Yes, that was my experience too. Everyone needed to pass a basic keyboard skills class the first year (or test out of it) regardless of their focus in performance, composition, teaching, etc.
All of us could play in a lot of scenarios at the end of it.
But it just so happened the college at the small midwestern town I grew up in had faculty from Eastman, Yale, Stanford, NW… and the music department was unusually rigorous for the level of school it was.