Columbia is considering expanding undergraduate enrollment in Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science by up to 20 percent, according to an Oct. 31 email to faculty from the policy and planning committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences obtained by Spectator.
The University anticipates finalizing its decision before releasing early decision admissions results mid-December, according to the email. Its consideration is part of a wave of policy proposals responding to recent shifts in higher education and growing programming concerns within the University.
Facing losses of up to $100 million each month of the COVID-19 pandemic, Columbia launched an
inquiry during the 2021-22 academic year into expanding its undergraduate population by between 5 and 20 percent. The inquiry resulted in nine faculty reports, which recommended
postponing expansion considerations and focusing first on improving “areas of campus life associated with peer-to-peer connection.” At the time, the FAS agreed to postpone expansion discussions.
“In the ensuing years, there have been efforts to address these recommendations,” Ivan Corwin, professor of mathematics and chair of the policy and planning committee, wrote in the email.
Corwin declined Spectator’s request for an interview.
The FAS is an administrative and budgetary unit that includes Columbia College and the School of General Studies. The policy and planning committee is “the only body elected to represent the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to the Arts and Sciences and university leadership,” according to its
web page.
“Expansion is now being reconsidered,” Corwin wrote in the email. “The exact percent growth in the CC and SEAS student population is not yet determined, though 20% seems to be the upper limit under consideration.”
Columbia is not considering an expansion of General Studies, according to Michael Thaddeus, professor of mathematics. A University spokesperson did not respond to a Spectator inquiry about whether Columbia was considering an expansion of General Studies.
The University
enrolled its largest ever incoming undergraduate class this fall. The Columbia College and SEAS class of 2029 totalled 1,806 first-year students, an increase of about 20 percent from the 1,499 students enrolled in the class of 2028. One proposed plan for expansion involves maintaining the expanded enrollment of the class of 2029 for all future classes.
Columbia’s undergraduate enrollment first increased due to pandemic-related deferrals and leaves of absence in the 2020-21 academic year. Combined enrollment in Columbia College and SEAS peaked at 6,779 in the fall of 2021, rising from 6,182 in 2020. A report from the 2022 expansion inquiry suggested that the stresses caused by this “unintended over yield” would be “instructive” in determining the effects of expansion.
Most students who enrolled in fall 2021 graduated in spring 2025. Acting University President Claire Shipman, CC ’86, SIPA ’94,
cited “the graduation of what was our largest class last spring” as one of the factors the University took into consideration when deciding whether to expand the class of 2029.
A University spokesperson told Spectator that Columbia had not made any official decision regarding further undergraduate expansion, and that it was still examining the academic and operational factors that expansion would necessitate.
The University first brought the policy and planning committee into these discussions on Oct. 20. “To my understanding, considerations around expansion were only initiated in late summer, after some other issues for Columbia were resolved,” Corwin wrote in the email to faculty.
Shipman addressed Columbia’s decision-making process to enlarge the class of 2029 at a University Senate plenary on Friday, specifically mentioning research funding and international student enrollment as “two big risk factors” the University considered.
President Donald Trump’s administration
canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia on March 7, shortly before the University released regular decision admissions to the class of 2029 on March 27, admitting
2,557 students. In July, Columbia struck a
$221 million deal with the federal government to restore funding. By August, the University announced that it had admitted 2,946 students, suggesting that Columbia relied heavily on its waitlist over the spring and summer.
“The decision about whether to expand the number of students for this coming year is one that needs to be made on a rather short timeframe given that early acceptance decisions are due in roughly a month,” Corwin wrote.
The number of students Columbia admitted through regular and early decision rose from
2,319 in the 2023-24 admissions cycle to 2,577 in the 2024-25 cycle. However, the number of students admitted off the waitlist this year is about 60 percent more than the growth in the number of students admitted in regular and early decision, suggesting the University primarily used its waitlist to expand the first-year class.
A University spokesperson declined to comment on the record about subsets of the admissions pool.
“When we looked at where we had some bench of deep, deep excellence, we had students on the waiting list,” Shipman said at the plenary.
All students admitted this year received offers before the end of June, a University official confirmed to Spectator.
Columbia agreed to “examine its business model and take steps to decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment” in its July settlement with the federal government. About 39 percent of University enrollment comes from international students—the highest percentage in the Ivy League. This distribution varies dramatically between Columbia’s schools. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Professional Studies, both of which fall under the FAS, are majority international, as is the graduate division of SEAS.
The FAS has historically faced
financial strain as the University’s central administration increased demands on its budget to fund projects such as the Manhattanville campus. With economic contributions to Columbia from international students
estimated at $903 million per year in 2023, or over 60 percent of the University’s net tuition revenue, even a small decrease in its international student enrollment would have drastic implications for the FAS budget.
