The private liberal arts college remains a halcyon image of higher education in many minds - caring professors on cloistered campuses teaching small classes the eternal truths of literature and science, molding young minds into those of responsible, thoughtful citizens.

But how is King Lear or Newton going to help you find a job in the high-tech, information-driven, Web-based 21st century?

Goucher, Washington, Western Maryland and Hood are four Maryland nonsectarian, traditional liberal arts colleges. In an increasingly bottom line-oriented society, they are battered by pressures from various points on the academic and economic compasses.

From one direction, Ivy League schools and their ilk - Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, Stanford - have price tags that are only slightly higher but offer a prestigious stamp of approval that many think is worth that kind of money. Few small colleges and none in Maryland - can compete in that arena.

"It is clearly a challenge," says John S. Toll, president of Washington College in Chestertown and former chancellor of the University of Maryland.

Even the value of the time-tested liberal arts education is questioned by prospective students who are increasingly vocationally oriented, seeking the kind of applied, practical and technical programs that lead directly to employment.

"Many of our applicants, and more often their parents, say to me, 'What can I do with this degree?" says Robert Welch, academic dean of Goucher College in Towson. "I tell them, 'Just about anything you want to.'"

Officials at the liberal arts schools make a fundamental case for their kind of education - what employers want are people who can write and speak well and think critically, and that is what a liberal arts education provides.

They also contend that what students need are not specific skills, but the ability to learn new ones. Toll points to a projection that today's students will change not just jobs but careers several times in their lifetimes.

"I happen to believe that a liberal arts education is the best possible preparation for today's society," says Shirley D. Peterson, who has been president of Hood College in Frederick for the past four years. "The pace of change is so great that any education that trains a student for one job is doing that student a disservice."

Martha O'Connell, director of admissions at Western Maryland College in Westminster, says prospective students will come to her and say they want to major in computer science.

"I ask them why, and they say they like computers," she says. "They dont know what computer science is. We have a minor in it. That's what they need. They can go to graduate school if they find they are really interested.

"You don't need to major in marine biology as an undergraduate. Get a good basic science education, major in biology. Specialize later in graduate school," she says.

Hood senior Erin Goodwillie, about to graduate with a joint major in art and French, agrees. "It's foolish to think that 17-year-olds know what they want to do the rest of their life," she says. "I started out as a management major, but I hated it. I found what I liked in my arts courses."

The message seems to be getting through.

"You don't hear as much about the irrelevance of studying Aristotle as you did 20 years ago," says Nicholas H. Farnham of the Educational Leadership Program, a New York-based group that works with liberal arts colleges.

"People didn't understand the concept of learning critical thinking then," he says. "These schools remain the backbone of the American higher education System."

Certainly these schools have modified their programs to appeal to the current crop of students.

Goucher attracts students with departments like dance - its department is one of the top-ranked among colleges - but it offers dance and other arts majors concentrations in administration, preparing students for a career in the business side of the fine arts, not just performing.

"I wanted to come to a school that had top academics as well as an excellent dance program," says Goucher sophomore Jennifer Ellsworth, who is majoring in dance and international studies.

Goucher also has an internship program that dates back 40 years and requires all students to have off-campus experience.

Western Maryland also emphasizes its internships, while Washington College is forging a wide variety of relationships with schools overseas as well as getting its students government internships in Annapolis and Washington.

Hood points to its networking with scientific institutions at nearby Fort Detrick as well as with various communities in Washington.

"The people at the National Gallery tell me there have been more interns there from Hood than from Harvard or Yale," says Ann Derbes, Hood's history of art professor.

Hood has probably changed more than any of the other schools in the past few years. Under Peterson, it has eliminated nine programs, mainly in the home economics area, and put a greater emphasis on liberal arts.

"We are repositioning ourselves both in the marketplace and in the academic community," Peterson says.

But unlike Goucher, which started admitting men a decade ago to counter an enrollment slump, Hood wants to remain essentially a women's college - and increase enrollment by about 50 residential students per class over the next few years, according to Joan Powers, Hood's vice president for enrollment management.

"We have the room for them," she says. All residential students are women, though the school allows men commuters who account for about 10 percent of the undergraduate student body. The school's graduate programs are coed.

"We need options in education," Peterson says of remaining a women's school. "This country is large enough and rich enough to offer them. You can see these women grow in confidence in the kind of environment Hood provides."

In one way or another, this is what all four of these nonsectarian liberal arts colleges offer - a hands-on education. Classes are small - it would be difficult to find one with more than 50 students at any of these schools and most have fewer than 20.

Graduate teaching assistants, who do so much of the work at universities, are virtually unheard of. Professors are the ones in front of the class.

"I compare classes with a friend of mine who goes to the University of Pennsylvania," says Washington College junior Courtney Fletcher. "Well, actually, he tells me half the time he doesn't even go to class. Miss three classes here, and your grade goes down. You're forced to go to class.

"I just think I'm getting a better education. He doesn't have that one-on-one interaction with professors," Fletcher says.

Goucher chemistry Professor Judith Levin knows she doesn't have all the equipment she had as a student at Harvard. "But what we do have, all the students actually get to use," she says.

