Revision at Chicago

No flighty theorist is 31-year-old President Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago. No flight of fancy was his speech to southern pedagogs three weeks ago at Chapel Hill, N. C. on a "University of Utopia" where "hours and residence requirements as criteria for winning college degrees" would be scrapped (TIME, Nov. 10). President Hutchins was hinting at, preparing pedagogs for the formal announcement of something which he and his predecessor Dr. Max Mason and the Chicago faculty had discussed for several years.

Last week, on the first anniversary of President Hutchins' induction, the formal announcement was made: a plan for drastic revision of the entire educational organization, personnel, method at the University of Chicago.

Premises. The modernizing of higher education in the U. S. has everywhere had the same aims: to free the capable student from the drag of the incapable; to encourage and reward intellectual initiative. And everywhere the liberalizing process has included these steps: removal of compulsion to study; replacement of frequent, specific examinations with in frequent, comprehensive ones. Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth long since took modifications of these steps. In Dr. Alex ander Meiklejohn's experimental college at the University of Wisconsin, the radical plan of studying human eras whole instead of human knowledge piecemeal has been tried with success. The University of Chicago approached its reformation guided by two factors not so pressing at other universities: a large and intricate budget ; a monster student body with a wide variety of demands.

Chicago's Plan. The present structure of the University of Chicago consists of:

1) Undergraduate colleges of Arts, Literature and Science.

2) Graduate schools of Arts, Literature and Science.

3) Professional schools of Medicine, Law, Divinity, Education, Commerce & Administration, Social Service Administration.

The new Chicago structure will have:

1) A College, in which the student will start.

2) Four main Divisions, in which he will take his degree: Humanities (Philosophy, Art, Comparative Religion, Latin, Greek, Romance, Germanics, English, et al.); Social Sciences (Psychology, Economics, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, et al.); Physical Sciences (Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, et al.); Biological Sciences (Botany, Zooelogy, Physiology, Bacteriology, Pathology, et al.}.

3) The Professional Schools, to which the student who has passed through the College "with distinction," or who has received a degree, may go.

In the College the student will not have to attend classes unless so moved; he will get no formal grades, take no formal examinations (unless he wants to find out how he is getting along) until he is ready to take a comprehensive examination. If he fails this he may 1) stay in the College or 2) leave it. If he passes he may 1) leave the university honorably, taking no degree or 2) go into a Division, there to take harder courses in small, seminar groups, in preparation for a degree. The Divisions will offer all degrees save those which are now offered by the Professional Schools.

Curricula now in charge of 72 Departments will be divided among twelve groups-the College, the four Divisions, the Professional Schools. Each & every College faculty member will be also a member of a Division, so that correlation between departments (i. e., a Psychology professor and an Economics professor may work together profitably whereas they rarely did before) may be furthered. To twelve deans will go all budgets: simpler will it be to handle twelve divisional budgets than the former 72 departmental budgets.

Deans. Although many details remained to be worked out-athletic eligibility to meet Big Ten Conference requirements, for example-already announced last week were the Deans for the new Plan: Professor Chauncey S. Boucher, dean of the College; Professor Gordon Jennings Laing, dean of Humanities Division; Professor Henry Gordon Gale, dean of Physical Sciences Division; Dr. Richard Severingham Scammon, dean of Biological Sciences Division; Dr. Frederic Campbell Woodward (temporary), dean of Social Sciences Division.

Reception. The morning of the announcement, jumbled accounts of the plan appeared in Chicago dailies. Excited students read of it in their Chicago Maroon which front-paged a large picture of President Hutchins. Those students who grasped the "no examinations" feature and at once began to celebrate were premature. Not for some time can the plan become operative.

To the high-school principals of Illinois-assembled last week at Urbana, President Hutchins added obiter dicta: "The whole business is an experiment. Perhaps we have not the brains to get from it all we should . . . [but] it will compel us to think what we are doing. . . ."

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