Amazon.com description: Product Description: Introduction from the Author

“Those who go to college for a good time, for social advantages, and for a meaningless diploma will not select the University of Chicago.” - Literary Digest, December 27, 1930

So it has been since the 1930s, when President Robert Maynard Hutchins overhauled the undergraduate curriculum and steered the University of Chicago onto the course that it remains to this day.

The intent of the undergraduate experience at the University of Chicago is best stated by Dean John Boyer in his history of the college, Three Views on Continuity and Change: “With vocationalism removed [the University of Chicago] could devote [itself] to the cultivation of the intellectual virtues for the sake of the pursuit of truth.” For Hutchins, one of the architects of the University as it exists today, only an education that aspires to be an ideal education would suffice.

When you read Plato (and if you come to the U of C, you will read Plato), you will learn about the concept of “forms.” Briefly, it is the idea that everything in the world aspires to be some ideal that exists apart from the real thing. For example, every chair ever made is imperfect, but is trying to aspire to become the “ideal chair” that exists in a realm of ideals apart from reality (and where everything is capitalized). Leon Battista Alberti, a renaissance artist, architect, philosopher, and sportsman applied Plato’s theory of the forms to the human being. Alberti did this himself, mastering languages, writing literary treatises, painting, designing buildings, and becoming a masterful athlete. UC is organized into the Core Curriculum, which requires mastery of math, physical science, biological science, foreign language, social science, humanities, civilization, and physical conditioning.

The Core, as well as the University itself, diverts the academic enterprise in Chicago from vocational training, instead attempting to give students a broad base of knowledge upon which they can build and inquire. Where this enterprise succeeds, it shines. Where it comes close, it suffices. Where it is questionable are those areas that come into conflict with its initial premise—the dismissing of the vocational.

This guide attempts to inform the reader of the broad, overarching strokes that comprise the University of Chicago, as well as a good number of its intimate details. This guide will also attempt to lay bare all the strengths and weaknesses that the University of Chicago has to offer. Chicago is, like all things in life, imperfect. It aspires to the ideal. Socrates would have approved. Your approval however is not unconditional.

Joshua Steinman, Author
University of Chicago