Columbia University School of Social Work is the nation’s oldest and most innovative. Its roots trace to 1898, when the New York Charity Organization Society’s summer course was announced in The New York Times. Tuition was $10.

Molding the Profession
The story of the Columbia University School of Social Work is the story of the social work profession itself. During its first century, the School, its faculty and its graduates have played key roles in:

• establishing the landmark Bureau of Children’s Guidance in 1922
• requiring field instruction in social work education
• through President Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, helping to write and implement the Social Security Act
• extending the social work role into the military during and after World War II
• pioneering psychiatric social work
• conducting a study of foster children and their parents, which was a major influence on national policy
• introducing the first curriculum on social work in the workplace
• forming coalitions that have led to national movements influential in bringing about social change, including the Urban League and the White House Conferences on Children
• contributing a disproportionate share of leaders in social work education, with graduates in an unprecedented 39 deanships in schools of social work all over the world
• originating the environmental/ecological approach to social work

A World-Class School in a World-Class City
New York City acts as the perfect magnet to draw a diverse and dynamic group of students, faculty and staff members, and offers the ideal environment for study, practice and research.

Columbia is one of only two U.S. schools to educate future social work leaders in key republics of the former Soviet Union, sponsored by the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute. Students from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan learn new ways to produce change and encourage an open society in their countries.

The University Community
As part of New York City’s only Ivy League university, Columbia University School of Social Work students are at the center of one of the most intellectually exciting academic communities in the world.

With 16 faculties, 70 departments and hundreds of academic centers and institutes, Columbia University enrolls over 26,000 students every year. Social work programs draw on the resources of a major Ivy League research university, giving participants access to the best thinking. Columbia University’s faculty is justly renowned for its cutting-edge research, with 79 Nobel Prize-winners as members.