4 ms·

In a way, Columbia already does! Columbia's School of General Studies is targeted at students without a high school diploma, students with "nontraditional" bac

In a way, Columbia already does! Columbia's School of General Studies is targeted at students without a high school diploma, students with "nontraditional" backgrounds, and students who have taken more than a year off after high school before going to school. I went to Columbia, and while I wasn't in GS, a lot of my friends were. A large number of GS students are veterans[0]. Of the rest, a surprising number are people with, well, backgrounds that typically disqualify a person from an Ivy League education. I can't share their stories because they're not mine to share, but I had classmates who were caught (and incarcerated for) drug trafficking and other serious-but-nonviolent crimes[1]. I know this because they told me, and they felt comfortable enough in their academic environment sharing this knowledge. To me, that really says something about not only the admissions process, but also the community and support that they receive as students. As a non-GS student, I really appreciated this setup. My education would not have been the same had I not been sitting next to these students in our discussion sections for class, or serving on the boards of student organizations with them. And at the same time, they were able to benefit from the structure of a school that was explicitly tailored to students with nontraditional backgrounds. Columbia could do a lot more to support GS students[3], as well as support incarcerated prisoners who are not students, but this is something they've been doing for decades without any fanfare at all. Columbia also has a very long history of accepting veterans who were discharged for being gay, even long before Don't Ask, Don't Tell (Stephen Donaldson was a Columbia student before joining the military[4]). IIRC, many of these discharges would have been dishonorable discharges, which in some states carries the same status as being a convicted felon. [0] Partly because Columbia GS is so proactive about recruiting on military bases, and partly because their yellow ribbon matching is so generous. [1] I mention nonviolent crimes because that's what (some of) my GS friends shared with me. I don't know of any who were convicted of violent crimes, and I don't know if this is simply selection bias or if there really weren't any. [3] If anyone reading this has $100MM to spare, the General Studies school could benefit greatly from its own endowment to increase access to financial aid! [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Donaldson_%28activist%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Donaldson_%28activist%...

jrcii 11y ago
I attended a General Studies information session at Columbia. They sit you around a little table with 10 other people, tell you how great the program is and that it will cost $40k/year with little-to-no financial aid.
a-dub 11y ago
Full time tuition at Columbia runs around $52k/yr. Their Yellow Ribbon matching works out to about $8k/yr. So they're raking in a nearly guaranteed $44k/yr from the Federal government for every vet they enroll. GS isn't some benevolent social program, they see the grant dollars and they take them. They've been experts at this for a long, long time. The cynical part is that they use completely different diplomas, transcript codes and CEEB codes for the GS program. This is non-standard, where most other universities fully integrate their veteran and re-entry students across the board. (including financial aid)
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > So they're raking in a nearly guaranteed $44k/yr from the Federal government for every vet they enroll. Not exactly. The GI bill doesn't pay anywhere near $44k for New York State. The federal government is not picking up the tab. I acknowledged the dearth of financial aid in my post, and that's something that they're desperately working on. GS is not as well endowed, which would be the solution to this. If you want to be cynical, fine, but the question of how much money GS has is different from how they're actually spending it. This is the downside of being a separate school, yes, though with the aforementioned very notable exception of the endowment issue, GS students and faculty overwhelmingly favor this model. In any case, the topic of this conversation was prisoners and convicts, not veterans. I merely mentioned them because they're a large part of GS and GS has a history of accepting disonorably discharged veterans, which is tantamount to convict status.
  - a-dub 11y ago
    $20k GI bill + $8k yellow ribbon + $3k/mo living allowance ($24k for 8 months or $36k for 12 months). So that's $52k/yr to $64k/yr before you start adding in stuff like Pell grants. Do I support federal dollars funding college education for vets? Yes, absolutely. Do I think this is some great act of benevolence by Columbia? No. Is that view reinforced by the simple fact that they use different diplomas, transcripts and CEEB codes for veterans? Certainly. Do I buy that Columbia's screwy internal administrative structure is a valid reason for this? Definitely not.

jrcii 11y ago

I attended a General Studies information session at Columbia. They sit you around a little table with 10 other people, tell you how great the program is and that it will cost $40k/year with little-to-no financial aid.

a-dub 11y ago

Full time tuition at Columbia runs around $52k/yr. Their Yellow Ribbon matching works out to about $8k/yr. So they're raking in a nearly guaranteed $44k/yr from the Federal government for every vet they enroll. GS isn't some benevolent social program, they see the grant dollars and they take them. They've been experts at this for a long, long time. The cynical part is that they use completely different diplomas, transcript codes and CEEB codes for the GS program. This is non-standard, where most other universities fully integrate their veteran and re-entry students across the board. (including financial aid)

chimeracoder 11y ago
> So they're raking in a nearly guaranteed $44k/yr from the Federal government for every vet they enroll. Not exactly. The GI bill doesn't pay anywhere near $44k for New York State. The federal government is not picking up the tab. I acknowledged the dearth of financial aid in my post, and that's something that they're desperately working on. GS is not as well endowed, which would be the solution to this. If you want to be cynical, fine, but the question of how much money GS has is different from how they're actually spending it. This is the downside of being a separate school, yes, though with the aforementioned very notable exception of the endowment issue, GS students and faculty overwhelmingly favor this model. In any case, the topic of this conversation was prisoners and convicts, not veterans. I merely mentioned them because they're a large part of GS and GS has a history of accepting disonorably discharged veterans, which is tantamount to convict status.
- a-dub 11y ago
  $20k GI bill + $8k yellow ribbon + $3k/mo living allowance ($24k for 8 months or $36k for 12 months). So that's $52k/yr to $64k/yr before you start adding in stuff like Pell grants. Do I support federal dollars funding college education for vets? Yes, absolutely. Do I think this is some great act of benevolence by Columbia? No. Is that view reinforced by the simple fact that they use different diplomas, transcripts and CEEB codes for veterans? Certainly. Do I buy that Columbia's screwy internal administrative structure is a valid reason for this? Definitely not.