What's wrong with this picture? No, I mean really: is there anything ambiguous about the image gazing fondly at you from the top of this page? I ask because I am receiving too many letters and e-mails with the salutation, "Dear Sir." Lovely letters, mostly, a few complaints, but all with this rather worrying common element. Perhaps people simply whiz past this page in their hurry to get to the fabulous features. Hmm.

In our cover story, Patrick McDonagh looks at the value of a liberal arts education. To B.A. or not to B.A.? has been asked before. McGill Principal F. Cyril James wrote a piece for a 1950 issue of the News about McGill's direction until the year 2000. In it, he reported that the "total free revenues" of the University had gone to the faculties of Agriculture, Medicine and Engineering in the previous year. Graduates of these faculties were "vitally important to the welfare and prosperity" of post-war Canada, wrote James. He called for the federal government "to finance on a generous scale the professional training by universities of physicians, surgeons, engineers, agriculturalists and forestry specialists." Without such help, there would be precious little funding for the arts.

Today, there are similar pressures to train people in particular fields and similar threats to arts faculties. The world's healthiest economies have become what Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, calls "conceptual-based" and are driven by "the most conceptual and impalpable of all new major products Ð software." Greenspan's remarks were part of a speech before the American Council on Education in which he urged universities "to struggle to prevent the liberal arts curricula from being swamped by technology and science."

In a New York Times article last year, author and software engineer Ellen Ullman wrote about early computer programmers like herself, who came to computing as a third or fourth vocation, frequently with more than one degree in the humanities. "We had all taught ourselves computing. What we knew was how to learn, which is all that one can hang on to in a profession in which change is relentless." She sees little merit in narrow computer science programs since the 'latest' skills become obsolete so quickly. Instead, she wants computer programmers to also study history, languages, literature and philosophy. "Programmers seem to be changing the world," writes Ullman. "It would be a relief, for them and for all of us, if they knew something about it."

Since Cyril James's day, of course, government has stepped in to fund universities, changing a measure which once put McGill first in the country. "Our fees have been, and are likely to remain, the highest in Canada," predicted James, but universities no longer set their own fees, and Quebec students now pay the lowest tuition. The problems that has created for McGill are highlighted in this issue's special section, "New Faces, Changing Times," which outlines how the University has dealt with this decade's huge budget cuts, and how it is reshaping for the long term.

The more immediate future is the preoccupation of many organizations right now as the end of the century approaches. The U.S. government has announced that it will print an extra $50 billion in case of a run on banks as people fear some catastrophic Y2K computer glitch will evaporate their savings. In Canada, the RCMP and the military cancelled leaves of all personnel for the year end in order to cope with possible disruptions to the public order. Who says we're not different countries?

Last fall, the Alumni Association travel program offered a trip to Rome for a week's stay at a luxury hotel as a way to greet the new millennium. (I don't need to hear from the 2001 people Ð you may be right but you're outnumbered.) The New Year package included a mass with the Pope, a night at the opera, a private tour of St. Peter's, a side trip to Florence, and wine with everything. There were no takers. Sure, the sticker price was a little high, but none of us is going to see this occasion again.

So if you're not going to Rome, what are you planning for the big night? Will you be hunkered down in the basement surrounded by crates of food, wading into a fistfight at the ATM, or waiting it out in Bora Bora? If you have plans, let us hear from you. We'll publish your letters in our December issue and award prizes for the best entries. Mark your envelope "millennium" or put it in the subject line of your e-mail. Oh, and please begin your message, "Dear Editor." Thanks.