The debate over the best delivery of general education, whether through a canon of Great Books, a core curriculum of specific courses and course sequences, or a distribution requirement of course types providing for greater student choice, has existed for generations. Today, the debate plays out in practice across the top-rated colleges and universities in the two most dominant institutional types: liberal arts and doctoral-granting institutions. The purpose of this article is to provide an exploratory analysis of the current context of general education at top liberal arts and doctoral-granting institutions in the United States. In doing so, the authors identify prevalent themes of general education found across these two institutional types through data from the top institutions within each classification. In this examination, the means of achieving the various goals of general education fall into one of two camps: core curriculum or distribution requirements. (Contains 3 tables.)