The ideal of general education in American universities has always been elusive. At the moment, a combination of forces would seem to be pushing both students and universities toward a still more narrowly conceived and utilitarian curriculum. This situation may be temporary, and concern about its effects on higher education is no doubt exaggerated in the press and then echoed in conversations on campus; but the sense of constraint felt by students is nonetheless real. The university assumes that college is a place where students discover what they can do well, and where they are encouraged to define their talents and to develop them in a concentrated way; it also assumes that college is where students are led to a certain self-consciousness about that discovery, and come to raise questions about the relation their particular talents bear to other forms of knowledge and action. Finally, the university would like to see more courses that address themselves, both practically and reflectively, to student fluency and writing. The committee's recommendations for general education in the university are summarized and argued for at length in this report. (Author/MSE)