When a group of pro-Palestinian protesters pitched tents on Columbia University’s Manhattan campus on April 17, they had one goal: to compel the school to sever financial ties with Israel, including halting an academic program in Tel Aviv. Until the demand was met, they refused to leave.
Nearly a month later, it’s clear that the ask was too steep. Negotiations between school administrators and student leaders soured. Police arrested hundreds of demonstrators over the next few weeks. Scores of students were suspended. The school became a lightning rod for a youth-led upheaval over the Israel-Hamas war, sparking similar protests on college campuses across the country.
Their main stipulation was a familiar one in American higher education: that the university stop drawing endowment money from companies affiliated with the Israeli government, particularly those that could stand to gain from the war in Gaza. Multibillion-dollar endowments, especially those at large research universities like Columbia, are complex and secretive. Often managed by hedge funds, they can be connected to thousands of potential revenue sources.
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Another demand from the protesters drew less attention.
In 2019, Columbia launched a dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University. Under the agreement, students could earn two undergraduate degrees by studying in Israel for two years and then returning to the U.S. to finish their schooling at Columbia’s School of General Studies in Manhattan. The program admitted about 60 students in 2021. Columbia offers similar programs, enrolling hundreds of students, in partnership with other universities in international hubs, including Dublin and Hong Kong.
When protesters urged the school to end its affiliation with Tel Aviv University, Columbia’s administrators didn’t budge. It was a point of pride and not a matter for consideration, officials said.
“Columbia University welcomes and embraces the Israeli students, faculty, and staff on our campus and are proud of their accomplishments on behalf of the greater Columbia community,” Columbia spokesperson Samantha Slater said in a statement to USA TODAY. “We also benefit greatly from our dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University, a program that the university will continue to wholeheartedly support.”
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Columbia’s refusal to end the partnership underscores some of the more nuanced truths about how the divestment movement on college campuses is butting up against larger trends in higher education – including the demand for study abroad programs, a “financial aid arms race,” reliance on tuition revenue, and the puzzling ways that money, even at the richest schools, can end up unevenly siloed in ways that reshape students’ lives.
Unequal financial aid at Columbia
When Charissa Ratliff-D’addario decided to leave Spokane Falls Community College in 2019, she thought she knew what she was getting into. She had always fantasized about moving to New York City. When she was 13, she hung a poster of Columbia’s main library on her bedroom wall.
Columbia’s School of General Studies, which houses the dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University, is made for people just like her: nontraditional students a few years removed from high school. Administrators rave about how those students enrich classroom dialogues and bring fresh perspectives to younger students. When Ratliff-D’addario was accepted, she was thrilled.
But the reality of her experience didn’t align with her dream. After she enrolled at 22 for her first year, she discovered that an error in the financial aid process deemed her ineligible for the grants she needed. She had to take out private loans to cover tuition. She eventually sold the house she owned in Washington state.
Her challenges are similar to those faced by many students at Columbia’s School of General Studies, an undergraduate school that has struggled for years to offer the same generous financial aid other Columbia students get. Though the school’s enrollment numbers have increased dramatically in the last decade, General Studies students, many of whom have children and juggle jobs, receive less help covering their costs than some of the students they sit with in class.
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“It’s a very tuition-driven school,” Ratliff-D’addario said. “I don’t think there’s any argument around that.”
An undergraduate paying full tuition at Columbia and living on campus can expect to pay roughly $90,000 per year, according to the school’s recent estimates. Though that number can diminish greatly when factoring in financial aid, skyrocketing tuition has helped Columbia become one of the richest and most expensive schools in the country.
But at Columbia, like many universities, every individual school is responsible for footing some major bills. Each is forced to cover a hefty annual tax from the central administration – a fee that is easier for some schools to pay than others. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a five-school conglomerate that houses the School of General Studies, has long faced challenges balancing its budget. The rising cost of financial aid is a big reason why.
“There was always this sense that we didn’t have enough money,” said Nicholas Dirks, who ran the Arts and Sciences arm at Columbia from 2004 to 2013 before going on to become a chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley. It was “hardscrabble work,” he said, to get more help for General Studies students.
Dual-degree programs ease some disparities
Driven by a broader trend in higher education to increase international opportunities for undergraduate students, Columbia first launched a dual-degree program in 2010 with the French university Sciences Po. When the European school committed to covering students’ financial aid for their first few years abroad, administrators welcomed the chance to bridge some of the financial aid disparities typically faced by General Studies students, Dirks said.
After launching more partnerships under similar models, Columbia’s dual- and joint-degree offerings more than doubled between 2010 and 2019, according to the campus newspaper. Meanwhile, the number of students in the School of General Studies increased by roughly a third, more than any of Columbia’s other undergraduate schools, over the last decade.
“In my mind, it’s impossible not to connect the rapid growth of General Studies with the need for revenue,” said Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor at Columbia who uncovered the university’s misreporting to a popular college rankings list several years ago.
Dirks, who ran the Arts and Sciences division a decade ago, pushed back on the idea that the School of General Studies’ enrollment bump has been primarily revenue-driven. But, he acknowledged, “it does help the bottom line.”
Though there have been some improvements to financial aid for General Studies students in recent years, it still has not bridged the gap with Columbia’s other undergraduate schools. Ratliff-D’addario, who received her bachelor’s degree last year, went on to start “Equality for GS,” a student-led movement to increase financial aid for students like her.
Howard Bunsis, an accounting professor at Eastern Michigan University, who was invited by faculty members last year to analyze Columbia’s finances independently, said Columbia nixing its dual-degree programs would make no difference financially.
“Whether these existed or not would not move the needle at all in my estimation,” he said. “What bothers me in higher ed finance is places like Columbia crying poverty.”
Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.