The story
Founded by American Baptist Education Society, Charles L. Hutchinson, John D. Rockefeller, John Dewey, Martin A. Ryerson and Silas B. Cobb in 1890.1
Old University of Chicago
The first University of Chicago was founded by a small group of Baptist educators and incorporated in 1857 after a land endowment from Senator Stephen A. Douglas and a fundraising campaign directed by the first president of the institution, John C. Burroughs. It closed in 1886 after decades of financial struggle, exacerbated by the Great Chicago Fire and the Panic of 1873, when the university's property was foreclosed on by its creditors. In 1890, its trustees elected to change the university's name to the "Old University of Chicago" so that the new university could go by the name of the city; a year later, the new university voted to recognize the alumni of the old as alumni of the new.
Early years
In 1890, the American Baptist Education Society (ABES) incorporated a new University of Chicago as a coeducational institution, using $400,000 donated to the ABES to supplement a $600,000 donation from Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller and land donated by Marshall Field. The Hyde Park campus’ construction was financed by donations from wealthy Chicagoans such as Silas B. Cobb, donor of the campus's first building, Cobb Lecture Hall; Charles L. Hutchinson, trustee, treasurer and donor of Hutchinson Commons; and Martin A. Ryerson, president of the board of trustees and donor of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory.
William Rainey Harper became the university's president on July 1, 1891, and classes first began on October 1, 1892. Harper offered large salaries to attract senior faculty, and in two years had a faculty of 120, including eight former university or college presidents. The undergraduate program was divided into two parts, with the first two years making up the Academic College, focusing on preparation for higher learning, and the last two years comprising the University College, with more advanced courses. The university operated on a quarter system, with 36 courses required to graduate. Harper brought the Baptist seminary, which had historical ties to the Old University of Chicago, to the university. This became the Divinity School in 1891, the first graduate professional school at the University of Chicago. Harper was a supporter of intercollegiate athletics, recruiting Amos Alonzo Stagg in 1892 to coach the football team and defending athletics from faculty opposition. In 1894, the university adopted maroon as its official color after initially selecting goldenrod. The Maroons became the university's nickname during the same year. During this period, the university founded the university extension, which offered evening courses for adults and correspondence courses, and the University of Chicago Press.
Rockefeller continued to provide significant contributions to the university after its founding. Harper's efforts to finance faculty research projects, expand the campus, and support university initiatives caused significant deficits covered by Rockefeller donations, with annual deficits between 1894 and 1903 averaging $215,000. In 1898, the board of trustees made a commitment to use new gifts to eliminate the deficit rather than to further expand programs, but structural deficits remained until after Harper's presidency.
1906–1929
After Harper's death in 1906, the board of trustees named Harry Pratt Judson, head of the Department of Political Science, acting president; in 1907, the appointment was made permanent. Judson initiated a policy of financial austerity, which renewed Rockefeller's confidence in the university and resulted in a series of large gifts to the endowment between 1906 and 1910, including a final gift of $10 million in 1910 that balanced the university's budget. In 1911, the university adopted a Latin motto of Crescat scientia; vita excolatur, which translates to "Let knowledge grow from more and more; and so be human life enriched." In 1912, Judson successfully encouraged the board to create a faculty pension fund.
During World War I, Judson, as well as faculty members such as Albion Small and Paul Shorey, published works supporting the war. On the other hand, student reaction was mixed, with most not participating in newly formed voluntary military training programs such as the ROTC. In 1918, the Student Army Training Corps program was announced by the War Department, which requisitioned the campus to be run by army officers for military training, but the November armistice soon ended the program. After the war, the Oriental Institute, now the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, was founded by Egyptologist James Henry Breasted to support and interpret archeological work in what was then called the Near East.
