What is the University of Chicago

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Part of Panorama

Title: What is the University of Chicago
Creator: Gunther, John
Language: English
Year: 1966
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Abstract: Condensed from Exchange, No. 36, 1965.
Fulltext: WHAT IS THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO In a long professional life I have tackled the job of writing about a good many nations, cities, and institu tions, and I have always sought to ask a number of questions: What does this place look like? Where did it come from? What are its prevailing qualities and characteristics? Who runs it? Is the population satisfied? Where is it going? In this survey I will try to do the same thing for the University of Chicago. This is what I found, Quality at an academic institution cannot be built merely upon individual bril liance. First rate work and first rate people need sup port both broad and deep. At Chicago, the faculty is supported by a staff of 7,300 (including 1,200 part-time student workers). The main campus has changed little since I first saw it. It has, so to speak, been filled in, but the cen tral design, the basic struc ture and pattern as laid down by the first builders, remains intact. It is still a handsome ly self-contained community of lawns and quadrangles, the battlements of which are built of grey Indiana lime stone in the Gothic manner. The gargoyles, ivy, spires, apertures, red slate, scrolled designs, look mildly anachro nistic, but are pleasing. South Campus has archi tecture quite different from the main campus. The works of three major modern architects stand in order along a “cultural mile,” ar rayed like specimens to be savored at leisure by the architectural connoisseur. Looking at the University after many years’ absence, I wanted first of all to find out something about the rockbottom citizenry of this principality, the undergrar duties. Of course the Uni 40 Panorama versity of Chicago is, and al ways has been since its foun dation in 1891, primarily a graduate school. In fact stu dents working for advanced degrees and those in the gra duate professional schools outnumber undergraduates today by a ratio of two to one. The University acquires as undergraduates the scholas tic cream of the cream. It has appeal for all sorts of bright youngsters, and espe cially favors vigorous “achievers” with serious mo tives and imaginative, inde pendent turns of mind. Chi cago students come from farms and hamlets, from slums and suburbia. Al though they study in the lee of a great graduate school, the College students are not repelled ,by their more ma ture and more extensively educated colleagues — ins tead, they are attracted. Chi cago is not an obvious place for the average student, but gifted youngsters find it su premely challenging, and some others discover abilities they never knew they had . No quota system of any kind governs entrance to the University. No questions are asked on application forms about race or religion, and a photograph is optional. Tuition comes high — in the $l,700-range for three quar ters — and an additional $1,500, at a bare minimum, is necessary for living ex penses. About half the un dergraduate body has helped in the form of scholarships, and nearly two-thirds have part-time jobs of one sort or another. The average scholarship for an entering freshman in the Class of ’68 was $1,225, and the Univer sity is spending about $10 million this year on various forms of aid to College and graduate students. Of course University of Chicago- graduates were bright in my day too, but not as terrifyingly bright as today’s leaders seem to be. I spent one afternoon with four bright, knowledgeable undergraduates. One was a vice president of the Student Government; another was editor of the "Maroon” (the campus newspaper, circula tion 10,000). These young sters, one of whom was a blonde, pretty girl who seem ed to be appallingly young, but who was specializing in February 1966 41 Russian GivilizAtion and had already had her first exten sive trip in the Soviet Union, impressed and puzzled me. They were very guarded — perhaps shy. I asked them what they like most about the University. Well, it was one hell of £ good school. They did not feel at all that they, as undergraduates, were overshadowed by the prevailing emphasis on gra duate study. Quite the con trary — they were being am ply prepared for graduate work. Complaints? First, tui tion charges were too high. They wanted to get at the bottom of the accounting system used by the Univer sity and see why costs could not be reduced. Second, the general education courses were sometimes "badly” taught and did not reach fully enough into the present. They wanted more emphasis on the contemporary, parti cularly in history and the humanities. Third, the Uni versity was behind the times in its approach to the racial problem. Fourth, although they freely conceded that the University was thorougly liberal, youngsters could get into trouble by being overvociferous on civil tights, censorship, and so on. Fifth, intelligent youngish teachers might, my informants said, be in danger of being fired just before they got tenure if they did not "tonform.’’ I doubt that a professor ever has been fired at Chicago for "non-conformity” despite what students may say. In my interviews with them, facul ty members were generous in their praise for the free dom and independence they are granted by the adminis tration of the University. If there is a pressure on them, it probably is the social pres sure of the academic com munity to work hard, teach well and contribute in posi tive terms to mankind’s store house of usable knowledge. The next day I climbed the old iron stairway of Cobb Hall and sat in on a sopho more humanities course. No rostrum, no desks. Eleven young men, t,en young wo men sat informally with an instructor round a large oval table. Classes are commen dably small — averaging 18 — at Chicago. The class was reading Plato’s “Gorgias,” and instruction took the form of question, elucidation, and 42 Panorama discussion. The mood waft nicely — but not exaggerated ly — spirited. There are all manners of innovations at Chicago. Formal lectures usually do not take place more than once a week, and only original texts are used. At examinations the identity of the student is unknown to the examiner who goes over his papers. Advocates of general edu cation are listened to with respect. This, indeed, next to the quarter system (The school operates the year around and is divided into four quarters) which has been widely copied (and will surely be introduced in ma ny more universities), is one of Chicago's distinguishing marks in the undergraduate realm to day. The alert, bright-eyed early careerists receive ap excellent pre-professional education and often move rapidly toward their chosen goals. But the Uni versity makes it clear that it values the well-rounded per son, with a solid underpin ning of general knowledge, before specialization begins. What the University wants to stress is the “interrelation of disciplines,” and thus arose the now celebrated broad-beam courses which every student is obliged to take and which totally occu py two 6f his four years un less he can prove by “place ment tests” that he does not need them. The eight obligatory cour ses are: 1. Humanities (including philosophy, art and music.) 2. English composition 3. A foreign language (not compulsory if a student passes a satisfactory examina tion.) 4. Mathematics 5. History of Western Ci vilization 6. Biological Sciences 7. Physical Sciences 8. Social Sciences One should also mention that instruction in the fourth year may be tutorial, and that “specialization” does not mean vocational educa tion. Chicago is certainly not the place to go if one wants to study ice cream ma nufacture or hotel manage ment. About 230 members of the faculty specifically serve the undergraduate body but practically all professors, no matter how elevated, may teach in the College. Many, including the President of February 1966 43 the College, like to do so, because it gives them the chance to associate with fresh, youthful minds. The graduate divisions are the Humanities (roughly 5 6 5 students), Biological Sciences excluding medicine (260), Physical Sciences (505) and Social Sciences (1,150). Here are enticing realms of the recondite; courses exist from Balkan Linguistics to Neuropharmacology. Here too, in spite of close empha sis on the refinements of par ticularized scholarship, we find that some of the fron tiers between disciplines have already broken down — par ticularly in the sciences. The University encourages this. There are professors who scarcely know whether they belong to one department or another. Nobody knows these days where biology stops and physics starts. Here too, the relations of professor to student can at tain an exquisite level of in tellectual intimacy. The De partment of Music, one of the strongest on the campus and one of the most stimu lating in the country, has a staff of 15 to 50 music ma jors. Astronomy presently has ten teachers, including several men of formidable renown, for 15 graduate stu dents. Many universities today have a tendency to be choosy about students who apply for graduate work. Chicago takes a more liberal attitude and prides itself for its hos pitality to “risk” admissions; it will take a chance on a bright boy, no matter how spotty or unconventional his previous education has been. Some of these have paid off well. And, of course, under graduates progressed to earn a doctorate between 1936 and 1956 than in any other insti tution in the country. Needless to say, the graduate and professional schools spawn an enormous amount of talent. Chicago ranks as the nation’s largest per capi ta producer of college and university teachers elsewhere in the nation. It is an in cubator, a teacher of teachers. No fewer than 167 presidents of other American colleges or universities — one out of 10 — either are Chicago alumni, or have been facility mem bers — an almost unbeliev able statistic. 44 Panorama The Graduate School of Education, established in 1958, is the newest of Chi cago’s professional schools. But the University from the beginning has won renown for its research in education. Research is translated into direct service through a num ber of Centers in the educa tion school — the Reading Research Center, the Urban Child Center, and the Com parative Education Center which investigates the dif ferences in teaching and learning the world over. Since 1957 the University has been providing educa tional training and guidance in Pakistan, and for Pakis tanis on the Chicago campus. The Laboratory Schools, as the name implies, serve both as a demonstration cen ter for Effective teaching — from nursery school through 12 years of pre-college edu cation — and as a research tool for testing and validat ing educational theory. In cidentally, the average I.Q. of the 1,200 students in the Laboratory Schools is higher than 130 — not surprising, I suppose, since about half of them are children of Univer sity faculty members. What makes the Univer sity of Chicago great is nei ther endowment nor equip ment, but men — the faculty. Twenty-four Nobel Prize winners have been associated with the University in one way or another so far. Twen ty-eight members of the fa culty are members of the National Academy of Scien ces, 31 are fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 17 are members of the American Philosophic Society, the old est learned society in! the country. Seventy per cent of the fa culty live close enough to the University to be able to walk to their classrooms, an im portant factor in maintain ing the community