The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between two aspects of higher education: the liberal arts and experiential learning. The thesis is that a combination of the traditional liberal arts objectives with the methods of experiential education can result in a strengthening of liberal education at a time when circumstances severely threaten its existence. Experiential learning has a specific relationship to the liberal arts. Abstract curricula are meaningless to many of today's students unless we provide them with some reason, some motivating factor to appreciate and use the abstraction. This motivation can be a field experience. The college learning experience should simultaneously provide the means of generalizing on one experience to come up with a myriad of experiences, and a conceptual framework for those generalizations. The abstraction provides the individual with a reason to explore an experience, and when the idea and experience are thus observed they both have meaning. Having meaning they will be remembered, used again and again, oriented through their interaction with other ideas and experiences that have been generalized, and will enter the total being of the individual. (Author/PG)