Educational values in both the United States and in China have suffered from the social and political reach of economic markets in each society. The models for counteracting the marketization of values in higher education can however be found in each country's past educational traditions. Surprisingly, the developmental values inherent in small liberal arts college teaching dovetail easily with the personal developmental benefits in the pedagogy of classical Confucian academies, as both center on the validation of the process by which students learn for themselves.