Improvement of the lower division undergraduate program of the General College of the University of Minnesota is addressed. Attention is directed to the history of the program, the status of the project when the General College Assembly adopted its 1981 statement, and the nature of the work to be completed during the 1981-82 year. Reference is made to the 1981 Carnegie Foundation essay (Boyer and Levine) showing that general education experienced a swing toward vocational education before the Depression, efforts to reaffirm values central in Western and American civilization after World War II, and an emphasis on science and mathematics and foreign languages after Russia orbited Sputnik in 1957. During the 1960s and early 1970s, students, minorities, feminists, and others called for diversity and relevance in general education offerings. The goals, characteristics, and desirable outcomes of the general education program, and degree requirements of the Associate in Arts Degree of the General College are specified in the 1981 Assembly statement. Broad educational outcomes in connection with skills, liberal education, and application/problem solving have been specified. Faculty have been examining course offerings as part of an effort to refine the liberal education requirement. Boyer and Levine suggest that general education content can be presented under six broad subject categories: shared use of symbols, shared membership in groups/institutions, shared producing and consuming, shared relationship with nature, shared sense of time, and shared values and beliefs. Two recent histories of general education, one by Roland Lincoln Guyotte, III, and the other by Gail A. Koch, are reviewed. (SW)