Columbia-Barnard Course Guides

The Columbia-Barnard Course Guide was founded in 1963, in order to provide students with a clearer understanding of which classes to take. The Course Guide was published by students, originally by Columbia’s Ted Kremer Society and, beginning in 1971, by an independent organization. Early issues consisted of informal stapled, mimeographed booklets and were referred to as the Ted Kremer Society’s Course Evaluation Booklets. In 1969, now using professional printing and binding, the publication began officially calling itself the Columbia-Barnard Course Guide in. The following year’s edition (the 1970 Columbia-Barnard Course Guide) is the earliest issue housed at the Barnard Archives.

Students evaluated courses using surveys provided by Columbia-Barnard Course Guide staff on a five-point scale from 1970 until 1981, and again beginning in 1992. 1982-1990 course guides were graded on a ten-point scale, the 1969 guide used letter grades, and earlier editions contained only written evaluations. Criteria that instructors were evaluated on included presentation, informative value, readings, and workload. Course Guides also contained statistics on different instructors’ grade distributions. In 1977, the Course Guide began including School of Engineering courses along with its regular Barnard and Columbia College listings.

Cuts in student funding put the Course Guide on hiatus in 1990, and no Course Guides were published during the following year. The Course Guide had a somewhat gradual revival, with smaller supplemental guides published during the 1992-1993 academic year before a full course guide was finally published again in 1993. Although the Barnard student handbooks mention the Columbia-Barnard Course Guides up until 2000, the Barnard Archive only has course guides up to 1994.

These course guides can be seen as precursors to the current online Columbia Underground Listing of Professor Ability (CULPA) review website.