The role of higher education in fostering the arts and educating artists is addressed. Currently, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare focuses on aid to primary and secondary levels, and the National Endowment for the Humanities has not developed programs to support professional training in a specific form or arts education of the artist. In the fall of 1978, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) began to consider educational institutions as eligible for Challenge Grants, a development that points to certain basic issues about the importance of the arts experience for students at colleges and universities. Recommendations of a task force of NEA are cited, including the suggestion that grants be made available for needy students to pay for advanced arts study. Data are presented on postsecondary enrollments in the fine arts and employment opportunities after graduation. Several views on the relationship of the artist to academe, some innovative curricular developments in the arts, and examples of the collaboration of art and science are discussed. Information on performing arts programs provide some indication of the support higher education gives to the arts. The data reveal that the performing arts do not pay their own way. The fact that institutions are willing to support such programs is one indicator of the importance such programs play for the institutions. (SW)