The School of General Studies traces its origins back to the mid-19th century when it was called Extension Teaching. Extension Teaching enrolled part-time students, professionals, and the general public in a "Literary and Scientific Course" offered in the evenings. Eventually renamed University Extension, the school began granting the Bachelor of Science degree in 1921.
In 1947, to meet the needs of thousands of military personnel returning from World War II, University Extension was restructured and designated the School of General Studies. The new college's mission was to educate adults who, in addition to having an average of 5 to 10 years of life experience, had career demands and/or family responsibilities while pursuing their educations.
The college began awarding Bachelor of Arts degrees in 1969. Today, GS serves top-quality, degree-seeking undergraduates who have had a break of one year or more in their educations.
Red, White, & Light Blue: A Brief History of the Military at Columbia
The following originally appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of The Owl
During the American Revolution, the fate of Columbia University, like the fate of the United States itself, hung in the balance. Although some King’s College students fought for the colonies—such as Alexander Hamilton, who spent his mornings drilling with a volunteer militia before classes—most professors and students were Loyalists, including British spy John Vardill and College President Myles Cooper, who was driven out of his home and back to England by a Revolutionary lynch mob. An interim president briefly took over, but after classes were suspended from 1776-1784 and College Hall used as a hospital by occupying British forces, the postwar viability of the young school was in doubt, until a new charter and a name change offered a fresh start.
Columbia participated far more modestly in the U.S.’s 19th-century wars, including, somewhat surprisingly, the Civil War, which claimed the lives of two percent of the nation’s population. Columbia students enlisted at rates far below those of students at other colleges, and less than a dozen alumni died in battle. By 1917 a more prominent, more diverse University was able to present a more comprehensive response to World War I with Extension Teaching offering classes in trench warfare and vegetable gardening (for victory gardens), among numerous other topics. The University also hosted a branch of the SATC (Student Army Training Corps, the forerunner to the ROTC) and mandated drilling for all undergraduates in the fall of 1918.
Columbia’s response to World War I—and, three decades later, World War II—helped lay the foundation for the modern University. The first Core Curriculum course, Contemporary Civilization, began in the fall of 1918 as “War Aims,” a current-events class for SATC members. The aftermath of World War II brought not only Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower to Morningside Heights, but also the GI Bill®, a financial blessing for the University, which was still reeling from the Depression. In the years following WWII, half of Columbia’s students were veterans, most in the extension program, which, as its director noted in 1946, “found places for more than three thousand veterans, and it may be said that no veteran qualified to do work on the college level was turned away.” In 1947, partly to meet the needs of returning veterans, including women from the WACS (Women’s Army Corps) and WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the extension program was reorganized into an undergraduate college, the School of General Studies.
Since its founding, GS students have served in all of America’s conflicts and participated on all sides of the debates surrounding them. Sixty years later, servicemembers no longer constitute the majority of the student body, but the school’s commitment remains unchanged: GS continues to be a place where veterans—of other countries’ armed services as well as of the United States—can begin the next chapter of their lives in a supportive community.
Photos
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower served as Columbia University's President from 1948 to 1953.
2. Army Air Corps on-campus recruiting event, May 1942.
