A very lucky group of students are pursuing a liberal education in these first days of the 2005-2006 academic year, including 542 new first-year students at St. Lawrence University, and hundreds of thousands more high school students are considering such an education as they search for college armed by colleges guides, Web sites, college counselors, helpful friends and neighbors and a dizzying array of other resources. But how many of these students really know what a liberal education is, and why it's important? Here's what I said to our first-year students at our annual Matriculation Ceremony:

A liberal education requires breadth, depth and integration in learning. It also requires the cultivation of those habits of intellectual and moral self-discipline that distinguish a mature individual. To these ends, St. Lawrence seeks to provide an education that fosters in students an open, inquiring and disciplined mind, well informed through broad exposure to basic areas of knowledge; an enthusiasm for life-long learning; self-confidence and self-knowledge; a respect for differing opinions and for free discussion of those opinions; and an ability to use information logically and to evaluate alternative points of view.

A liberal education frees students from the confines of limited personal experiences and limited knowledge of the physical, historical, social and cultural world. In return, this liberation gives an enlightened understanding of that which is singular, immediate and limited. Thus, a liberal education is always relevant to the world in which students must live at the same time that it attempts to maintain a certain detachment from that world.

The kind of education we're describing in these aims and objectives is the kind of education I want those who are tackling the world's tough issues on my behalf to have: the diplomat who seeks to contribute to peace in the Middle East, the physician who is going to diagnose my illness, the mother and father who are going to bring children into the world and help them grow, the lawyer who is an advocate but also knows and pursues justice, the novelist whose insight will help me understand the human condition better, the manufacturer who is not just good at making things but who also cares about the lives of his or her workers and the environmental impact of his or her manufacturing processes and products, and, most importantly, the person who can use the global market economy to help produce greater overall world wealth and standard of living in an environmentally sustainable way and in a way that also preserves and enhances our ultimate humanity.

The kind of education we're about at St. Lawrence is not just important--it is absolutely essential and totally practical: it is a means to the end of making a powerful and positive difference in a world that has never been more challenging or complex. It is also not easily won, if it is truly going to stand you well in the kind of world I have described.

We are the most affluent society in the history of the world. Affluence really does breed a feeling of entitlement, but you are not entitled to the kind of education I've been discussing. You have to earn it; you have to work hard for it. I am not being hyperbolic when I say that the future of America and the world depends on you not feeling entitled, on your willingness and commitment to absorb all you can and grow as far and as fast as you can--to use the rich resources of this university in the most transforming way possible.

We are ready to do our very best for you. We're going to be academically demanding and provide you with a rich array of academic opportunities, but we're also going to give you hundreds of opportunities to develop yourselves in ways other than just the intellectual, so that you will be able and courageous enough, we hope, to introduce and support just the right frictions in the world economic marketplace--those that preserve and extend our humanity.

It is my deepest hope that you will leave St. Lawrence having been challenged powerfully, and that you will have met the challenge. If this works the way we intend it, you will also leave St. Lawrence loving this place in a way that will last a lifetime. You will have been affected profoundly, and your attachment to St. Lawrence will be permanent and deeply meaningful.

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President Sullivan graduated from St. Lawrence, in Canton, New York, in 1965. He became the University's 17th president in 1996.

NOTE: The information in this press release is available for free and immediate use. If used, please contact Macreena Doyle, University Communications, 315-229-5587, mdoyle@stlawu.edu.