Remedial courses and programs are typically treated in isolation from the core mission of the college or university, an institutional quarantine. The author sees the remedial function as interconnected with foundational concerns: what does it mean to enter higher education in America? What truly is the relationship between the research and undergraduate teaching missions of the university? How is knowledge best developed and incorporated into the social structure of a complex, ever-evolving democracy? Remedial programs are necessary if one wants to educate a wide sweep of the citizenry. They serve as a corrective to the impersonal dispensary that lower-division education has become. If one is wise enough to see, they can be a source of valuable information. In this article, the author argues that remediation, despite its negative reputation, is both a historically appropriate function of higher education and intimately interconnected with its foundational concerns.