<p>“if Columbia is trying to change one aspect of its students’ attitudes, it’s to give them an open mind about a wide variety of subjects”</p>
<p>I’ve found this to be marginally true, but professors’ attitude’s hardly change and those inevitably influence students’. what is changing is the pre-professional and practical nature of the student body (becoming more pre-law, pre-med, pre-wall street oriented). Seas is definitely trying to do this (gateway lab, financial engineering major, entrepreneurship minor, econ-OR joint major, applied math and physics allowing business and econ electives, applied physics having a medical physics focus area, more CS minors, requiring an intro CS class.)</p>
<p>CC too is realizing what an asset a good econ dept is, and is creating / strengthening econ-something else joint majors. econ-philosophy, econ-math, econ-OR, econ-poli sci, even if these aren’t new, they are at any rate gaining greater enrollment, because they sell well, and students realize that they can make more money off an interdisciplinary major. Frontiers of science though close to meaningless, was instituted to give people a practial, modern and relevant understanding of science, it is a divergence from the classical core education.</p>
<p>I think all these changes actually attract more practical students who are less intensely idealistic, and more in generall politically moderate.</p>