Columbia Considers Coeducation

NEW YORK--A confidential internal report at Columbia University recommends that Columbia become coeducational, perhaps as early as next year, The Columbia Daily Spectator reported.

The report, prepared for the college committee on admissions and financial aids, urges that women be admitted as transfers next fall and as freshmen in the fall of 1982.

Columbia now is affiliated with Barnard College, a women's school, but undergraduates said in a recent poll they wanted more coeducation and an end to Columbia's status as the last all-male school in the Ivy League.

The Spectator said the report discounts the likelihood of attaining "a much more integrated arrangement with Barnard than exists at present," because "such integration has been under discussion for several years with no perceptible progress towards the goal."

The report, which was prepared by the committee's chairman, Gerald Feinberg, urges that coeducation is necessary to prevent Columbia's applicant pool from falling.

The report said that of students who apply to Columbia and at least one other Ivy school, only 27 per cent choose Columbia. By becoming coeducational, the college not only would be able to admit qualified women but also would attract more men, the report said.

Without any changes the applicant pool could decline by more than 17 per cent because of the end of the baby boom, the report said.