Teachers College – Columbia University

The library is great! Good environment and quiet neighborhood. There’s also a café right inside the school so that’s very convenient. Not a lot of people around usually which is also a plus.

Not amused by my program.

Expensive, but it’s a private school in the US, just like any other. The PhD students got a lot of attention from a few professors, which was very noticeable to us, the MA students. Sometimes we felt a bit ignored. I give as much as 3/​5, because I got a Master’s degree and that helped me get a job which I couldn’t get without it.
The professors are very knowledgeable, on the most part. We had a problem only with one instructor who hadn’t even had a Master’s Degree and was teaching a lab course strictly from slides with no additional information. (We know how to use basic Word and Excel. but we spent a few weeks worth of classes reading slides about it).
In general, I learned a lot and I really enjoyed the course work. My concentration was in Motor Learning and Control (Biobehavioral Sciences). I also met many wonderful people who were in the same or in related MA and PhD programs.
I just would have liked it more if we (MA students) got a bit more attention from the few important professors in the program.

I know Unilocal is not the greatest place to rate a school, but I have to say that I was totally disappointed by TC. First of all, if you just want Columbia on your degree paper, go for it, because TC is probably one of the easiest (and maybe the cheapest) ways to achieve this.
Now I will talk about why I was disappointed. One of the common things people complain about is the faculty-​student ratio. It’s true. It matters because your advisor won’t have that much time to try to guide you and even listen to you! It depends on people of course, but at least mine literally told me she didn’t have time (during her office hours!!) to help me choose classes. Faculty-​student ratio also matters because it is very hard to have in-​depth discussions in a classroom with more than 50 people who are just trying to say something to show they are «participating».
Their career services are also inadequate, and especially poor when it comes to international students who are already a large community at the school. No one even keeps a record of which employers would hire international students, because «it is not required by the US government». Since when an Ivy League school does not offer anything more than what is required by the US government?
The quality of the peers is questionable. I am not sure how much the admissions threshold has been lowered within the last few years. All I know is that I got to see fewer and fewer people that are really competent. What bothered me the most is that some of its programs (including mine) are not academically rigorous at all. I’ve known people who pretty much didn’t do anything in a term-​long group project and could easily get an A. I’ve known people who copied other people’s homework and could easily pass. Sometimes the professors might not have known what was going on, but sometimes they knew and they didn’t care.
Again, different people come out of TC with totally different experiences. I had those bad ones because I happened to meet certain people, happened to work with certain people, and happened to take certain classes. However, I am definitely not the only person who felt much disappointed. Talk to as many current students or recent grads as you can before deciding to attend TC, get an insight of where TC is heading towards, think thoroughly what you want and see what and how TC can provide, otherwise you will regret spending your time and money there.

One of the oldest and best ed schools in the country. Located on the 120^th block of Manhattan between Broadway and Amsterdam on the north end of Morningside Heights bordering Harlem and Morningside Park. Buildings are cloistered together on the block, serving as a labyrinth of rooms and nooks and crannies and hallways. Several little restaurants nearby. Staff in the buildings are professional and helpful and friendly. Faculty are great. Students are bright and hardworking. Spent a year and a half here getting my M.A. as a Literacy Specialist and had a great, unforgettable experience.

I did an orientation as was considering a Master’s there.
The teacher to student ratios are quite large and from all my research this is far from a rigorous program.
It seems like a veritable diploma mill where the basis for the transaction is very expensive classes in return for a Columbia branded resume (with not what one would expect at a master’s level in between). If you fail out of this program, it is because you never showed up for class or the tests, ever.
The very high acceptance rate supports this. Columbia has turned a very needed programme into a cash cow. This model has been playing out in many of the MS level classes at TC and at the university at large.
This is the Harvard Extension School (being very, very kind here to Columbia by even offering that associative reference) equivalent in a teaching program.
Buyer beware, and do your own due diligence before you apply (since the above is more or less common knowledge).

Teachers College Café just added new gluten free pizza crusts! I also heard that they are working on rolls/​bread! I know what is on the menu for dinner tonight…
:0)

The professors are great and so are the students! The Library and Thorndike are the newer or remodel places in comparison to Thompson, Grace Dodge, HM, and more that need some remodeling. I also love the dinning hall that seems so classic and fancy for a University cafeteria.

