It will be in Jackson Park- bordered by Stoney Island on the west, Cornell on the east, 60th to the north, and 63rd to the south.
And the university’s long term plan of gentrifying up to 63rd continues…
@HydeSnark - I get the sense you really won’t like what the university will look like in about ten years, with gentrification, ed and ed2 to lock in the bad fits, etc. Etc.
@Cue7 Who knows. I am not happy with these decisions, it’s true, but I am more happy than upset with the current state of the university.
We can always hope that a change in leadership (Zimmer has been showing some signs of being on his way out) will bring a president less intent on bringing in radical cultural shifts, but I think the despite everything the sky isn’t quite falling yet. Unabashed nerds are still being admitted, and even the young, new professors seemed to have gotten the memo that at UChicago you learn through suffering. Is it the same school as it was 30 years ago? Probably not. And it probably won’t be the same school 30 years from now. But I think the same is true of any school.
The admissions propaganda, for all the hate it gets, still tries to be “quirky”, and most of the admissions officers try to admit “intellectual curious” people, even if their definition of it has shifted somewhat. The university is making an effort to make the school more accessible, and the money they’re bringing in really does seem to be going to good purposes - North is much better than Max or South, the physicists finally have a nice building, and the administration is making an effort to make the school more accessible. Breck got to keep its name, the extended essay isn’t going away anytime soon, and scav comes every year like it always has.
There are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about the future of UChicago, but there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic, too. UChicago students are very, very good at finding reasons to be miserable, and I will admit to having moments of blind outrage at the boneheaded decisions made by the University Administration. But I don’t think UChicago is going to turn into Stanford or Princeton.
@HydeSnark said:
" Is [UChicago] the same school as it was 30 years ago? Probably not. And it probably won’t be the same school 30 years from now. But I think the same is true of any school."
Do you really think this is true? Ask some of your friends at other schools to talk to alums who are in, say, their 40s. Ask the alums if they think Brown is very different now from how it was in 1990, or if Princeton feels markedly different now than it was in 1990. I went to one of UPenn’s professional schools, and whenever I talk to alums, they say things like “It still feels like Penn.”
I don’t think the changes are radical at Chicago, but there are probably more subsets of students (fratty types, fairly serious athletes, very committed pre-professional types, etc) that I simply didn’t see in my day. They are molded by the Chicago experience somewhat, but as more and more of these changes hit, the climate is probably a little different.
Interestingly, when my Chicago friends go back for reunion, they always talk about how “corporate” the school has become. It’s gone from being wonky intellectual all around (including poor planned reunions that mainly become book clubs) to having a grander, more polished feel. The current students seem a little more polished too (note, this doesn’t say much, but you have to remember that Chicago’s gone from being a bootcamp/punishing experience to being “merely” hard - that’s a big change!). Professors talk about admin pressures to grade inflate as well, which certainly wasn’t the case in my day. (Google Jonathan Hall Chicago Maroon grades - you’ll find the article discussing current pressures to inflate grades, so that undergrads can get into good grad schools.)
So, all in all, Chicago’s probably seen the most cultural shift. This isn’t to say it’s the polar opposite of 30 years ago, but it also hasn’t resolutely stuck to a certain course, a la Brown or Northwestern or Duke.
Oh yes, only UChicago alumni are annoyed at the direction their school has gone in.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/us/college-protests-alumni-donations.html?_r=0
Come now, @HydeSnark - you’re going fairly way back with alums in their 60s or 70s lamenting the state of their alma maters. If you keep to our ballpark of 25-30 years, you don’t think the seeds of what those at Princeton or Yale complain about now were sowed then?
Put another way, I don’t think you see many complaints from Brown Alums of 2005 complaining about what their school has now become. You do see that at Chicago because the admin shifts have been more significant over a shorter span of time.
Find me an article of a brown alum from 1998 or 2005 complaining about how the school has changed. Then we’ll be talking.
Until then, enjoy this: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/28/us/winds-of-academic-change-rustle-university-of-chicago.html?pagewanted=all
i don’t think there’s much debate that the pace and type of changes at Chicago have been fast and significant, perhaps more than any other school. The root of issues at some of her peers lay in admin decisions that go back decades. Some of chicagos big changes go back to admin changes from like 36 months ago.
I’m in my 50s and think Harvard is a different (and less appealing) place than it was when I was an undergrad. I think Princeton has also became a different (but more appealing) place over roughly the same time period.
Here, I found you some angry alumi from '99
The point is interesting - what do you think has been in the root of these perceived cultural changes? My lens may be too narrow here.
