by our College Data Analytics TeamUse 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 .
Student to faculty ratio is a common metric used to gauge the number of teaching resources a school provides for its students. With 6 students for every one instructional faculty member, Columbia University in the City of New York ranks among the best colleges when compared to the national average of 15.
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 University in the City of New York as primarily performing research or public service.
| Total | Full Time | Part Time | Percent Full Time | |
| Total of Instructional Employees | 3,245 | 1,583 | 1,662 | 48.8% |
| Total of Those With Faculty Status | 3,245 | 1,583 | 1,662 | 48.8% |
| Tenured Faculty | 841 | 841 | - | 100.0% |
| On Tenure Track | 281 | 281 | - | 100.0% |
| Not on Tenure Track | 2,123 | 461 | 1,662 | 21.7% |
| Without Faculty Status | - | - | - | - |
| Graduate Assistants | 1,589 | - | 1,589 | - |
At Columbia University in the City of New York ,49.0% of the teaching staff are full time, which is on average when compared nationally.
51.0% of the teaching staff at Columbia University in the City of New York are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This use of adjuncts is on par with the national average of 51.4% .
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.
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.
Columbia University in the City of New York has 1,589 instructional graduate assistants that teach or provide teaching-related duties. These responsibilities could range from entirely teaching lower-level courses themselves, to assisting professors by developing teaching materials, preparing or giving exams and grading student work. We suggest you ask the college to what extent graduate assistants are relied on for instruction, so you know what you are paying for.
Additionally, the school has 904 non-instructional graduate assistants.