I agree that, unfortunately, our schools beat curiosity out of our children (more often than not) before they get to university. But curiosity is an innate human trait, and I'd like to think it can be re-kindled in the right environment at age 18.

It could in principle. But first note that every student comes to the Question having taken 16 courses from throughout the life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, social sciences humanities and arts. We then help them form questions which are inherently interdisciplinary, have a required experiential learning component out in the real world, and a reading list which provides context for the course of study. In fact, I think this is much more open than pre-programmed major sequences or programs one finds at most universities.

Yes, there is certainly not a one-to-one correspondence between academic performance and creativity. Our goal in having each student define his or her own Question is to help each one find the area(s) which they are most inspired to pursue.

Note that our degree -- the only one we award -- is the Bachelor of Arts AND Sciences -- all of our students take both in substantial quantities; in fact, only a minority of our students end up with Questions in what would traditionally be found in an "arts" or "humanities curriculum.

Some Questions are very broad: "Is democracy a viable form of government to solve the problems of the twenty-first century?" The final project focused on a much narrower comparative study of different voting systems. Others are quite specific: "How do local cultural norms affect the delivery of public health services in developing countries?" This student collected Lyme-diseased ticks in a Haz Mat suit and took courses in epidemiology and biochemistry to understand vector-borne diseases, then spent three months in Central America in local health clinics seeing our centralized government health services played out on the ground, and took courses in cultural anthropology. Her final project studied an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever in the Bolivian Amazon in which she documented the interaction of the WHO doctors with the local shamans in stopping this epidemic. She is now in grad school in epidemiology.

My senior mathematics colleague puts it best. There are only two criteria: You have to love your subject, and you have to love your students.

I do agree that real world experience is important; that is what our experiential learning requirement is for. However I emphatically do not agree that the point of an undergraduate education must be job training. There is a large difference between education and training. Both are very important. But, in fact, if you ask HR officers at corporations what they want and are not getting from today's graduates, it is NOT more techincal training. 89% say they want employees who can write and speak effectvely and persuasively; 84% say they want employees who collaborate well with people from other backgrounds and job skills to solve real-world company problems. And they want people with advanced analytical reasoning abilities. Those are precisely the things a liberal arts education provide...

In fact, in the US, undergraduate liberal arts (4-year) colleges produce only 3% of US bachelor degrees. But if you look at PhD scientists, Peace Corps volunteers, Fortune 500 CEOs, Pulitzer Prize winners, etc., the graduates of these programs are over-represented by 200% to 600%.

Quest University opened in 2007 with a few dozen students, so we only have one small class of graduates, but they are thriving. Two are in graduate programs at the Canadian Center for Human Health. One is going to the UBC Sauder School of Business and another just got into the Anthropology PhD program at Stanford. Three are Katimavik leaders and two are in the US Peace Corps. Several are in the fifth-year K-12 teacher programs. And one just returned from presenting a major study he conducted on training of primary care health workers in remote parts of Zambia to the Zambian Minister of Health.

Education and job training are being confused and superimposed on each other just now. In high schools we are striving to send almost all students to university. This in itself is flawed. We are sending many students who prefer structure over creativity into a knowledgescape where they are overwhelmed. Good questions need broad based understanding in order to extend to innovation. How is Quest selecting its students?

The Block system -- about which I was initially skeptical -- has been a revelation, to me, to every faculty member (permanent and visiting) who has taught in it, and to the vast majority of our students (who when they study abroad in semesters, come running back to embrace it)....

The block system allows a banishment of one of the evils of our age -- multi-tasking -- and produces a level of focus, engagement, and depth that is simply not achievable in the traditional system. It allows for unlimited field trips (hours to weeks) because there are no class conflicts. And it allows us to bring in wonderful visiting faculty who can't take 4 months off from their day job, but can do 3.5 weeks. Last year our international relations course was taught by the Canadian ambassador to Mozambique.

Yes, I do. The proof of practice is the University of Montana-Western which adopted it very sucessfully a few years ago. Some universities in Canada are considering it (as reported in the G&M a few months ago).

Do I think it will happen? No.

We are working on the assessment of what we do (although I must confess it usually gets second priority compared with doing it). We would welcome educational researchers interested in the model to come and visit us.

What I find most odd, Fred, is the strictly Provincial nature of education in Canada. I really do not think it is healthy. Greater than 96% of students go to university in their home Province, and even transferring from one province to another to go to gradate school has barriers. Labour market mobility is a sine qua non of a vibrant, creative economy, and I don't think Canada's current system encourages that.

The blocks are completely self-contained; i.e., all the work is accomplished within the block. But note, classes meet three hours a day, five days a week and we expect 5 hours a day of work outside of class (collaboratively and individually). The Keystone project that comes out of the Question, of course, runs for two years, but the individual courses are self-contained (and a fifty-page essay, while not a typical assignment, is possible when you have nothing else to worry about for a month).

I gave a talk to 250 parents and students last night at an independent school in Toronto -- you will be unsurprised I was asked that question. My answer comes from my personal experience and the statistics cited earlier about US liberal arts institutions. But note, I would not call it "free exploration" -- the first 16 courses are specified and the program is quite structured -- it is just that it is structured to foster creativity.

I would welcome any of your readers who find themselves on the West Coast to contact me and schedule a visit. There is no more effective way to communicate what we are doing than to spend a day participating in it.

My pleasure. d