In 2024, 15 percent of the Columbia College student body consisted of international students, and 22 percent of the undergraduate division of SEAS were international students, some of the lowest proportions out of any of the University’s schools.
“We are heavily international, … so a big decrease in that population is not only bad for the community, because I think we value who we are as a community when we’re international, but it affects us. We’re a tuition-driven institution as well,” Shipman said at the plenary.
Shipman confirmed in an Oct. 8 email that
“nearly all” international students were able to arrive on campus this fall.
“It’s very clear to me that … we need to understand how we can think about raising money to support Arts and Sciences more robustly as this centerpiece of our undergraduate life,” Shipman said at the plenary.
Columbia’s July settlement with the federal government saw
“almost 99 percent” of its grants restored by October. Still, Columbia experienced a
63.1 percentdecrease in its operating surplus for fiscal year 2025 and is facing a
decline in international student applications for the upcoming admissions cycle.
Shipman did not mention the University’s financial constraints or concerns about international students when she announced the increased size of the class of 2029. Rather, Shipman wrote in an Aug. 29 email welcoming the class that the University decided to expand its undergraduate enrollment due to “a high volume of outstanding applications” and “a positive response to our initial offers of admission.”
“Growth of our student body, if done right and with the guidance and involvement of our faculty, could be a wonderful opportunity for A&S,” Corwin wrote. “We can both expand the scope of our offerings as well as the reach of whose lives we impact.”
Michael J. Schmidtberger, CC ’82, Law ’85, chair of the Columbia College Board of Visitors, wrote in a statement to Spectator that expansion considerations were taking place in the context of “the challenges and opportunities presented by AI” and other challenges in higher education. The board would remain committed to “academic excellence and the student experience.”
“Board of Visitors leadership supports a comprehensive strategic planning process for undergraduate education, including consideration of increasing the enrollment of the College, and stands ready to help with that effort,” Schmidtberger wrote.
The Columbia College Board of Visitors—composed of 34 members who are largely Columbia College alumni—is an independent, self-governing advisory group to the dean of Columbia College.
Thaddeus, acting president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, expressed dissatisfaction with the communication he received from the University regarding an expansion of Columbia College and SEAS.
“The idea that we’re just going to grow them by 20 percent for what is, transparently, revenue generating reasons, the faculty should be upset about that, and right now, we’re just not hearing much from the faculty because they don’t know what’s going on,” Thaddeus said.
Thaddeus noted that Corwin’s email was “literally the only communication that we’ve had from anyone about this” and that, to his knowledge, the University did not consult faculty about the decision to expand the first-year class over the summer.
“The decision that was made this summer was made by me,” Shipman said at the plenary.
Several student leaders told Spectator they only found out about Columbia’s plans to further expand undergraduate enrollment when Spectator requested an interview with them. When Columbia expanded the class of 2029 over the summer, members of the student councils said they were only informed after the University introduced
Wien Hall as a first-year dorm option and
relocated about 160 General Studies students from their housing.
“I feel like student leaders still don’t have enough information, even though we have a mountain of information, more than the general student body,” Sam Cano Cabrera, CC ’26, president of Columbia College Student Council, told Spectator. “I think the communication is not really student-centered. It’s more administratively or institutionally centered.”
The University planned to include Wien as an option for first-year housing before the 2025-26 housing selection process opened. However, due to the increased size of the first-year class, the University relocated sophomores, juniors, and seniors who had already selected Wien into 600 W. 113th St., known as Nuss, and 503 W. 121st St., known as The Fairholm. Wien is now classified as housing “mostly or only first-year students,” according to the Columbia Housing
website. Nuss and The Fairholm had previously been set aside in part for General Studies and graduate students, according to three accounts from student leaders.
“There’s a really big and real concern from students that they’re seen by the University more as money to be made than students to be taught in a community to be instilled,” Cano Cabrera said.
Columbia announced that it had increased the financial aid budget for the class of 2029 to $66 million—22 percent more than the previous year—to match the 20 percent increase in enrollment. The total average amount in grants and scholarships per financial aid recipient was $77,908 for the class of 2029, rising $1,643 from $76,265 for the class of 2028. Columbia College’s estimated total cost of attendance, not including travel expenses, rose $3,518 from $92,742 in 2024-25 to $96,260 in 2025-26.
“They should have been consulting myself and the CCSC president,” Janie Zhang, SEAS ’26, president of the Engineering Student Council, told Spectator. “Undergraduate students are the ones that would be most impacted by this change, and so it’d be better if we had more student voices.”
