UChicago: A School Rooted in History

J.D Rockefeller.

UChicago wasn’t always the university we see it as today. There was initially a school of the same name that was affiliated with the Baptist church in Chicago, but this school went bankrupt in 1886, and the name was changed to “Old University of Chicago” so it wouldn’t be confused with the new university J.D Rockefeller planned to invest in. Rockefeller pledged $600,000 toward the founding of today’s UChicago in 1889, provided that $400,000 more could be found elsewhere. The money was raised, and in 1890, the University was officially founded by Rockefeller and the American Baptist Education Society on a donation of land by Marshall Field.

The Old UChicago, after it went bankrupt.

The University of Chicago’s first president was William Rainey Harper, who established a high academic level early on. The faculty that worked with him had come from colleges all over the country, with the shared mindset of wanting to foster an environment of academic success. This early attitude among the faculty is evident in today’s UChicago and has shown itself through the successes of the UChicago alumni.

William Rainey Harper,
the University's first president.

UChicago aimed for a diverse atmosphere from its onset, despite the involvement of the American Baptist Education Society in its birth. William Rainey Harper wanted the University to maintain gender equality and religious freedom among its students. Not all schools were as accepting of different races at the time, so the University gained a lot of minority and foreign applicants.

In addition to a mindset of academic excellence and diversity, Harper encouraged inquiry among the students. He wanted them to ask difficult questions and challenge what was accepted as the standard by professors. This policy of inquiry has persisted to the present and the research that spawned off of this attitude has resulted in close to 90 Nobel Prizes and almost 50 MacArthur “genius grants” earned by scholars, professors, and researchers related to the University.

Robert Hutchins,
the University's fifth president.

If Harper is held as the force that laid out the foundations for the ideals of the school, then the fifth president, Robert Hutchins, can be recognized as the person who first introduced the type of class experience that can be found in the University today. He implemented a curriculum that involved a focus on interdisciplinary education, study of original documents, and discussion-based classes. These traits form the backbone of today’s UChicago academic approach.  

You can trace back several of UChicago’s defining features to its formative years. The diversity of the student body, the encouragement of inquiry and challenge, the discussion-based classes, and the commitment to academic success are all rooted in decisions made early in the school’s history that went against the norm at the time. When looking at its development, it’s clear that the University of Chicago is a school that excels not despite its tendency to go against the grain, but because of it.