CCSC Survey With Record-High Participation Reveals Unsatisfied Student Body

Upper West Side NY

02 May, 2022

5:16 PM

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By Irie Sentner, Columbia Daily Spectator • May 2, 2022, 2:29 PM On its undergraduate admissions website, Columbia markets itself as "a place unlike any other," one with "variety and flexibility in living options," an academic environment in which students work "closely with outstanding faculty who are deeply invested in their learning," and top-ranked dining options. But a survey sent to all Columbia College students by the Columbia College Student Council paints a picture of a different campus, one in which students are dissatisfied with the current state of the University's academics and student life. The survey, sent to 4,830 Columbia College students, was distributed in partnership with the Core Curriculum and Student Life Working Group, one of three working groups and a steering committee which have been conducting an inquiry into undergraduate expansion since April 2021. The Core Curriculum and Student Life Working Group, which is chaired by Columbia College Dean James Valentini, delivered a presentation this February to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences with staggering findings about student life. Among other findings, the presentation noted a current ratio of students on meal plans to available dining hall seats over triple that of peer institutions and that just 32 percent of Literature Humanities instructors are full, assistant, or associate professors. The CCSC survey—which garnered approximately 1,500 responses in just two hours and received 2,878 responses overall at a response rate of 45 percent—points to student sentiment in line with the working group's findings. For example, just 6.3 percent of respondents agreed with the statement "I am satisfied with the amount of space and equipment in Dodge Fitness Center" and just 5.9 percent of respondents agreed with the statement "I am often able to quickly find a seat in the Columbia dining halls." "Prior to the survey, I had anticipated Columbia College student dissatisfaction across a number of important areas that significantly impact their experience, both in and out of the classroom. The results speak for themselves in terms of current depth and breadth of dissatisfaction," Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life, wrote in a statement to Spectator. "I know the people who work here want to offer students the very best. I am hopeful this survey, and expansion study overall, will allow us to look more deeply into the current constraints in each area in need of improvements and then an opportunity to allocate resources needed to do so." CCSC President Radhika Mehta, CC '22, a member of the working group, said that the "question of expansion has ended up turning a spotlight on current student life at Columbia." She called the data "a lot worse than I even expected" and said "people were even more upset than I had expected." Mehta said she and other members of CCSC worked with the rest of the working group and administrators to build an unbiased survey. "I find that when the trends look like this, and when the open response text looks like this, there's a level of consistency amongst responses that makes it hard for me to feel like the data is invalid," Mehta said. The results are broken down into nine sections, including dining services, student spaces and services, housing, campus community and co-curriculars, Berick Center for Student Advising, Columbia Health and Counseling and Psychological Services, Core Curriculum, and academics. In each category, a majority of responses reveal a student body deeply unsatisfied with an enrollment size that has already overwhelmed the capabilities of the Morningside campus. According to the report's executive summary, "Across all sections, the prevailing sentiment was against the proposal to expand the undergraduate class size." Some have attributed the sentiments to a pandemic-generated enrollment bump that has increased the current undergraduate class size by about 10 percent compared to 2020—the same amount proposed in the expansion inquiry. But according to Mehta, the issues, particularly with dining, "existed before COVID" and "might have been exacerbated in the return from COVID," but would not "go away next year in a post-COVID world." "I think the lines with dining and the issues with seating did exist in part before COVID but have escalated to a degree that is completely absurd and hard for me to honestly understand," Mehta said. Mehta also noted that problems with over enrollment and waitlists for required courses is an issue that has long plagued the student experience. In the survey, only 5.6 percent of respondents agreed with the statement "I think it is easy to get into Music Hum and Art Hum during any semester" and 26.6 percent of respondents agreed with the statement "I have been able to get into my first choice classes all or most of the time." "I, as a junior and even as a senior this year, have always struggled to get into, for example, my top choice Global Core courses, and that's something that I hear a lot from students, and I've always heard complaints even before COVID about getting into Music Hum and Art Hum and changing your [University] Writing theme," Mehta said. Nearly 50 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement "I am satisfied with how Columbia facilitates a sense of community." One free text respondent, included in a list of selected quotes in the report, wrote "Columbia suffers from a chronic lack of campus community, atomization, and student alienation." "The biggest problem that I see that is new is the lack of community on campus. And I think there's been a major shift in the social scene on campus in a way that I personally feel is detrimental to the campus community as a whole," Mehta said. News Editor Irie Sentner can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @iriesentner. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.