Higher education serves many purposes. One purpose dominates, however: to students, their parents, future employers, government officials, and many academic administrators, higher education is all about preparing students for the professional workforce. Other requirements, such as general education programs, are considered to be of lesser importance. In many cases, they are designed solely to support the primary goal of training professionals, providing generalized skills that can be translated to many professions. Yet treating general education programs as secondary constitutes a great loss of opportunity, as well-designed programs have the potential to help students become better citizens, deeper thinkers, and more moral people. In this report, the author explores actual learning processes at a primary level and shows why a tightly crafted general education that deliberately connects various types of knowledge and learning is vastly superior to one that that allows students wide latitude to choose among unconnected courses that may appear to be interesting at the time but offer little long-term insight. And is also preferable to one that attempts to teach skills without bothering with the content involved. This report should be read--and acted upon--by all policymakers, administrators, and academics who are truly concerned with the quality of education that colleges and universities provide.