- The accreditation was recently renewed on June 23, 2016.
- The next accreditation review is scheduled for November 30, 2025.
A rigorous academic program requires that students and faculty alike are engaging in independent research, and that activity requires strong library support. You can get some useful information here:
- How strong and how balanced between traditional physical books and easily-accessed (but expensive) electronic journals and other resources is this library?
- How much is this library borrowing from other libraries? The number of interlibrary loans received can indicate the school's commitment to getting the resources on-campus researchers need, and also of the research activity on campus.
- How big a resource is this library to other libraries? A large number of outgoing interlibrary loans speaks highly of the value of its content.
The presence of a library in and of itself is a good thing. Increasingly, libraries are comfortable and inviting spaces for individual and group study sessions. Librarians can be incredibly friendly guides in your quest to find materials that aid your learning.
How much funding does this university have for research in your discipline? This is your primary evidence of nationally-recognized scholarship coming out of this university, and provides a good indicator of the availability of research funding for graduate students and post-docs. You can select bars to drill down into the specific disciplines funded, or further into the sources of that funding. If you hover on the bars, you can see summary details. The dollar amounts reflect the institution's annual spending, inclusive of external grants.
Because this data is collected by the National Science Foundation (NSF), it is focused on traditional science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM) disciplines. There are only hints of funding outside of these areas.
Traditionally, the long-term faculty at a school are hired as Assistant Professors. After about six years, they then advance to the Associate Professor level after proving excellence in three areas: teaching, service to the institution, and significant contributions to their field of expertise. Assistant professors who are not promoted to the Associate level are usually required to leave the school. The rank of Professor is reserved for senior faculty who have demonstrated the highest standing in those three areas. The standards of excellence differ widely across institutions; nonetheless, the presence of a large proportion of faculty in the three professor ranks suggests you will be taught by faculty who are invested in their academic fields and in the school. Generally, instructors with any of the three professor titles will hold the highest possible (terminal) degree in their academic fields.
The instructor/lecturer positions are generally held by full-time faculty who are focused on teaching alone, often for lower-level classes. These positions usually require some advanced education or experience, but not the highest (terminal) degree in a given academic field. Those teaching with no academic rank may be hired to teach in mostly non-academic fields, giving skills- or vocation-based guidance.
Teachers College at Columbia University is a private not-for-profit school. Along with publicly-controlled schools, not-for-profit schools do not have the goal of annual profit, but they do want to have healthy finances with adequate revenue to meet all expenses. On the other hand, private for-profit schools have creating a profit for shareholders as an annual goal.
Here we examine assets at Teachers College at Columbia University in context, and it seems most fair to adjust for the size of the institution. We examine the assets per full-time-equivalent student so that we level the playing field for size.
There's a catch to these assets, though. Many gifts to a school's endowment have strings attached; the money is restricted to a specific purpose. Assets shown in green below are unrestricted, and are very important to a school's ability to meet its financial obligations. Some assets are the land and buildings that a school must have in order to function, and these may appear as green (unrestricted assets) but are nonetheless less helpful in meeting annual financial commitments. This look at assets is only a piece of the puzzle as we decide if a school is stable.
