 5y ago
  That kind of masters is just credentialism, like the corporate certs people pay for. They are a good moneymaker for the universities. There are other kinds of masters, like one attached to an extended bachelor’s (more classes, a project and/or do-op) or as a consolation prize for dropping out of a PhD program. These are more academic.
Animats 5y ago
even as population grows What population growth? The US college age population is flat, and the US grade school age population is dropping. US population growth is mostly old people living longer.[1] New York City's population is declining. Not the whole metro area, just the city. [1] https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/population-data/population/ https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-a...
- mjmahone17 5y ago
  New York City grew by 700,000 people between 2010 and 2020, while the metro area grew by 1.15 million. I’m not sure where you’re getting the declining figures from?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nonrandomstring 5y ago

Why? The article clearly objects to mindless growth. It talks about measuring growth and the effects of growth, over-filled classrooms, student stress, stretched resources and the strain on teaching staff. But _nowhere_ do I see a single word on _why_ growth is desirable? It just doesn't get discussed. It's so baked into the assumptions behind the article that in fact the word "why" does not even appear in the text. This is an ivy-league university falling into the tragic abyss of modern unreason - the reckless pathology of blind management.

voidfunc 5y ago
Money.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  > Money. Well no. In this case the universal answer fails. > Yale Provost Ben Polak told the Washington Post, "At no point in the expansion did we think we'd do it to raise money for the university. This is about access." That's Yale. But the the article properly deals with the simple tradeoff between "access" and quality at Columbia. It's a bad deal. Nobody benefits. > President Bollinger in an interview says, "We have to have growth as the institution evolves." No we do not! This a bare, unqualified, ideologically rooted and - in the current milieu - frankly insane statement. Give me a single good reason why, when all factors considered growth leads to poorer student and staff experiences, we "have to have" it?
  - voidfunc 5y ago
    Growth increases alumni network. Bigger alumni network increases chance you have more big fish who donate more. It's all money regardless of what they say.
sdenton4 5y ago
Educational institutions are the rocks on which the endless waves of ignorance crash and are broken. Educational capactiy thus needs to grow with the overall population. And if you don't grow the elite schools - or build new elite schools - you lock the society into oligarchy, as the relative size of the 'elite' grows smaller and smaller, educating the Sackler children while locking out increasing proportions of talented kids from less advantaged class backgrounds.

daxfohl 5y ago

Couldn't embracing remote learning have solved most of these problems? I took a few classes over the last two years and loved remote learning. I don't get why it was so quickly cast away.

next_xibalba 5y ago

Peter Thiel has a fascinating perspective related to top universities and their enrollments: > "You could say that it's an investment good, where you're investing in the future, or a consumption good, a four-year party. I think that most parents and students think of college as an insurance policy, this ever more expensive insurance so that students don't fall through the growing cracks in our society" > "It's not an insurance policy at all. It's a crazy tournament. It's a zero-sum tournament. If you were the president of Harvard or Stanford and you wanted to get a lynch mob of students, alumni, and faculty to come after you, what you should say is something like this: We live in this much larger, more global world. We offer this great education to everybody. So we're going to double or triple our enrollment over the next 15 to 20 years. And people would all be furious, because the value of the degree comes from massive exclusion. And what you're really running is something like a Studio 54 night club that's got an incredibly long line outside and a very small number of people let inside. It's branded as positive sum, everybody can learn, but the reality is that it is deeply zero sum."

andreyk 5y ago
This is an absurdly cynical view. For one, Stanford admissions are growing over time (even if admit rate is dropping) - https://ivyleagueprep.com/stanford-university-class-of-2024/ https://ivyleagueprep.com/stanford-university-class-of-2024/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-... Two, growing class size this much is not easy, as additional housing is required. Three, part of the value proposition of elite schools is to be surrounded by smart ambitious people, and to have the prestige associates with the school to be more competitive in the future. Thiel is right this is partially bad, but realistically competition is inherently part of capitalism. The same is true of top tech companies - their value proposition is not just an absurd salary, but the prestige of working at eg Google and having that on your resume. And fourth, Stanford offers a lot of online certificates, and has SCPD admissions. Georgia Tech has a whole online Masters degree that has had thousands if not tens of thousands of admits. The trend is for education to be more accessible, not less. Granted, I'm biased as someone who went to Georgia Tech and Stanford. But this take by Thiel is entirely reductive, even if it does have a grain of truth to it. Much of life is zero sum (what is job hunting if not that) and while it's not ideal, it's silly to single out elite colleges as being bad for it.

jaqalopes 5y ago

I graduated from Columbia College in 2014. Everything about the overcrowding of dorms, classrooms, dining halls, libraries and especially the gym made my undergrad experience far more painful than it should have been. There was, strictly speaking, enough space. But the space was often low quality: dark, windowless hallways; dorm rooms in old high rises whose windows faced inner air shafts rather than the street. It was comical. I always assumed it was just a New York problem. But as this article explains, the actual problem is investment in the campus. There would be absolutely no problem academically or culturally with Columbia expanding (doubling, tripling?) undergrad enrollment (obviously this assumes they could find enough new teachers--huge assumption of course). It's already so big you will go through your four years and never meet most of your classmates. What is there to lose? I don't think Columbia is as worried about prestige or exclusivity as peer schools. What they're worried about is placing as many graduates as possible in high paying jobs in Wall Street and Silicon Valley. As they rightfully should be. I don't think this goal would be harmed by raising enrollment, if the commensurate investments were made. All of that being said, I personally think the ideal college is something like a Deep Springs, with a low double digit enrollment of students living and learning together in the middle of nowhere and spending a large amount of their time not just studying but working. If I could wave a wand and dissolve the Ivy League and replace it with 1000 Deeps Springs scattered across the rural Northeast, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But universities are big businesses (someone once said "hedge funds with schools attached") so this will most likely never happen.

wolverine876 5y ago
I recently spent time on Columbia's campus. If you are complaining about the facilities, you might visit some other schools, including community colleges.
- jaqalopes 5y ago
  Totally fair, I definitely would consider it in context of the other top Ivies. Community colleges are criminally underresourced in most places.

graycat 5y ago

Ah, any such "expansion" would need more money, and the main job of the President of a university is to raise money. Soooo, we can conclude that the President of Columbia is trying to raise money. We ever expected something else?