This comprehensive examination of general education by Daniel Bell scrutinizes the experiences of Columbia College, Harvard, and The College of the University of Chicago. These three basic models of general education in the country are set against a background of social change which includes a detailed analysis of structural changes in American society, the universities and the secondary schools and what Bell has called the emerging "postindustrial" society.

Bell attacks the distinction between general education and specialism. He holds that one must embody and exemplify general...