University Mission Statement
Columbia University is one of the world’s most important centers of research and at the same time a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. The University recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty, staff, and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the University to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.
Looking Out on a City and a World
Columbia University is the oldest institution of higher education in New York, and the fifth-oldest in the United States. Today, it is one of the world’s leading research institutions and has a world-renowned medical center. Columbia provides a distinctive and rigorous learning environment for undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of scholarly and professional fields.
Columbia University embodies “a spirit that does not look inward at itself, but outward on a city and a world.”
Frederick J.E. Woodbridge, philosopher
With its 17 schools and four affiliate schools spread over four campuses located in and around New York City, the University understands its regional and global impact. Indeed, as the philosopher Frederick J.E. Woodbridge, who spent more than three decades at Columbia in the early 20th century, notably said, the University is “inextricably mixed up with what is going on in the world. It is a spirit that does not look inward at itself, but outward on a city and a world.”
Woodbridge’s characterization of Columbia has been echoed through the generations by numerous presidents of the university, emphasizing its global reach and important role in engaging with the great problems facing society. Indeed, Columbia thrives as a center for ideas within a diverse community where everyone has something to contribute.
That vital role of civic engagement has infused Columbia since its earliest days in 1754 in a schoolhouse at the lower tip of Manhattan to its current incarnation as a leading Ivy League University in New York City, with 11 global centers around the world.