The so-called "conservative view" denounced the concept of preparing its undergraduates for specific professional work and suggested a liberal education. In the Report, it says, the appropriate object of a collegiate education is to lay the foundation of a superior education. The ground work of a thorough education, must be broad, and deep, and solid. The two great points to be gained in intellectual culture are the discipline and the furniture of the mind; expanding its powers, and storing it with knowledge. The former of these is, perhaps, the more important of the two. What's more, it argued that there is no science which does not contribute its aid to professional skill. Classical curriculums have the function of disciplining people's mind since they have been passed down generation after generation and have survived from earlier times.

In the following year, A. S. Packard wrote on North American Review to support the report, using "general education" to state the necessity of offering common courses in colleges. From then on，the term "general education" came into being in America.