Reminiscences of Thirty Years

Abstract

C OLUMBIA COLLEGE is one of seventeen schools and colleges which, together, comprise Columbia University. It is one of three liberal-arts units in the University, the other two being Barnard College and the School of General Studies. Columbia College is the undergraduate college for men, Barnard for women, and the School of General Studies for both men and women twenty years of age or over who, for economic or other reasons, were unable to go to college at the usual age. Contrary to prevailing opinion, Columbia College is a small college. Today it has a student body of approximately twenty-two hundred; prior to the Second World War it had a student population of about eighteen hundred. In fact, it is the smallest of the Ivy League colleges. Though located in the heart of the city of New York, it is national, even international, in enrollment. Only one-third of its student body comes from the city of New York. Approximately another third comes from the metropolitan area outside New York, and the rest from all parts of the country. Since the war we have had between thirty and forty students from other lands. Socially and economically, the Columbia College student body is a good cross section of American society. Irrespective of social-economic status, however, it is of high caliber intellectually. Last year we had nearly four thousand applications for entrance; out of this number six hundred fifty applicants were selected. In other words, we skimmed off the cream. Like the student body, the instructional staff has, through the years, been carefully selected and, as a consequence, is a highly effective body. Only those who have professorial rank are members of the faculty. Those who have the rank