Want an Ivy League degree barely worth the paper it’s printed on? Then TC is for you.
This place is an utter racket of criminally high tuition, mediocre to laughable instruction, flimsy joke degrees that will ensure our national education system is staffed by dim layabouts for a long time to come.
I can’t wait for the National Council on Teacher Quality to drill TC into the ground this fall.

The school is great! With all the money they have they should be able to remodel the place a little. I love the vintage look, but some of the classrooms need to be re-​done. the programs here are great and so are the professors. I wish it cost less money to go there, but i guess you have to pay for a good education.
The area around is nice, def one of the quieter places in the city.

Just spend a week at Teacher’s College and you’ll have a decent handle on what’s wrong with education in this country. Here you are smack in the center of the Hogwarts for teachers, but it’s really just an opportunity to hand over A LOT of money to get Columbia University listed on your resume. It should be criminal because these are teachers that we are talking about. At least if Teachers College actually imparted something useful that can be used to improve the quality of education in this country, but this is just a pure money grab.
— Most of your classes have a minimum of 30+ students. Some have more than 50. Go look on the TC web site to see the number of students enrolled in classes under «Class Schedule». This is hardly graduate education. You’re just being given articles to read and papers to write. Little to no class discussion. In graduate school, you should expect classes that have a max of 15.
— Most of what you get from these articles is pretty basic and things that you will learn after you have taught for about two years. In two years no one is going to care that you went to Columbia; they are going to care what type of teacher you are, and you won’t get that at TC.
— A good number of classes are taught by graduate students and adjuncts, in some programs more than half. It’s something of a bait and switch because you think that your classes, especially required classes, will be taught by faculty, but really they aren’t. Do the math. At about $ 4000 per class, TC takes in about $ 150,000 for some classes and pays the adjunct maybe $ 4000 to teach it. For example, here is Professor Joanna Williams trying to claim that she teaches a class in Educational Psychology when, in fact, she never teaches a class in Educational Psychology:
In fact here she even says «I teach a master’s-level course in educational psychology» (1:52) when, again, a grad student or adjunct teaches the class. It’s just deceptive. The administration knows about this. They are too busy counting your money to care.
— If you do get a class with an actual professor, it’s pretty much read to you from the same yellowed paper that the professor has used for decades. Not a lot of adaptation or creativity goes into the programs.
— Also do the math: you are charged for three credit hours, but most classes only meet for for about two hours.
— TC accepts a massive number of students for the MA programs and herds them through. You will not have a problem being accepted because pretty much every application is accepted. This is to help pay for the PhD students. But many of the PhD students can’t get work.
— One of the few respected programs, and one actually with any real rigor, is Organizational Leadership. Yet TC is one of the most dysfunctional bureaucratic environments that you’ll find yourself in. Try dealing with the registrar, paying a bill, or getting your e-​mail set up. People refer you to someone else and that person will refer you back to the first person. I was in one class that had a janitorial closet in the back and janitors would walk in and through the classroom during class time with ladders and other pieces of heavy equipment. In one case I applied for and was granted an extension by the registrar. Then later the registrar came back and said that I had an issue because I had no extension. I showed the registrar her own letter, signed by her, that clearly stated the extension and the terms of the extension, and that still wasn’t enough. She said that she needed to meet with a special committee. This is very common. Most students can tell you a story like this.
— In the end TC graduates teachers who are burdened under a massive amount of dept. Try to pay that off on a teachers salary. I’m sure some of the students believe that they got a decent education, but they don’t really have something impressive to compare their TC experience to. They think that TC is normal. Hope that they don’t emulate it in their own classrooms.
I’ve written all of this because supporting teachers is very important, and two months after you start classes at TC this is what you are going to wish that someone had told you when you were looking at graduate programs.
If gold will rust, what will iron do?

