Reading the Core Curriculum seems to be, approximately, the cultural equivalent of turning over a wet log: one returns, after class, to old narratives and political opinions and finds them crawling with intertext and rotten with hidden assumptions. LitHum changed the way I read, and CC changed the way I approach politics. The Core is Columbia’s most important institution.1 It’s an extraordinary privilege, and an increasingly rare one, to be able to spend as much time as I have reading classics in fulfillment of an engineering degree, and it’s a testament to the careful design of our program that the same books are relevant nearly a century after CC was first held.
Yet why—especially given all the present dialog about the tremendous economic costs of expensive and “useless” liberal-arts programs—bother? There was a time when Columbia and its brethren were little more than finishing schools for the upper classes; in such circumstances this education was necessary because the cultivation of cultural literacy was the primary purpose of a college, a means to facilitate interaction with people who had been similarly educated.
This has long since ceased to be the case. Much as we joke that the Core is a training exercise for future cocktail parties, I’ve yet to find a moment when a clever citation from the Leviathan was called for in conversation.2 It is also not the case that the curriculum is of immediate instrumental value: I don’t buy the claim, made occasionally, that forcing scientists to take the Core makes them better scientists. The Origin of Species, the only real scientific text on the syllabus, and The Human Condition, the text most directly concerned with the implications of the scientific worldview, both lead to fascinating discussions that were nevertheless totally unconducive to an understanding of scientific subject matter.
But one does not make a society out of science alone. To be in any position of leadership, whether that of the politician, the investor, or the principal investigator, demands a thoughtfulness and an ethical sensibility that technical training cannot provide. I was a little put off, when I applied, by the SEAS literature’s claim to produce “engineering leaders”, but I think there’s something important under the buzzspeak. If all you want to do is build bridges, this course of study is completely superfluous; if you want to do more, it is indispensable.
And the format is just as important as the subject matter: it’s interesting to note that the Global Core, which most closely resembles distribution requirements at other schools, is also regarded (at least among everyone I’ve talked to about it) as the curriculum’s greatest disappointment. My general impression is that even the people who complained most vocally about LitHum and CC miss the intimacy and the focus of their seminars once they’re over. Indeed, the only people consistently happy with the Global Core are those who satisfy the requirement with classes deliberately modeled after LitHum or CC: Columbia is full of enthusiastic supporters of Nobility & Civility but not many of “Music of Southeast Asia”. It’s not that lectures aren’t useful—there’s a reason they’re the primary vehicle of instruction, even at Columbia—but I’ve found that in the handful of humanities lectures I’ve had, I tend to develop a solid understanding of the two or three texts I write essays about, and not much else. Being forced to give an oral defense of your interpretation, twice a week, does wonders for understanding.3
There’s no doubt that we pay a price for the program—organization of the 128-ish seminars making up each semester’s worth of LitHum and CC classes is both logistically and financially ruinous, and one wonders how many of the problems with student life at Columbia could be rectified if the time and money devoted to the Core were otherwise spent.4 But it’s a price decades of Columbians have determined is well worth paying, and one that I’m happy to share in. My lasting memory of this school will be of the seminar table.
Columbia began to provide reasonable private-college amenities like dormitories and advising, when it was in fact the only compelling reason to come.
While I'm obviously pleased to see our reputation improve (and watch the corresponding plummet in acceptance rates), there's a part of me that's sad to see that distinction vanish as we grow, in all respects, more and more like our peer institutions. It's particularly alarming to see the HYP from my application days swell into CHYPS (a discovery made during an embarassingly long trawl through collegeconfidential.com prompted by a stray Bwog link)---it's inconceivable that one person could seriously want to go to all five, and I fear that our inclusion in the group marks the beginning of our transformation into an undifferentiated symbol of status. I imagine the sweet spot was probably the few years before I arrived, during which time we were selective but not prestigious, but I don't actually know whether the student experience then was better.
capacity to bullshit. It’s certainly possible to survive the Core without
reading a single book—indeed, some instructors encourage
it—but I managed to do about 80%
without too much pain. I still seriously regret not staying up the extra couple
of hours to finish Mill (finally read “On Liberty”) and Ibn Khaldun.
endowment by doing away with the Core altogether.