spirit, and their children by and large go to the same schools and play together. Nobody pulls rank; everybody from the President down is plain “Mr.," except Doctors of Medicine. To summarize, it is the far culty which gives the Uni versity much of its unique quality, its special temper, based on a devout belief in research for its own sake and relentlessly acutp* and inces February 1966 45 sant speculation and experi ments. The dominant prin ciple is solid scholarship, and it demands the best. Small principalities as well as large ones have their founding fa thers, their historical raison d'etre. The University of Chicago was founded in 1890 by the curious impingement of three forces — a Baptist organization (the American Baptist Education Society) which contributed the idea; John D. Rockefeller who contributed most of the mo ney; and the first President, William Rainey Harper, who contributed almost every thing else. It opened its doors on October 1, 1892 as a full-fledged university, not a college. This was some thing unusual at the time, when a university normally grew out of a previously existing college. The origi nal faculty of 103 included eight college presidents, whom Harper enticed from other institutions, as well as other eminent scholars. The student body numbered 594. Harper, assuming charge of the creation of a new Uni versity, was enthralled by its possibilities; after being as sured of getting a free hand, he issued an extraordinary manifesto of policy — a po licy so revolutionary that it provoked the amusement or scorn of almost all the ortho dox pedagogues of the time. Soon this remarkable inno vator and energizer evolved a novel idea which is still one of the most distinctive marks of the University — the four quarter system. He scrapped the old Septemberto-June schedule, and estab, lished in its place the first all-year-round university in the history of the world. The year was divided into four quarters which were made as nearly as possible identical in the work offered and the professors in atten dance; the University was to keep its doors open the whole year, in full blast all the time. By this scheme Uni versity education was made more flexible than it had ever been before. A student — even today — may come when his finances permit, leave again, come back, and graduate at any season when his work is complete; on the other hand, he may work all four quarters for three years without interruption and thus get out a year ahead of Panorama time. Another advantage is that a student at Chicago takes no more than three or four courses during each quarter, and the curriculum widened. Harper died, worn out, in 1906, aged 49. The Univer sity has never changed much from the pattern stamped/ on it by this extraordinary and indomitable man. In 1929 came Robert May nard Hutchins, aged 30, from Yale, where he had become the “boy wonder” Dean of the Law School at 28. The University will never forget Robert Hutchins, and discus sion of his regime still pro vokes lively controversy. Hutchins was a brilliantly inspired innovator, lucid, packed with principle, and possessed of enormous charm. Hutchins' central belief was. that “Every student should obtain a liberal edu cation before being permit ted to specialize.” At the same time he wanted to speed up education so that work in the professions could get under way more quickly. What he sought was “more educated A.B.’s and fewer uneducated Ph.D.’s.” He even looked forward, as somebody put it, to the time “when Ph.D.’s would really be Doctors of Philo sophy." What interested him was ideas, and he stood for culture and the human tra dition. The two men who have followed Hutchins as heads of state at Chicago came from quite different molds and have shown quite different styles. Lawrerice A. Kimpton, an energetic professor of philo sophy and a practical man as well who had become vice president of the University, took over when Hutchins re signed in 1951 and served as chief executive until 1960. George Beadle, who suc ceeded Kimpton in 1961 to become the seventh president of the Chicago principality, is a biologist, a specialist in genetics, which is a field that could well turn out to mean to this generation what ato mic physics meant to the last. Who does run the Univer sity of Chicago? From trustees, faculty, stu dents and outsiders, I got the same answer: “Under Beadle, Levi.” Edward Hirsch Levi, formerly Dean of the Law School is Provost February 1966 47 of the University and Bea dle’s right arm. The faculty has consider able autonomous power at Chicago, probably more than in any comparable American university. Beadle is facultyminded, and so - is Levi. Harper laid it down back in the 1890’s that educational jurisdiction is the exclusive domain of the faculty, and this tradition has been pretty well kept up to this day. The trustees do not super vise on the academic level. Money follows policy not the reverse. The faculty is un shakeable. Perhaps the single element that best characterizes the University is its incessant search for quality, which goes back all the way to Harper. It does not have to kowtow to any legislature or city council. It has unlimited reserves of energy and crea tive talent for dealing with the true business of a univer sity, the pursuit and commu nication of knowledge, and it has risen again to become newly typical of what a uni versity should be, an un frightened and pertinacious community of scholars. — John Gunther, condensed from Exchange, No. 36, 1965. THE WRONG MAN Pauline Bonaparte was in love with Freron, a commissioner of the Convention. She wrote him: “I love you always and most passionately. I love you forever, my beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love you, the most laved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else” Soon after she fell in love with Junot who be came a field marshal. 48 Panorama