In April 2013, the "New England Journal of Higher Education" ("NEJHE") launched its "New Directions for Higher Education" series to examine emerging issues, trends, and ideas that have an impact on higher education policies, programs, and practices. In this series feature Philip DiSalvio, dean of the College of Advancing & Professional Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, has interviewed leaders from the field getting perspectives on such topics as: the future of the credit hour; student debt; enrolling and graduating more students from college; and raising educational attainment in the U.S. and around the world. In this installment, DiSalvio interviews Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), on why liberal education is essential to America's global future. AAC&U sees liberal education as a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. This liberal education approach, characterized by challenging encounters with important issues, is more a way of studying than a specific course or field of study. While there abounds proclamations about "the death of liberal arts," and reports about student debt and the unemployability of those with an undergraduate liberal education, many graduating from college these days are going to hold a number of different jobs in their lives, and many of those jobs have not yet been invented. For a world like that, what's the best education? It appears to be a very general education that enables students to think critically. It is with the clarification of these issues that the interview with Carol Geary Schneider provides a perspective. [Support in writing this series is provided by the "New England Journal of Higher Education" Staff.]