This report identifies the essential aims, learning outcomes, and guiding principles for a 21st century college education. It is based on extensive input both from educators and employers and responds to the new global challenges today's students face. It describes the learning contemporary students need from college, and what it will take to help them achieve it. The report concludes that liberal education is needed now more than ever. It explores what students need to know and what skills they need to have to prepare themselves for life and work in the twenty-first century. The goal of this report is to move from off-camera analysis to public priorities and action. The educational aims and outcomes recommended in this report are needed in every area of human endeavor. This report calls on policy leaders to expand substantially the investment in active, hands-on, collaborative, and inquiry-based forms of teaching and learning--making full use of new educational technologies--to ensure that all students have rich opportunities to fully achieve the intended learning outcomes. The use of effective and engaging educational practices will be the key to higher achievement for contemporary college students. Following a foreword, executive highlights, and an introduction, the report divides into four parts and constituent sections. Part I, What Matters in College?, contains: (1) The Essential Learning Outcomes; and (2) Liberal Education and American Capability. Part II, From the American Century to the Global Century, contains: (1) Narrow Learning is Not Enough; (2) The World Is Changing and Liberal Education Must Change Too; (3) Engaging Twenty-First-Century Realities; (4) Key Questions to Guide School-College Planning; and (5) Fulfilling the Promise of College in the Twenty-First Century. Part III, A New Framework for Excellence, contains The Principles of Excellence, and (1) Aim High--And Make Excellence Inclusive; (2) Give Students a Compass; (3) Teach the Arts of Inquiry and Innovation; (4) Engage the Big Questions; (5) Connect Knowledge with Choices and Action; (6) Foster Civic, Intercultural, and Ethical Learning; and (7) Assess Students' Ability to Apply Learning to Complex Problems. Part IV, A Time for Leadership and Action, contains: (1) What it Will Take; and (2) Liberal Education and America's Promise. Appendix A presents a Guide to Effective Educational Practices; and Appendix B presents a Note on Commercial Colleges. (Contains 57 endnotes.) [Additional funding provided by the Charles Engelhard Foundation and the AT&T Foundation.]