Education is the instinct of the university, the university is the foundation of the legitimacy of survival; idea is the soul of the university, determines the university’s grade and level. American universities were born a long time as the vassal of the Europe University until the early 20th century, and then kept going forward to become an irrefutable leader. The implementation of this process was very clearly reflected in the idea of American university education, from the initial blindly followed the classical liberal education, to examine self-proposed "whole person cultivation" of holistic education, to "overall development" and "critical skills". The historical evolution of the idea of education clearly marks the development of American universities, and also provides an important reference for foreign language education in China.