In 1923, senior scholar Ernest D. Burton succeeded Judson as president. Burton launched the first major fundraising campaign of the university to improve the research environment of the faculty as well as invest in residential halls for undergraduates, finding initial success despite faculty opposition to the perceived prioritization of undergraduate over graduate interests. Burton's sudden death in 1925 led to his replacement by physicist Max Mason, who ended the citywide fundraising drive early in favor of a quieter outreach among local businessmen. During Burton's term, and later Mason's, the Chicago Schools of thought began to emerge in the social sciences, with new organizations being established such as the Social Science Research Council in 1923.
1929–1950
In 1929, the 30-year-old dean of Yale Law School, Robert Maynard Hutchins, became president. In 1930, Hutchins organized the graduate departments under four independent divisions and united the undergraduate colleges into one college. In 1931, alongside dean of the college Chauncey Boucher, Hutchins implemented a new two-year general education curriculum called the "New Plan", which formed the basis for the university's core curriculum. Later in the 1930s, Hutchins became unsatisfied with departmental influence on the undergraduate curriculum and pushed for further expansion to the general education curriculum. In 1942, Hutchins transferred jurisdiction of the BA degree from the graduate divisions to the college, thus removing divisional leverage to shape the curriculum. The same year, the college reformed the BA degree with four years of prescribed general education.
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Budget shortfalls caused by the Great Depression led to significant austerity measures and staffing cuts, though Hutchins protected the salaries of those who remained. In 1933, Hutchins proposed a plan to alleviate the financial situation by merging the university with Northwestern University, though it was ultimately abandoned. Financial woes contributed to the decision to end the university's football program in 1939. With substantial budget gaps remaining and support from the Rockefeller Foundation having dried up, a second major fundraising campaign was launched between 1939 and 1941 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the university's founding with mixed results. Large deficits persisted after World War II, leaving future presidents to balance the budget.
During the war, the university recruited a number of refugee scientists from Europe, including Enrico Fermi, Rudolf Carnap, and James Franck. The university's Metallurgical Laboratory contributed to the Manhattan Project, with Enrico Fermi engineering the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under the stands of Stagg Field, the university's football stadium, in 1942. In 1945, Hutchins announced the formation of the Institute for Nuclear Studies and the Institute for the Study of Metals in order to continue work done during the war. These were later renamed the Enrico Fermi Institute and the James Franck Institute, respectively. The university came under public scrutiny before and after the war for alleged communist influence, with university leadership called to testify before the Illinois General Assembly on the loyalty of its student body and faculty in 1935 and 1949.
1951–1977
In 1951, vice president of development Lawrence Kimpton succeeded Hutchins as chancellor, a position created in 1945 replacing the president as head of the university. The deficits left from Hutchins necessitated severe annual cuts in the operating budget, which was brought into balance by 1954. A fundraising campaign was launched the same year, which allowed for modest recovery, but the financial situation worsened after a decline in undergraduate enrollments. In 1957, to attract more students, Kimpton reduced the general education curriculum from four years to two years. Furthermore, the graduate divisional faculty was slowly merged with the previously independent college faculty via joint appointments. To address safety concerns driven by increasing crime and poverty in the Hyde Park neighborhood, the university became a major sponsor of a controversial urban renewal project for Hyde Park. Between 1954 and 1960, the university worked with the South East Chicago Commission and Mayor Richard J. Daley to clear approximately 925 acres of land, disproportionately affecting Black, low-income residents.
In 1961, Caltech professor George Beadle was elected chancellor, resuming the title of president later that year. Beadle's tenure saw large investments in faculty and campus expansion to rebuild the university after Kimpton's austerity, funded in large part by a $25 million grant provided by the Ford Foundation and an accompanying fundraising campaign. The university experienced its share of student unrest during this time, beginning in 1962 when then-freshman Bernie Sanders helped lead a 15-day sit-in at the college's administration building in a protest over the university's segregationist off-campus rental policies. After continued turmoil, a university committee in 1967 issued what became known as the Kalven Report. The report, a two-page statement of the university's policy in "social and political action," declared that "To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures."
