History
Nontraditional education began at Columbia in the 1830s. A formal program, Extension Teaching (later renamed University Extension), was created by Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler in 1904. GS's evolutionary ancestor, however, is Seth Low Junior College, which was established in Brooklyn to help alleviate the steady flood of applicants to Columbia College when the College was limiting the number of Jewish applicants.
In 1947, University Extension was reorganized as an official undergraduate college and designated the School of General Studies, with an influx of students attending the university on the GI Bill. GS has become one of the three undergraduate schools of Columbia University with Columbia College and the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.
In December 1968, the University Council first decided to allow GS to grant the B.A. degree in addition to the B.S., over the objections of some members of the Columbia College Faculty. The Board of Trustees authorized that decision in February 1969.
In 1990, the CC, GS, and GSAS faculties were merged into the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. As a result, GS and CC students are academically indistinguishable - they both receive degrees conferred by the Trustees of Columbia University through the Faculty of Art & Sciences, and GS is recognized as one of the two official liberal arts colleges at Columbia University, along with Columbia College.
More recently, as a result of the passage of extended GI Bill coverage in 2008, the school hosts many U.S. and international veterans. In the 2010-2011 school year, the school hosted about 150 of Columbia's nearly 300 studying veterans.
Some GS students are veterans of the U.S. military, and have their own group, the U.S. Military Veterans of Columbia University (or "MilVets"; see link below). In addition, there is a significant population of former Israeli soldiers who have completed their pre-university military duty. A January 2010 news article in The New York Times discusses the strong military veteran presence in the GS student body. In addition to a large body of former military students, many students have held full-time jobs before matriculating at Columbia.
Read more about this topic: Columbia University School Of General Studies
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