Union's vision for the academic experience states that "Union College helps students make learning connections, with a well-qualified faculty that collaborate and cooperate across traditionally separate disciplinary lines. Intellectual and ethical development, plus the ability to make meaningful choices and informed decisions, is nurtured through a variety of on- and off-campus learning experiences."

This vision guided the careful crafting of Union's core curriculum - a curriculum that challenges each student to develop a life philosophy, that enables members of the faculty to significantly improve student learning, and that intentionally seeks to produce graduates who see being educated as a quality of mind, not simply an accumulation of facts.

Union's core contributes toward the nurturing of a graduate whose personal integrity, intellectual aptitude and responsible citizenship mark him or her as a Union graduate.

(1) understand the basics of such academic discourse as speeches, written argumentation, and documented research papers (first year);
(2) comprehend the major topics and historical development of philosophy;
(3) understand the beliefs and historical development of such major religions as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and how each relates to the others;
(4) be familiar with the tools of literary analysis (first year);
(5) understand the development of canonical literature from its beginnings through the late Renaissance (first year);
(6) and from the Enlightenment to the present (second year);
(7) be familiar with major trends in art (including architecture)
(8) and music;
(9) and understand the historical contexts of Western culture, from its prehistoric beginnings to the late Renaissance (first year)
(10) and from the Enlightenment to the present day (second year).