Tragically, many schools are afflicted by a hostility and blind incomprehension of the past. Readers of our guides will be warned at which schools current students warn Christians or conservatives to keep a low profile—if they wish to receive fair grades or make any friends. But there are other problems as well, which cannot be blamed on the left. Too many who are not in the grip of radical ideologies are simply pragmatists, who view an education simply as a form of technical or pre-professional training, so that a school’s success could essentially be judged by looking at the incomes of its graduates. If this were true, then universities would not be essentially different from schools that teach students how to serve as court stenographers, or repair refrigerators. We would not lavish them will billions of dollars of private philanthropy and taxpayer subsidies. Few would gather at intervals of 10 and 20 years, or speak of their school as an “alma mater,” or nourishing mother.

The place which colleges still hold in our culture tells us that we remember, albeit dimly, that they are meant to do something more—to form the free citizen, prepare the future parent, and fortify the soul. Universities train us to think and argue for ourselves, but also to listen to older and wiser authorities, to question but also to take seriously the wisdom of other periods and peoples, to learn from our contemporaries and serve as mentors to the young. Most of us carry with us memories of one or two faculty members who stand in our minds as models of how to teach, how to counsel, how to correct—memories that will guide us when we have children or students of our own. Schools also teach how to wisely spend our time, how to choose among the myriad political, cultural, and social options which a free society offers. That—and not keeping the kids entertained—is the secret function of a university’s extracurricular activities. Colleges do train us in particular disciplines, and prepare those of us who intend further study in one of the arts or sciences. The workload imposed should be sufficient to engage the bright and awaken the lazy. A university must challenge us to succeed, but also to get up again when we fail. It is, in every sense, a school of life. It is by these criteria that this book judges a college.

Needless to say, we are often disappointed.

But after one recovers from the initial shock of seeing how far many schools have strayed from their founding missions—be they religious or classically humanist—it is possible to adopt another view. Once one admits that the great edifice of traditional education has crumbled, that the Roman aqueducts and Gothic arches are broken, it is possible to look for what one poet called “love among the ruins.” Few schools still fully embody a vision of liberal (that is, liberating) education which Newman would recognize. (Any such schools which we could find, we have included, and commend to your attention.) But in many of them, there are still significant remnants, or recent growths, of excellence—brilliant scholars, committed but fair-minded teachers, extraordinary libraries and museums and intellectually motivated fellow students.

Some places more than others have clung to their traditions. Others have begun to remember the deeper reasons why they were founded. Still others have sprung up to fill the void created by the great catastrophes of the 1960s and 1970s. And even on many of the campuses which saw the most, and most destructive changes in that great period of anti-intellectualism, one can piece together a first-rate education by choosing carefully among professors and programs. In fact, there are very few prominent schools in America at which this is not possible. (We talk about those places, too.)

An exclusive feature of Choosing the Right College is the inclusion, in each institutional profile, of an inset box that tells students how to build their own core curriculum. In this box we highlight eight specific courses that cover the eight areas we believe together make for a decent substitute for a traditional integrated core. These areas are:

1. Classical literature (in translation)
2. Ancient philosophy
3. The Bible
4. Christian thought before 1500
5. Modern political theory
6. Shakespeare
7. U.S. history before 1865
8. Nineteenth-century European intellectual history

The rationale behind this vision of the core curriculum is explained in detail in Mark Henrie’s book, A Student’s Guide to the Core Curriculum (which, by the way, is also included in its entirety inside our new guide, All-American Colleges). In essence, this grouping of courses reflects the input of dozens of distinguished professors from a wide variety of disciplines as to what a brief but genuine core curriculum ought to cover. If taught well—and especially if taught using primary texts—these courses will help students obtain a broad and sophisticated understanding of the West, that is, an understanding of the narratives, beliefs, events, thinkers, and institutions that have shaped not only the world around them, and the core beliefs encoded in our culture and the American Constitution. If you don’t understand your own culture, you’ll make a poor student of anyone else’s. (As Socrates famously insisted, “Know thyself.”)

If students take the eight courses we recommend, and especially if they can contrive to take them from professors we recommend, they should graduate with at least the semblance of a true liberal arts education. That means they will have minds which are free to go on learning all through life from a vast variety of sources, supported by hard-won skills and guided by a sure intellectual compass.