Reply to Explain the Barnard/Columbia consortium to me

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Barnard is the only of the 7 sisters to qualify in any way as an Ivy. Radcliffe would if it existed, but it doesn't anymore. Vassar, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Smith, and Bryn Mawr are all SLACs. [/quote]

All the other 7 sisters are affiliated with Ivy universities too:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_%28colleges%29. While Barnard women can take courses at Columbia College/University, women at these other 7 sisters can take courses at the Ivies within their own consortia.

When you say "qualify in any way as an Ivy," this implies that Barnard grads can claim Ivy status. Somehow or in some way. While you don't come right out and say it, the implication is that a Barnard grad would use Ivy status to impress employers and/or friends (if they would actually be impressed by this compared to a pure Barnard degree, but that's another issue). As other posters have said, it's fair and honest to say "Barnard College of Columbia University" but anything more is stretching.

So tell people a straight-forward "Barnard College at Columbia University" and let the people reading your resume or your new acquaintances form their own opinions. (Although I tend to doubt this would spell "Ivy" for most people.)

Barnard is an excellent SLAC -- why demote it to "backdoor to the Ivies"? [/quote]

You are wrong about the "affiliations" and how they work. They vary greatly in extent in a way that the wikipedia table does not make clear. For example--I went to Bryn Mawr--BMC and Haverford share a course catalog and exchange resources at times, but they are still completely independent schools. You had to jump through hoops to take a class at Swarthmore or Penn (e.g. by proving the class wasn't available at BMC or HC). There was always call to include Swarthmore in the bi-co catalog but it didn't happen in my day.  The Princeton affiliation was a social one from the days when most schools were single-sex, by the 90s it was long gone. You could not go to BMC and take a class at Princeton. [/quote]

Right, but the link to Wikicu (the Columbia version of Wikipedia) above makes it clear that Barnard has its own administrative structure, including its own Board of Trustees. Barnard College is institutionally separate from Columbia College, to a greater degree than even the other undergrad Columbia institutions (Fu and the College of General Studies) are separate from Columbia College.

You can argue semantics all you like. But a degree/diploma (which is signed by both Barnard and CU) is not the same thing as a degree from Columbia College. You can stretch the relationship any way you want, but the ability to take classes at CC doesn't change this, and the relative freedom with which you can take classes at CC, compared to other 7 sisters, doesn't change this either.[/quote]

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