Columbia University: School of General Studies

Columbia University: School of General Studies Introduction

Founded in 1947, in large part to accommodate the wave of veterans returning from World War II, the School of General Studies of Columbia University (GS) is the finest liberal arts college in the United States devoted to returning, adult, and nontraditional students who seek a rigorous undergraduate education. GS students take the same classes, with the same professors, and earn the same degree as students in Columbia’s other undergraduate colleges.

One of the world’s leading research centers, Columbia University offers a distinctive and distinguished learning environment. Undergraduate colleges at Columbia include GS, Columbia College, a liberal-arts college for traditional students, and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science; affiliated institutions include Barnard College, a liberal arts college for women, and The Jewish Theological Seminary.

The Students

What exactly is a nontraditional student? It’s a difficult question, particularly since, according to Department of Education figures, seventy-three percent of all college students are nontraditional, and the GS student body provides no easy answers. Some GS students attend part-time while working, performing, or raising a family, while others enroll full-time and immerse themselves in the Columbia undergraduate experience. The only thing common to all GS students, apart from a desire to earn a bachelor’s degree in a dynamic, challenging academic environment, is the fact that they have interrupted their educations for at least one year. In every other respect, each GS student is unique, making GS one of the most diverse colleges in the nation and, moreover, a place where diversity is defined by standards that are themselves diverse.

The guiding philosophy of our school is to question the mainstream idea of what makes a successful college student. Instead of requiring that all of its students take the same path to get here, GS actively seeks out students who have taken different paths. If one of the goals of diversification is to expand the perspectives and backgrounds within a given community, what better way to achieve it than by including individuals who have transcended tradition and convention?” —Pavan Surapaneni, ’06, Political Science

Why General Studies?

The name “School of General Studies” is rather unfortunate, because, as most GS students are quick to point out, there’s nothing general about us. GS evolved out of Columbia’s extension program, which offered degrees in “general studies.” “School of General Studies” was adopted to maintain a sense of continuity and to establish GS as a full-fledged undergraduate college based in part on the model of medieval universities, which, because they catered to a diverse, international group of scholars, were known as studia generalia (vs. the more parochial studia particularia).

Like New York City, GS is home to a wide spectrum of peoples and personalities: world-class dancers, athletes, models, musicians, and actors, soldiers and refugees, entrepreneurs and NGO workers, firefighters and police officers, community activists and computer programmers, writers and welders, bankers, bike messengers, and baristas, professionals returning for a second degree and parents resuming their education, students who have never been to college and those who are transferring from community colleges and Columbia’s peer institutions, representing each of the 50 states and every corner of the world—all in search of a rich, vigorous education that prepares and inspires.

The Campus

Stepping off Broadway and onto College Walk can be disorienting for the first-time visitor, simply because the Columbia campus is unlike any other space in New York City. Located on thirty-six acres in the northern Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, the campus was designed by the renowned architect Charles McKim in a monumental neoclassical style well suited to the neighborhood’s nineteenth-century nickname, “America’s Acropolis.”

The first time I walked on campus, Columbia had me in its grip. I knew I had to come here. Then later I became a student tour guide, to help pass on that feeling. ” —Erich Erving, ’06, Writing

Glance to the north and you’ll see Low Library, modeled on the Roman Pantheon and the Baths of Caracalla (which housed libraries and were the sites of public lectures, in addition to their more obvious function). Beneath Low Library, which is actually no longer a library, but the university administration building and site for special events, such as the annual awarding of the Pulitzer Prize, is Low Plaza, an open space ideal for socializing that has been called an “urban beach” and named a “Great American Public Place.”

Glance to the south and you’ll see the tall Ionic columns of Butler Library, the university’s main library, which houses two million of Columbia’s nine and one half million volumes. The main study spot on campus, Butler has a serious façade—literally: the names of ancient and modern writers, orators, and philosophers are inscribed on its frieze—and, with Columbia’s academic demands, you will spend a not inconsiderable amount of time there or in one of the university’s twenty-five other libraries. Of course, everyone else is there too, so this is not an isolating experience; rather, the libraries are places where the entire university comes to work, socialize, and procrastinate together.

The City

James Thurber once wrote to his New Yorker colleague E. B. White that “[t]here is nothing else in all the countries of the world like New York City life. It does more to people, it socks them harder, than life in Paris, London, or Rome, say, possibly could.” A fundamental characteristic of GS students, whether they are lifelong New York residents or moving to the city for the first time, is an openness to the whole experience of New York City life, with all its vicissitudes.

New York City offers unparalleled and inexhaustible cultural and recreational opportunities, but as a GS student your interaction with the city won’t be strictly extracurricular. You’ll have the option to study with some of the leading members of New York’s arts community, retrace Walt Whitman’s steps in “Whitman and New York,” or learn about Manhattan from Peter Minuit to the present day, including a professor-led bike ride through the city, in “History of the City of New York.” You’ll also visit some of the city’s outstanding museums and performance spaces through core courses in art and music.

Of course, as an elite university in a world city, Columbia is also uniquely poised to reach far beyond the borders of its hometown. Through initiatives such as the Committee on Global Thought, which counts among its members Joseph Stiglitz and Orhan Pamuk, Nobel laureates in economics and literature, respectively, and the World Leaders Forum, which, since its founding in 2003, has brought leaders from more than forty countries to campus, including the Dalai Lama, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Columbia has become increasingly connected to institutions and scholars throughout the world. GS students complement this outward extension by bringing their distinctive experiences to Morningside Heights and, in doing so, are playing a unique and significant role as Columbia becomes a global university.

Passport to New York

Columbia students with a valid ID card can obtain free admission to the museums listed below (and many others).

• American Folk Art Museum
• Asia Society
• The Cloisters
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• International Center of Photography
• El Museo del Barrio
• Museum of Chinese in the Americas
• Museum of the City of New York
• Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
• Museum of Modern Art
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Museum of Television and Radio
• National Academy Museum
• New York City Police Museum
• New York Historical Society
• PS1/MoMA
• Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture
• Whitney Museum of American Art

Everyone knows Andy Warhol’s soup cans–but seeing an entire wall of them at MoMA is a different experience altogether. Similarly, I’d listened to some of Morton Feldman’s compositions on my iPod, but I didn’t realize how quiet and textured they were until I heard them played by a full orchestra at Carnegie Hall. For some things you really do have to be there.

Any college has the power to help shape a life: taking a certain class, discovering a certain interest, meeting certain people—any or all of these can launch a trajectory that might last a lifetime. But GS, with its unique student body and academic rigor, has a singular opportunity to transform a life.

When I arrived at GS the highlight of my professional career was a particularly well-received Jamba Juice run. Of course I always knew that I could do more, if given the opportunity; GS gave me the opportunity. Glancing around at Commencement I saw my classmates: a former member of Guns N’ Roses who’s now in medical school, the chief architect of Internet Explorer, and a retired New York City firefighter who worked in the recovery effort at Ground Zero, and so many other people with amazing stories. I found myself marveling at the fact that we were all together, in one place; that’s when I realized fully just how special this school is.

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