When undergraduates work in her laboratory on her projects, they are involved in the research, not just washing test tubes for graduate students.

"When something is published, their names will be on it," she says.

The expense of contemporary science is a challenge for these schools. Goucher boasts some expensive new scientific equipment, while Western Maryland is finishing a $14 million science building and Hood is about to break ground on a $17 million facility.

The state is generous with its aid to these schools - it gave about $3 million for each of the science buildings, and all private colleges in Maryland get about $1,000 per full-time student each year in state aid. But such expensive capital projects are a challenge for schools with only about 1,000 students and no big federal grants of the type research Universities attract.

"We're doing Pretty well right now," Goucher President Judy Jolley Mohraz says of enrollment applications "I think that's because the economy is so good and people are feeling confident . We know that could change."

Powers, the Hood vice President, says all private liberal arts colleges face a similar challenge.

"We are losing our share of the upper-income families" she says of applicants "They are choosing either the Ivy League-type schools or state schools. It's the middle-income range that is hanging in there."

Farnham points to a study that shows the average income of families of students at state schools is higher than those at private colleges.

The colleges have responded to that pressure by offering large discounts, making them more competitive in the marketplace - though at a cost to their bottom line.

"There's the sticker price and the price most students actually pay," says Robert H. Chambers, president of Western Maryland. 'We have something like 80 percent of our students getting financial aid. I graduated from Yale in 1962, and I don't know if I knew anybody on financial aid. It's not that I was rich, I had to work-all the time, but that's the way it was then.

"Now it's an entirely different story," Chambers says. "It's like taking an airline flight - no two people on the plane paid the same price for their tickets. And what we're doing, everyone else is doing."

The competition is especially fierce in Maryland because the state offers a small liberal arts college in St. Mary's. Its tuition is far below any charged by the private liberal arts schools, including Western Maryland, where the price is $18,650.

But Shannon Tinney, a 21-year-old Western Maryland senior, shows the truth of Chambers' statement. She says her choice of college came down to St. Mary's and Western Maryland.

"It was a financial decision," she says. "After I got the financial aid offers, it would have cost twice as much to go to St. Mary's'. I don't think they offered me anything."

At Washington College, every member of a high school National Honor Society who is admitted gets a $10,000-per-year scholarship - a 50 percent reduction in tuition. Half the freshman class enters under that program.

"Some people at top schools say we shouldn't be in the merit aid business," says O'Connell of Western Maryland. "What are we supposed to do, just sit back and watch these people go somewhere else? If schools can go after athletes, we can go after good students, too."

All of these schools are proud of their top students - the ones who come in with combined 1,400 SAT scores, the ones who get into medical schools already sporting lists of scientific publications - but their bread-and-butter are those who might have stumbled somewhere along the way to college, maybe in their standardized test-taking. These used to be ones who couldn't get into Harvard, or Hopkins, but now might not get into University of Maryland, college Park, either.

"One of our goals is helping what might be called late-bloomers," says Washington College's Toll.

Says Western Maryland's Chambers: "We can offer a first-rate undergraduate education to a student who might not have discovered his or her strengths yet, and what he or she can do with them. As a faculty member, I don't think there is anything more satisfying then helping to shape and form people in that way."

Hood faculty dean Tom Samet says that such experiences seduce even faculty who might - think they would prefer a life of research, not teaching.

"Cutting-edge knowledge is important because part of what we bring to the classroom is our original joy in studying things we care most about," he says of the importance of supporting research.

"But these are very small classes. You get to know students as individuals, and to see them develop over the course of four years at a place like Hood brings a longitudinal satisfaction that you are not going to get at a large research institution," he says.

Ultimately, what schools like these offer is a total experience not just an education, but the opportunity to be part of a community during four formative years of life, a community that is supposed to educate, support and develop the student in a variety of ways.

"I meet alumnae who are in their 70s or 80s, and they still seem to feel so responsible for their social environment," says Goucher's Mohraz. "It must come from somewhere, and I think it comes from here. Students are so engaged in their community."

It is certainly an experience that can't be found taking courses online or at new, for-profit places such as the University of Phoenix, which will open a branch in Maryland this fall. Bigger universities try to duplicate it with a variety of programs, but they are essentially copying the liberal arts college paradigm.

At their best, schools like these four are where you find the genuine article.

Washington College fits the image almost perfectly, in part because of its location.

"We don't have the options some other schools have, says Toll. By that he means it cannot develop additional revenue from graduate programs - as the state's other colleges do - simply because not enough people support them.

But its Eastern Shore locale on the banks of the Chester River makes the brick buildings of Washington's campus approach the archetype of such a college.

It has kept philosophy Professor David Newell around for 30 years. He's just back from two years as acting director of the Aspen Institute and says he was offered the permanent job at better than twice his current salary.

"I've had several opportunities to go elsewhere over the years, but what I always wanted to do was teach in a liberal arts college and have a boat," he says. "Every time I think about leaving, I just go out to the dock.

"Sometimes you're teaching and teaching and teachin, and wondering if you are ever getting anywhere, and then a senior will come up to you and say, "That course of yours I took my freshman year made such a difference to me.'

"And you think, maybe I did something right four years ago. Somewhere out there, you're making a difference in somebody's life.