The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University (also known as GSAS) is a graduate school of the university that grants academic degrees in the arts and sciences, including M.A.s and Ph.D.s., in fields not covered by the university's professional or other schools.
GSAS began to take shape in the late 19th century, when Columbia, until then a primarily undergraduate institution with a few professional attachments, began to establish graduate faculties in several fields: Political Science (1880), Philosophy (1890), and Pure Science (1892). The graduate faculties, notably, were open to women at a time when many other Columbia schools were not; Columbia College did not become a coeducational institution until 1983. The first Ph.D. awarded by Columbia was conferred in 1882; the first woman to receive one did so in 1886.
The increasing professionalization of the university brought with it an emphasis on the graduate schools, as presidents such as Seth Low and Nicholas Murray Butler sought to emulate the success of German universities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, in the effort to produce as many graduate degree-holders as possible, attempts were made to streamline undergraduate life and center academic life in the graduate-focused departments. Such efforts led to resistance among Columbia College administrators and undergraduates, arguably one of the contributing factors in the 1968 protests. Nevertheless, graduate research has flourished at Columbia as a result, and the university has been among the top producers of PhDs in the United States from the inception of the graduate disciplines. In the early 1990s, GSAS and Columbia College faculty were all absorbed into a consolidated Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with familiar complaints among undergraduates and their advocates.
Arthur Burns - economist, Ph.D., 1934Milton Friedman - economist, Ph.D., 1946Kenneth Arrow - economist, Ph.D., 1951Nina Ansary - historian, Ph.D 2013Jacques Barzun - historian, Ph.D. 1932Charles A. Beard - historian, Ph.D. 1904Lawrence Cremin - historian, M.A. 1947, Ph.D. 1949Richard Hofstadter - historian, Ph.D. 1942Bruce Cumings - historian, Ph.D. 1975Stanley Payne—historian, Ph.D. 1959Howard Zinn—historian, Ph.D. 1958Jacob M. Appel - writer and bioethicist, M.A., 2000John Ashbery - poet, 1951Isaac Asimov - science fiction writer, M.A. 1941Paul Auster - writer, M.A., 1970Randolph Bourne - antiwar essayist, M.A. 1913Rachel Blau DuPlessis - literary critic, M.A. 1964, Ph.D. 1970Jason Epstein - writer, M.A., 1950John Erskine - literary scholar, Ph.D. 1903James Goldman - writer, 1952William Goldman - screenwriter, 1956Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal - screenwriterCarolyn Heilbrun - writer, M.A. 1951, Ph.D. 1959Joseph Heller - writer, 1949Zora Neale Hurston - writer, 1935Alfred Kazin - literary critic, 1958Kenneth Koch - poet, M.A. 1953, Ph.D. 1959Joseph Wood Krutch - writer, M.A. 1916, Ph.D. 1929David Lehman - poet, Ph.D. 1978Peter Straub - writer, 1966Lionel Trilling - literary critic, M.A. 1926, Ph.D. 1938Anne Tyler - novelist, 1962Mark Van Doren - writer, Ph.D. 1920Stark Young - critic and writer, 1902Mortimer Adler - Ph.D. in psychology, 1928Arthur Danto - M.A. 1949, Ph.D. in philosophy, 1952Irwin Edman - Ph.D. in philosophy, 1919Hu Shih - public intellectual in China, Ph.D. 1917Jacqueline Barton - chemist, 1979Niles Eldredge - paleontologist, Ph.D. 1969Stephen Jay Gould - paleontologist, Ph.D. 1967Neil deGrasse Tyson - astrophysicist, author, science communicator, Ph.D. 1991Kenneth Ascher, DMA – jazz pianist, composer – 1966 CC; 1968 GSAS; 1971 SOAAlan Heyman, traditional Korean musicologist and composer, 1959Art Garfunkel - musician, 1967Will Geer - actorEdward Everett Horton - actor, 1909John Kander - composer, 1954Bernard Malamud - writer, 1942Thomas Merton - Catholic writer, 1939Ruth Benedict - anthropologist, Ph.D. 1923Theos Casimir Bernard - explorer and religionist, M.A. 1936, Ph.D. 1943Kenneth B. Clark - educational psychologist, Ph.D. 1940Mamie Phipps Clark - educational psychologist, Ph.D. 1943Gilberto Freyre — Brazilian sociologist, cultural anthropologist and historian, M.A. 1922Margaret Mead - anthropologist, Ph.D. 1929B. R. Ambedkar - a founding father of India, M.A. 1915, Ph.D. 1928Nicholas Murray Butler - diplomat and President of Columbia University, Ph.D. 1884Benjamin Cardozo - jurist, M.A. 1890Wellington Koo - Chinese diplomat, Ph.D. 1912Robert Moses urban planner, Ph.D. 1914Frances Perkins - US Secretary of Labor, M.A. 1910Brent Scowcroft - US National Security Advisor, M.A. and Ph.D. in international relations, 1967Mark Wyland - California State Senator, M.A. in political science, 1969Donald Clarence Judd - sculptor, 1961Agnes Martin - painter, M.A. 1952Meyer Schapiro - art historian, Ph.D. 1929Herman Hollerith - inventor, Ph.D. 1890Sam Levenson - comedian, 1938John McCaffery - newscasterRichard P. Mills - former Commissioner of Education for both Vermont and New York States, M.A. 1967Madeleine B. Stern - rare book expert, M.A. 1934Judith Rodin - 7th president of the University of Pennsylvania and president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ph.D. 1970