Even before the University started considering expansion, Columbia’s facilities and physical space were under immense stress. When the expansion study group resulting from the 2021-22 inquiry decided to postpone its discussions, it made “aiming to reevaluate the timing and feasibility of any expansion” contingent upon the completion of
renovations for Uris Hall, which was expected to increase space available for FAS schools by
about 20 percent.
The Business School, which previously occupied Uris, officially
moved to a new location on the Manhattanville campus in 2022, which had taken nearly 20 years and $6.3 billion to build.
The expansion working group said in its 2022 report that the Morningside campus was “stretched to the breaking point in accommodating students in Core classes, particularly Lit Hum and CC.” The Uris renovation, which the University expected to complete by fall 2025, has not started.
A University official confirmed to Spectator that Columbia has made 16 classrooms in Uris available to the FAS since the winter of 2022 and moved the psychology department to the eighth floor of Uris. The University plans to open a new 12,000-square-foot, two-floor computer science learning center in the space vacated by the psychology department in Schermerhorn Hall by fall 2026, according to the official.
The University has also opened new classrooms in Riverside Church and sought to optimize classroom space by scheduling classes to be more evenly distributed throughout the day. Ten departments in FAS attempted to implement a 40 percent distributional cap on courses scheduled to start between 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the spring 2026 semester in a pilot program designed to limit overlapping course offerings. Eight departments met this target, according to the official.
Columbia has long
struggled to schedule enough courses to accommodate all its students and to find appropriate classrooms for these courses. Faculty committees have attempted to curb “bunching,” the practice of departments scheduling many classes around the same peak times, for years.
In the Core Curriculum, Columbia raised the enrollment cap in University Writing sections from 14 to 16 this fall and shortened the weekly Frontiers of Science lecture by 15 minutes when it added an additional lecture section. There has been no indication that the University plans to revisit the enrollment caps in other Core classes.
The expansion study group also suggested that the University was not meeting student needs in either dining or housing at the time, though it acknowledged that developments in these two areas were “difficult to assess” due to the immediate impacts of the pandemic.
“I don’t think we have enough resources currently to support the student body that we have,” Cano Cabrera said. “If we were to continue to expand, I think the quality of life for a student here and the quality of education would decrease.”
Columbia has considered long-term plans to make improvements and expand capacity in certain facilities, regardless of whether or not it moves ahead with expansion plans. Shipman wrote that in expanding the class of 2029, the University made “careful adjustments to the resources that support our students,” including increasing the number of faculty and advisors, optimizing classroom space, and expanding dining options.
Since the expansion inquiry in the 2021-22 academic year, the University has opened a new undergraduate dorm at
611 W. 112th St., formerly the historic Maranamay hotel, and several
new dining halls, including
Grace Dodge Dining Hall at Teachers College. The Maranamay has capacity for fewer than 200 students. Hartley Hall, which will not be available for housing selection until fall 2027 due to ongoing renovations, has capacity for under 250 students.
The University has also partnered with Envision Strategies, a consulting company specializing in food services, to develop a 10-year strategic plan for Columbia Dining in consultation with student leaders.
“We’re talking about renovations, new building requirements, probably within the next 10 to 20 years,” Cano Cabrera said.
Robert Kasdin, senior executive vice president, who
returned to his role at Columbia following a 10-year hiatus, is leading efforts to examine the operational feasibility of expansion, including the necessary measures to increase housing and dining capacity.
Dafne Sarfati, SEAS ’26, University senator and student affairs committee member, told Spectator that Columbia Dining limited graduate student access to dining halls amid the expansion of the first-year class this fall. Unlike its undergraduate dining plans, Columbia’s new
graduate student dining plans cannot be used at John Jay Dining Hall, Ferris Booth Commons, or JJ’s Place.
“If they do decide to expand the class size, all these solutions or these fixes that they’re implementing aren’t going to take effect until many years down the road,” Zhang said. “It just doesn’t seem sustainable to increase the size now.”
Corwin wrote in his email that the Office of the Provost formed a small committee on undergraduate enrollments and instructional needs composed of representatives from Arts and Sciences, SEAS, the Core Curriculum, and advising to consider the “instructional implications of expansion and what is needed to ensure that we maintain and enhance the quality of our offerings.”
“I am not opposed to planned growth,” Brian Krisberg, CC ’81, Law ’84, former president of the Columbia College Alumni Association and former chair of the Columbia Alumni Association board of directors, told Spectator. “What I am opposed to is unplanned growth. And at this point, what seems to be on the table is unplanned growth.”
“Any growth must be preceded by a written understanding of how Columbia College students’ needs and interests will be enhanced,” he said.
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