In 1964, the undergraduate college was reorganized into five collegiate divisions, four paralleling the four graduate divisions and one interdisciplinary New Collegiate Division.
In 1967, provost Edward Levi became president. His tenure saw a number of sit-ins at the administrative building: in 1962, over the university's segregationist off-campus rental policies; in 1966 and 1967, over the university providing the class rank of students who sought deferments to draft boards; and in 1969, over the sociology's department decision not to rehire the openly Marxist assistant professor Marlene Dixon. In 1967, a university committee issued the Kalven Report, maintaining the university's duty to uphold academic freedom and remain non-partisan. The report has since been cited in university debates over divesting from South Africa and Sudan, as well as in the Chicago Principles on free speech, which a number of other universities have since adopted. By the 1970s, facing the end of the Ford Foundation's support, a reduction in enrollment due to insufficient student housing, flagging federal funding, and broader economic stagflation, the university faced more fiscal austerity. In 1975, provost John Wilson was appointed president, balancing the budget once more through cuts.
1978–present
In 1978, history scholar and provost of Yale, Hanna Holborn Gray, became president of the university. She was the first woman in the United States to be appointed to a full-term presidency of a major research university. Still facing budgetary issues, Gray modernized the university's financial systems, increased the size and tuition of the undergraduate college, and paired campus expansion and renovation with administrative austerity. While budgetary equilibrium was reached through the mid-1980s, acute deficits soon re-emerged, exacerbated by the 1990-1992 recession. Gray also oversaw the implementation of a unified 21 course core curriculum across all collegiate divisions in 1985 and invested in student life through new food services, school festivals, and the reintroduction of varsity athletics.
In 1992, economist Hugo F. Sonnenschein became president, facing projected deficits of $23 million for the 1995-96 budget and poor endowment growth. The raising of $676 million in a fundraising campaign for the university's centennial throughout the early 1990s helped alleviate these problems. In 1996, Sonnenschein proposed the expansion of the undergraduate college by 1,000 students to raise tuition revenue, and in 1997, backed a plan to reduce the number of required course in the core curriculum from 21 to 15–18 (depending on how a student met the language requirement). After intense debate, with the university becoming the focal point of a national debate on education, both reforms were approved. In 2000, Cornell University provost Don Michael Randel became the twelfth president of the university. His tenure was marked by increased support for the arts on campus, stronger outreach to local civic and business leaders, investments in major campus facilities, and the launch of a new $2 billion capital campaign.
In 2006, mathematician Robert J. Zimmer was appointed president, receiving board approval to take on large amounts of debt at low interest rates after the 2008 recession in order to finance a number of major projects. These included new buildings and pavilions, such as Mansueto Library in 2011, a reading room and book storage facility; the Logan Center for the Arts in 2012; the Keller Center in 2019, home of the Harris School of Public Policy; and Woodlawn Residential Commons in 2020, which houses 1,298 students. Between 2008 and 2022, the university partnered with the city and outside businesses to launch three interventions along 53rd Street in an attempt to improve the neighborhood's economic condition. As part of an effort to invest in its professional schools, the university formed the Becker Friedman Institute in 2011, acquired the Marine Biological Laboratory in 2013, repurposed the Crerar Library as the headquarters of the Department of Computer Science in 2018, and established the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering in 2019. The university also expanded its presence abroad, opening campuses in Hong Kong in 2018, in London in 2022, and in Paris in 2024, alongside centers in Beijing in 2010 and in Delhi in 2014. Despite a $5.4 billion fundraising campaign started in 2014, university debt has exceeded initial planning expectations, reaching $6.3 billion in 2025.
In 2021, Zimmer was succeeded by chemist Paul Alivisatos, then-provost of the University of California, Berkeley. In 2024, university students set up an encampment on the university's main quad as a part of the nationwide movement in support of Palestine at institutions of higher learning across the country. The encampment was later cleared by University of Chicago Police Department officers.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Chicago, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5