Students had adjunct professors, loans, and the World Leaders Forum on their minds when they arrived at University President Lee Bollinger’s fireside chat Tuesday evening.
Graduate students gathered at the President’s House on Morningside Drive for an informal discussion—though some of the issues hit close to home.
The fireside chat began with a question about the University and its role in gentrification. Bollinger defended the Manhattanville expansion, arguing that it is a necessary move for Columbia because space is a “critical issue”—and that it will ultimately prove advantageous for the neighborhood.
“We [Columbia] have employment, we have lots of jobs, lots of opportunities to help people,” he said. “I know that might sound idealistic or you’d expect that from Columbia … there are 10,000 jobs that Columbia will create [with Manhattanville]. We made deep, deep commitments to this … I think it will improve Harlem.”
Another audience member asked Bollinger about his thoughts on the role of adjunct professors at the University. Adjuncts are not on a tenure track.
“On the whole, having adjuncts and visitors in principle is a really good thing for the university and students,” he said.
He added: “I think many, many people of different fields are changing the way they think about their fields because of the outside world,” stressing that these outside scholars bring in a different perspective.
But some were dissatisfied with Bollinger’s answer. Tyler Bickford, a Ph.D student and professor of Contemporary Civilization, said that adjunct professors should have some say in the terms of their employment.
“Adjuncts are not a problem, we are scholars,” he said. “I think that’s really the core of the question.”
Bollinger insisted that he thinks highly of adjunct professors.
“I didn’t mean to say anything about those in the scholarly community that are not tenure-tracked,” he said. “For those people who are teaching who are not tenure track who are scholars in a sense of being part of the culture … I think that’s a magnificent experience.”
But he still maintained, “I don’t like to think about graduate students as employees.”
Bollinger also fielded questions about the World Leaders Forum, and said he was surprised at the clarity of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s speech earlier this month.
“I had an image of Sarkozy, his mind would be all over the place … having one or two themes,” he said. “It turns out it [Sarkozy’s speech] was very, very compelling in large part because of the systematic way he made his argument.”
An attendee also wondered why there weren’t more available loans for international students. Bollinger said that the entire loan would be considered an obligation of the University, emphasizing his concern for “the aggregate yearly debt that we would have to show on that.”
But he said that international students at Columbia and those who have already been admitted are guaranteed loans from the University, and that international students can also receive loans from their schools. He expects the availability of loans to improve in the next few years.
While students were overall satisfied with the discussion, some were critical of his stance on certain issues.
“Bollinger seems to have a limited notion of what academic employment actually looks like in the world,” Bickford said. “The sort of common experience of most academic workers is not the experience of the tenured faculty of an elite university. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not the responsibility of an elite university to be attentive to and aware of and even active around the national and global market for teachers and scholars.”
Michael McDowell, a first-year student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, agreed.
“I felt he dodged the probing of some of the adjunct questions,” he said.
Zhihai Yang, a first-year at the School of Engineering and Applied Science Graduate School, wished that Bollinger had spoken more about loan opportunities for engineering students.
“He talked about international students, that there are some banks that can provide loans to international students,” she said. “I want to know why there are no loans provided to students who are majoring in engineering.”
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