These also happen to be the primary ends of a liberal education, and, I submit, criteria by which a liberally educated person ought to and will be judged. Yet, as we close the second millennium, we face in American life a crisis of legitimacy in which higher education has been openly and harshly critiqued, with liberal arts education deemed particularly irrelevant. It is also the case, however, that small liberal arts colleges, by virtue of their primary focus on teaching, their small size, residential nature, quest for genuine community, engagement of students in active learning, concern for a general and coherent education, and emphasis on the development of the whole person, offer the most important kind of undergraduate education for the 21 st century. By virtue of its exclusive focus on undergraduates and priority given to a teaching faculty, the liberal arts college is the conscience of higher education and the leading edge of the highest and best standards for undergraduate education. A small, residential liberal arts college is, in itself, a special kind of pedagogy where the resulting whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Adolescents entering college are in an elastic, formative stage of development.
They need an education that is personalized as well as demanding, coherent, and mentored. This is a human-intensive calling, not a job for TVs and CPUs and modems. These form the substrate of ethical and emotional intelligence on which a powerful reasoning must rest. They also develop best in conditions of active intellectual, social, and emotional engagement. The higher the expectations and standards held by professors and the institution the greater the learning.