The Columbia College Chicago Student to Faculty Ratio & Faculty Composition

Does Columbia College Chicago have a good student to faculty ratio?

Use 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 College Chicago.

Amount of Faculty Here is About Average

Student to faculty ratio at Columbia College Chicago is on par with the national average of 14 students for every one instructional faculty member, at 14:1. This ratio is a standard metric used to gauge the number of teaching resources a school provides for its students.

Instructional Staff at the College

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 College Chicago as primarily performing research or public service.

This College Among the Worst for Full-Time Teachers

Columbia College Chicago's use of full-time instructors ranks among the nation's lowest, with only 28.0% of instructors teaching on a full-time basis.

Use of Part-Time Teachers is Above Average

72.0% of the teaching staff at Columbia College Chicago are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This percentage represents a higher than average use of adjuncts when compared to the national average of 48.1%, a controversial statistic that some consider indicative of a college's commitment to building a strong, long-term instructional team.

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.

Additional Information

• What is an Adjunct?

  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.

Keep an Eye Out for Grad Assistants Teaching Classes

Columbia College Chicago has 27 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.