Into the next century ...
from The Pictorial History, final section, p. 238

The University of Virginia was formed on a plan at once "broad and liberal and modern," in Jefferson's words. Those ideals still inspire University students, faculty, staff and alumni, who seek to broaden the University's reach across the arts, sciences and letters; who strive for an open forum of expression and debate; who discover and articulate new ideas through intellectual discourse, library research and laboratory experimentation.

Some of the ideas that Jefferson brought into being at his university have become commonplace in American higher education: organization into disciplinary schools or departments; the elective system, whereby students choose their own courses of study; administration by democracy, through which faculty bear responsibility for curriculum and requirements. Other Jeffersonian ideas continue to distinguish the university: a nonsectarian atmosphere of inquiry and a student honor system. By the end of the 20th century, the University of Virginia had fulfilled Jefferson's vision, educating future citizen-leaders not only from Virginia and the South but from the nation, the hemisphere, and the world.

Over many years people remarked that it felt as if Thomas Jefferson still lived at the University of Virginia -- as though he were in the next room, just around the corner, still exerting an influence. His ideas continued to challenge. The principles of freedom, democracy, tolerance and hope that he articulated in the 18th century and manifested in a 19th-century institution of learning remained driving ideals as the University entered the 21st century.

"The great object of our aim from the beginning," Jefferson wrote, "has been to make the establishment the most eminent in the United States." When U.S. News and World Report named the University of Virginia the best public university in the nation for the fifth year in a row, in 1998, some may have been tempted to consider Jefferson's goal met. But if he had been in the next room, just around the corner, he would have said that there was still work to be done. "Each generation," as he wrote in the Rockfish Gap Commission report of 1818, "must advance the knowledge and well-being of mankind, not infinitely, as some have said, but indefinitely, and to a term which no one can fix and forsee."