I had the BEST time in graduate school … to the point where I wish elementary, middle, high school and college could have been similar. I love the professors here. The buildings are clean, the classrooms well lit and ventilated. The surrounding neighborhood is perfect for students to let off steam or grab a drink after a grueling day of studying or attending lectures.
I was fortunate to receive two strategically located student teacher placements, as well as an on-​campus job, which made my intensive year program at TC manageable and enjoyable.
My classmates and I typically didn’t finish our last class until 10 pm (classes didn’t start until 5 because all of us student taught during the day). Nonetheless, professors were always available to talk or answer questions whenever (and I do mean WHENEVER) we had them.
We would frequently go to West End (before it became Havana Central– RIP) for drinks and food and stumble home discussing how we could use Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences to determine what alcohol said about our respective personalities. The good ‘ol days …
I’ve gone back to the UWS sporadically to visit with some professors (one was even a guest at my wedding) and see the neighborhood, but truthfully, I’m due for another visit very soon.

I really want to rate my graduate school higher. I am grateful the education graduate school of Columbia University admitted me with just a 3.3 undergraduate GPA and gave me the opportunity to get a Master’s degree here.
I am really appreciative I got a small minority scholarship for working on the academic journal, CICE (Current Issues in Comparative Education) at Teachers College. I would try and get my doctorate here, but the school does not fully fund doctoral students sadly.
However, I thought the academic advising system was particularly bad in the department of International and Transcultural studies, as it is TC’s policy to pair you up with a professor as your advisor. My former professor could care less about advising me. When she agreed to advise my thesis over the summer, she later flaked out on me when I got an impersonal, masse email from the department head mentioning that she was leaving to take another job in DC. My advisor couldn’t even take 10 minutes to write a personal adieu to her advisees, or to say goodbye? Absolutely pathetic.
Fortunately, this negative advisory experience was counteracted by a Teachers College faculty member who took me on last minute to help me graduate in 1 year time. In addition, I had several professors that were very good at teaching: Terosky and Hatch come to mind as great.
However, I am disheartened by the school itself, because it doesn’t seem to value hiring it’s own alumni. I would love to work for TC, but I have not been one of the chosen ones. There are non-​alumni working in its alumni affairs office and career services offices, and although I’m sure they do an decent jobs, there are alumni out there like me that would give our left arm to work for our alma mater and are not given interviews.
Teachers College library itself is absolutely gorgeous: 3 floors of plush chairs and pretty wood desks. I found Teachers College to have enjoyable areas of study. The bookstore employees were always helpful, too.
Another qualm I have is the career services center attitude that because I have a Columbia University degree that I will find full-​time work soon. Au contraire: being Ivy League in this economy doesn’t necessarily mean anything. You cannot advise Teachers College alumni to have hope through reliance on being affiliated with a well respected school. Furthermore, the alumni database the career center touts needs to be built up A LOT more because it is barely searchable as is.

I LOVE TC. I know I am spending WAY too much money here and my loans are adding up, but I am getting a degree that will get me any job in the future (well not ‘any’ but, within reason). I think if you want to be just a regular education teacher you should not go here because of the expense. But if you are looking for a more specialized degree (special ed, ABA, speech pathology, etc) then this is a GREAT place to go.

Excellent educationally but much to improve – facilities/​etc. should align with tuition to alleviate the faculty and student disullisionment for the cost of the education and services rendered.

TC is expensive. The education programs are excellent from what I’ve heard. The psychology departments are good, but the large enrollment of the M.A. programs lend a «degree mill» sense I don’t care for. Organizational psychology gets the best bang for the buck — I’m not sure the M.A. in clinical psych would be worth the price (see Carissa’s post). I attend at a discount, but I would consider the cost (as well as living in NYC) very carefully before coming. That being said, I really enjoy my particular program (M.A. Organizational Psychology) and am very happy I have come.

Beautifully appointed building and rooms: carpets, cozy chairs, old-​fashioned style. Quiet and pleasant to work in. (I’m not familiar with the actual collection.)
You need a C.U. ID or a friend to bring you in as a guest.
And there’s that huge (6 feet long) stuffed bear that students lie on on the floor.

Since no teacher’s college can teach a prospective teacher how to teach, either don’t teach or find a less expensive way to get the same PC drivel elsewhere. Otherwise, great place to live, and lots of perks in the neighborhood.
This is where we lived for four years and I did two masters, while Ken would stop by and have a great time as Uncle Kenny while Marie was a toddler.
please visit