現行大學體制下，通識教育常被視為「專業教育以外的課程」。本文指出博雅教育理念的佚失，正導源自此錯誤的二元對立觀點。依據Michael Oakeshott，博雅教育是西方大學的理念，博雅學習本是大學「全體」師生的本務，有賴各有專精的學者潛心於學習活動，並引導新來者——大學生進入各種人類（自我）理解的形式，學習參與對話，以此延續大學的博雅學習精神。為此，大學須與外在「力與利」的世界保持距離，以維護大學的「幕間」特性，使學習者從工具性學習中解放，探索各種人類的自我理解，進而決定揭示自我的樣態；博雅教育因而體現自由人的特性——透過學習以成人∕己。依此理解，Oakeshott對當代大學的三種發展趨勢痛下針砭。

In a modern university, it is quite common for an undergraduate to conceive of general education as the rest part of curricula opposed to what is offered by his/her department whose business lies in specialised education. This paper is aimed to make the case that it is this misleading division of labour and dichotomy of general education and specialised education that results in the frustration of the idea(l) of liberal education in modern universities. In Michael Oakeshott’s view, liberal education is the idea(l) of a university, and liberal learning and liberal education need to be undertaken by all scholars, teachers, and undergraduates in a university. The tradition of (liberal) learning is passed on to the new generation by each scholar who engages him/herself in the pursuit of learning and initiating the newcomers, i.e. undergraduates into a specific voice of human self-understanding and conversation among the specialisms. It is imperative for a university to cautiously detach its world of liberal learning from the world of power and utility, and carefully maintain its defining feature of ‘interval’ in which each undergraduate is invited to freely seek his/her intellectual fortune without hurry among the limited variety of specialisms selected and offered by a university and henceforth acquires a distinct voice and participates in the conversation. Liberal education is aimed to liberate learners from the limitations of instrumental learning and enable them to enact and disclose themselves by exploring the various voices of human self-understandings. Liberal education as the idea(l) of university education is an embodied practice of ‘free’ human beings who become themselves by learning. Finally, three severe challenges confronting liberal education in a modern university are the self-betrayal of university, the fragmentation of specialisms, and problematic general education.