ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ego development as a guide to understanding the personal and transformative meaning of education and explores its validity as an explicit aim for higher education. It illustrates differences in students' inner structuring of experience. Ego development is an implicit aim of higher education and can be one of its most significant results. Stages of ego development constitute qualitatively different frames of reference for perceiving and responding to experience. Higher education has a great deal to gain from recognizing these patterns of ego development as the framework of consciousness within which learning occurs. A knowledge of ego development provides a "map for growth", which can help to find the best ways to reach the students. Individuals at different stages of ego development have different conceptions of what education is, why it is valuable, and how closely tied education is to what is taught or required by a college faculty.
