Word: chicago
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Hutchins was sure that he could. Chicago set up a college that was to give a basic liberal education by the end of the sophomore year. Students who wanted to specialize thereafter could do so in the university. Instead of a hodgepodge of electives, there were only four main course divisions-the social, physical and biological sciences, and the humanities. Since students differed in ability, Chicago decided that they should be free to attend class or not and to go as fast as they wanted. All they had to do was to pass a set of broad examinations given...
...notion of awarding a B.A. after sophomore year scandalized the rest of the educational profession. On the University of Wisconsin campus the Chicago B.A. was called the Bastard of Arts. The Association of American Colleges and the American Association of University Women "deplored" it. It was, recalls Hutchins, "an alltime high in educational deploring...
...spite of the deploring, however, the Chicago Plan worked. Though free to stay away, students flocked to classes where no attendance records were kept and no grades given. Gradually, the Great Books were worked into the courses, until this year they are 75% of the reading for the B.A. It was not all that Hutchins could have wanted, but it was close-an education not of books about books, but one which places ideas over facts, firsthand knowledge over secondhand interpretations, theory over practice...
...promotion by the university-organized Great Books Foundation, adult education classes in the Great Books are becoming a nationwide middlebrow vogue. Hutchins himself teaches one class of prominent Chicagoans (known as "The Fat Men's Course"). There are 50,000 other people hashing the books over, too, from Chicago's swank Union League Club to the Detroit House of Correction and the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala...
Budgets & Books. Over the years, the self-perpetuating board of trustees of the University of Chicago has grown accustomed to wincing every time Robert Hutchins opens his mouth (he once suggested that all universities be burned down every 25 years lest they get into a rut). But he is a crack administrator who has seen $86 million raised for his university, and who seems as much at ease with Chicago's great budget (almost $39 million) as with its great books...