The mission of Deep Springs is to prepare young people for a life of service to humanity. Leadership and enlightened service are the aims of Deep Springs, which fulfills its mission by bringing students into intense contact with nature, work, and ideas. Sound principles of teaching and learning are taken to their practical limits. Based on a cattle ranch in an isolated valley, the college enables its students to experience and take responsibility for a largely self-sustaining community, while requiring them to engage in a two-year liberal arts honors program. Learning is pursued to solve real problems, both practical and social, for the joy of intellectual understanding and humane action. Those who are educated at Deep Springs incur a lifelong obligation to improve the human condition.