"What image does a first-rank college or university present
today to a teen-ager leaving home for the first time, off to the adventure of a
liberal education?
"He has four years of freedom to discover himself--a space
between the intellectual wasteland he has left behind and the inevitable dreary
professional training that awaits him after the [bachelor's degree].
"In this
short time he must learn that there is a great world beyond the little one he
knows, experience the exhilaration of it and digest enough of it to sustain
himself in the intellectual deserts he is destined to traverse.
"He must do
this, that is, if he is to have any hope of a higher life.
"These are the
charmed years when he can, if he so chooses, become anything he wishes and when
he has the opportunity to survey his alternatives, not merely those current in
his time or provided by careers, but those available to him as a human being.
"The importance of these years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are
civilization's only chance to get to him."
