True liberal education requires a specific physical environment designed to promote both planned and spontaneous conversation. These conditions are most likely to exist in the small, residential liberal arts college, particularly those with modest means, where collegiality and inclusiveness are valued. (MSE)

Life-changing personal experience as a student at Bowdoin College (Maine) in the 1970s convinced the author that small liberal arts colleges will play an important role in the coming global debate about the success or failures of American-style democracy. Such institutions are where the vision and promise of American democracy have been, and…

Residential liberal arts colleges provide the most important form of undergraduate education for the 21st century, by virtue of their primary focus on teaching, small size, residential nature, quest for genuine community, engagement of students in active learning, concern for a general and coherent education, and emphasis on development of the…