This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline

theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Mola, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,

Kentucky.

Andrew Del Banco is director of American Studies at Columbia University, where he's been a faculty member for many years.

He has been Columbia's Julian Clarence Levi professor in the humanities since 1995, a widely

published author and lecturer.

He is a major figure in America's intellectual life.

Dr Andrew Del Bonko now joins me for thinking in public.

Professor Del Bonko in your new book entitled College, What It Was and Should should be you talk about the gain and perhaps

the loss of what you call the college idea what is that idea well it's got a lot of

dimensions of course uh... and and roots in uh... educational

institutions in the ancient world and in europe

uh... but my contention is that the americ American College has been a distinctive institution in a number of ways.

First of all, I think it's based on the assumption which is very deep in our culture that young people between

adolescents and adulthood two stages of life of which the boundaries are

always in motion of course.

Deserve an opportunity to reflect on who they are

and who they hope to become on what their values are and how they might best be able to make for themselves

a life of meaning and purpose.

And I think, although we tend to take for granted this sort of interregnum of four years

at that stage of life

...