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<p>This is more dependent on the campus culture and individual students. Although Oberlin didn’t have a core curriculum beyond general distribution requirements, one of my fondest undergrad memories was having long meandering discussions on a wide variety of topics including political philosophies, History, Science Ethics as applied in genetics, Sociology, Literature, music, etc and how they related to our perceptions of the world. </p>
<p>Those conversations drew from what we were learning in class and from other sources and tended to get so interesting and involved that they’d continue into the following day if we didn’t have class/exams/ECs/part-time jobs to prepare for the following day/week. </p>
<p>Funniest part was not having a “Core Curriculum” ended up working well because we had a wide variety of majors evenly distributed among Humanities, Social Science, Natural Sciences, and the Conservatory. </p>
<p>As for the OP’s question…whether a Core Curriculum is effective or not really depends on its intended purpose and whether the students subjected to it are engaged and interested or not. I’ve seen plenty of Columbia College undergrads who weren’t terribly engaged and interested for a variety of reasons…including not understanding the implications of Columbia’s “Core Curriculum” undergrad program until they were enrolled for a semester or few. Hard to believe…but true.</p>