Funding and fund raising are never out of the thoughts of the presidents of public and private colleges and universities. In the recent general election, much was said about taxes. In the coming session of the General Assembly, much will be said about spending.

Those who support higher education through taxes or freely given personal resources make possible more than buildings and playing fields, teaching and scholarships, and ever more advanced technology. Support of higher education provides country and commonwealth with citizens and leaders able to place modern machines and events in a historical and cultural context.

In 1775, while a dedicated group of patriots was working to forge a new nation out of a group of former colonies, another dedicated group was struggling to found a new liberal arts college in the semiwilderness of Southside Virginia. The efforts were not unrelated.

The founders of this country were fired by the revolutionary spirit to create a new way of life based in a form of government guaranteeing unprecedented freedoms of belief, thought and action. The founders of Hampden-Sydney College were well aware that a new nation needed well-educated * leaders who would guide its formation and provide it with sound moral foundations, assuring the continuation of those hard-won freedoms.

Revolutionary times, they understood, required the leaven of intelligent thought and action so that the noble possibilities inherent in revolution might be transformed into practical and virtuous realities.

The goal of the founders of Hampden-Sydney College was to educate young men to serve their communities and their country with integrity. Integrity is the product of a moral life, and the moral life in turn is shaped by the study of the thoughts and examples of the great thinkers and people of action from across history.

The founders also understood that integrity and a moral life require the capacities to think critically and creatively. The broad-based, liberal arts curriculum, argued the founders, would prepare students for any task and would prepare them to meet those tasks with intelligence, creativity and the collective wisdom of thousands of years of moral reflection. In revolutionary times, these qualities, this ability to provide moral guidance and intelligent leadership, were of central importance to the establishment of the new republic.

More than 200 years later, we find ourselves in the midst of another revolution, technological rather than political. The sweeping scope and pace of change in every part of life is sometimes almost overwhelming, as yesterday's stunning new invention becomes today's outmoded technology. We find ourselves easily able to do things that a few years ago seemed possible only in science fiction.

With the technological revolution have come profound moral questions that challenge even the most basic assumptions about the nature of human life. In such revolutionary times, creative thought grounded in broad moral reflection is desperately needed to guide a changing nation and world, so that the noble possibilities of the technological revolution might become morally grounded realities, providing a way of life that is unambiguously good for all people.

The quality and shape of the revolutions separated by centuries may be quite different, but the need for intelligent, creative leadership, rooted firmly in moral convictions and personal integrity, is precisely the same.

Our technological culture is awash in information, but as yet remains largely confused about how to transform information into knowledge. Information alone, shorn of its setting and context, is at best trivial. But when creative, intelligent men and women, themselves aware of the breadth and depth of our intellectual heritage in its proper setting and context, are able to help their communities transform information into knowledge, and so into lives of moral integrity, then the benefits of the technological revolution begin to assume their best role. To the training and moral shaping of such men and women, the liberal arts tradition remains totally committed.

The future of country and commonwealth requires a citizenry able to provide moral guidance and intelligent leadership in the present technological revolution and in all the "revolutions" yet to come. Whether the liberal arts is the sole focus of the small independent college or the core of the great research university, it is worth the cost.