The Columbia College Missouri Student to Faculty Ratio & Faculty Composition

Does Columbia College have a good student to faculty ratio?

Use the student to faculty ratio, as well as the faculty composition to get an idea of how much attention you'll receive as an individual student at Columbia College Missouri .

Student to Faculty Ratio is Well Below Average

Columbia College , with 25 students for every instructional faculty member, ranks among the lowest in comparison to the national average of 15 :1. This ratio indicates that the number of students split between the same faculty is much higher than normal, and could mean students will experience larger class sizes and fewer opportunities to connect with professors, especially in introductory courses.

Instructional Staff at the College

The following table shows all the employees the school considers instructional, and therefore, part of the above student-to-faculty ratio. These include both those employees designated as either "primarily instructional" or as "instructional combined with research/public service". It does not include employees that have been identified by Columbia College as primarily performing research or public service.

This College Among the Worst for Full-Time Teachers

Columbia College's use of full-time instructors ranks among the nation's lowest, with only 14.0% of instructors teaching on a full-time basis.

High Reliance on Part-Time Teachers or Adjuncts

86.0% of the teaching staff at Columbia College are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This high use of adjuncts is far above the national average of 51.4% . A high use of adjuncts instead of tenured professors is controversial, and some consider this statistic to be indicative of a college's commitment to building a strong, long-term instructional team.

Colleges often use part-time professors and adjuncts to teach courses, rather than full-time faculty. This hiring practice is primarily a way to save money amid increasingly tight budgets. However, it is a controversial practice with strong views on either side. We encourage you to understand this topic more deeply, and how the colleges you are interested in approach faculty hiring. It's your education and your money on the line. Make sure you know what you are getting for it.

Additional Information

• What is an Adjunct?

  On this page, we refer to an adjunct teacher or a part-time teacher interchangeably, although each school may have a slightly different definition. In short, an adjunct professor can either work full-time or part-time during a school semester, but they have no contract or a contract that lasts only a short amount of time. To come up with the numbers for this page, we use the total number of part-time non-faculty and non-tenure track faculty to represent the count of adjuncts for the college or university.

Non-Instructional Grad Assistants

Columbia College reports 14 graduate assistants, however, none of them are considered instructional, meaning they do not teach or perform teaching-related activities.