Just when you thought higher education couldn't get any worse, along comes Randolph College, a private, liberal-arts school in Lynchburg. Randolph, it seems, takes education seriously, particularly when it comes to sexology, and has gone a step further than such esteemed wonders of erudition as The College of William & Mary, which brings "sex workers" to campus to explain their trade.

The enlightened philosophes at Randolph took students on a "field trip" to a brothel in Pahrump, Nev., about 60 miles outside Las Vegas. They visisted the Chicken Ranch, CNN reported, where they met such thinkers as Alicia, who "wore a black-and-white gingham nighty and a tattoo on her left breast that read ‘Famous.'"

The alluring Alicia and her scarlet sisters answered such cosmic questions as "Do you consider yourself a feminist?" and "is there a certain look most men prefer?" "Why aren't there brothels with male prostitutes?" they wondered, and by the way, "do you still give a military discount?"

Well, yes, they do, which proves the girls are nothing if not high-minded patriots, but what's most encouraging about the trip is the completely plausible explanation for it. The scholars at Randolph "don't just study America," burbled Julio Rodgriguez, the director of the school's American Culture Program. "They live it."

Absolutely. The college's Web site opens with the legend "World Wise," and explains the true value of a Randolph diploma: "A Randolph education is the best investment you could possibly make. Our distinctive, personal approach to education means more: more opportunities to explore, more mentoring relationships, more global focus in the curriculum. And that translates directly into enhanced career opportunities, deeper personal enrichment, and a lot more."

What better way to fulfill that ambitious "liberal arts" agenda than a trip to a bawdyhouse. For $34,860 a year in tuition, the modern student expects a lot, and Randolph delivers. Homer, Vergil and Plutarch? Dante, Erasmus and Shakespeare? They have nothing on Alicia, who limned the mysterious dimensions of human suffering when she unbosomed this remark: "I have to be here 24 hours a day."

Speaking of American culture, the reason the students met these worthy additions to our heritage, surely we must jettison such names as Hawthorne, Melville and Poe, and Crane, Faulkner and Fitzgerald. These, good reader, are dead men of the past, and we must ever be grateful that Mr. Rodriguez and the other sages at Randolph have demonstrated that true education lies not in the disreputable canon of Western Civilization, but in that lofty lyceum of learning called the Chicken Ranch.