This being said, along with observations of cultural shifts, do you have any data of quantifiable changes at some of Chicago’s peers? Put another way, in the past 15 years, Chicago’s college has grown about 40%. The size of the administration has grown by a comparable - if not greater - amount. 50% of student housing from 2000 no longer stands. There’s been a 10% increase in freshmen retention and a 15% increase in graduation rate. Grades have gone up from around a 3.1 to probably around a 3.4. We don’t even need to mention changes in selectivity and overall shifts in admissions.
As cultural perception is hard to capture, if I looked at Princeton or Brown or Duke, could we describe similar quantifiable changes?
In the mid-80s, Princeton faculty asked the University to admit 15% of the freshman class from applicants with top academic credentials. IIRC, that was defined as 1500 SATs and either a 3.75 or 3.8 GPA. At that point, only 7.5% of those offered admission had such credentials. University administrators turned the faculty down. At that point, there were still some all-male eating clubs (Sally Frank had filed the lawsuit challenging their legitimacy, but it wasn’t conclusively won until 1990.) It was a very WASPY, to the manor born place – and sports and drinking seemed to be held in higher regard by most undergrads than academics were. Over the past 15 years, the school has been under pressure to rethink the role of legacy admissions and one change has been the decision to treat the children of grad student alumns as legacies. The residential college system was brand new when I got there and didn’t go beyond sophomore year IIRC. So there have been deliberate attempt to change the demographics and reengineer the social environment at Princeton. The changes seemed noticeable when I’ve visited, but I haven’t looked at stats. The ISC program I commented on was a faculty initiative designed to find/train/encourage a cohort of budding research scientists (from within a sea of pre-meds) starting freshman year. It appears to have been very successful
Harvard has, in certain ways, stuck to its formula but expanded its reach and adapted to a changing world. Basically, it bets on future leaders and, back in the 1980s, that meant international students in the college where the children of foreign rulers or elites. And, of course, the Kennedy school had what we called the mid-career dictators program. These days, it seems as if there’s more of a sense that international undergrads are chosen based on their own accomplishments. There’s more attention to first-gen students than previously and the alumn base is more diverse now than it was then, which I think/hope has lead to better retention among AA undergrads than what I saw in the late 70s/early 80s. Harvard’s gender balance has also changed. My class (1982) was the first with equal access admissions for women. That meant more women than previously, but we were still outnumbered 2:1. Harvard has also taken more control over the House system (to keep each House inclusive, I think) and has closed one of its undergrad libraries. Faculty complain that schoolwork is increasingly taking a backseat to extracurriculars. Arguably, the new performing arts major is a reaction to that phenomenon. But Harvard is also adding an engineering school (when I was there, there wasn’t even a CS major yet).
I think a lot can change in 30 years or so and that “college” in the US has been continually changing over that period Different schools adapt in different ways – and some plans succeed and others don’t. And it’s a competitive market (albeit of a really weird sort), so everybody’s watching what other schools are doing.
Princeton increased its class size from 1,000 to 1,300 11 years ago, when it opened Whitman College. (That’s about the same time Chicago increased its class size from 1,000 to 1,250 - oops! - 1,350 - oops! - 1,550. And I think Princeton is a much more diverse place than it was in the 70s, 80s, or 90s.
@Cue7 : 50% of student housing from 2000 no longer stands? What the heck is the 50% that is supposedly still standing? As of this fall, I think the only undergraduate dorms that were in use as undergraduate dorms in 2000 will be Snell-Hitchcock and Burton-Judson. That’s about 500 beds – about the size of the Shoreland alone, not to mention Pierce, Broadview, Blackstone, Maclean, Woodward Court, Max Mason , , ,
As someone who attended the College in the early 1980s, I am very happy to see 99% of the changes that have come about since then. The education was exceptional, but frankly, it was a miserable place to be for an undergrad. Half of my friends dropped out. mostly from depression. People can romanticize it all they want, but I know what I experienced.
So good riddance to that.
And Princeton plans further expansion (as well as acceptance of transfer students) in the next few years. They’ll add 125 students per class for four years (bringing the undergrad population to 5700), build another residential college, then consider increasing enrollment again.
Re housing - I was ball parking figures, and forgot that Pierce has already been demolished, and the new North Campus is nearly ready to go. With Pierce gone, and Shoreland, Woodward Court, Breck, Blackstone, Max Mason, etc. all gone, the figure is probably something like 20% of housing from 2000 still stands.
That being noted, let me run through some data from the past 15-20 years or so.
In 1998, Chicago’s College had an enrollment of about 3,800 (source: https://magazine.uchicago.edu/9904/html/curriculum.htm)
In 2016, the College has an enrollment of about 5600 (source: https://registrar.uchicago.edu/page/quarterly-census-date-enrollment-reports)
That means, in about 18 years, the size of the College has grown about 50%.
In 2002, the College had a six-year graduation rate of about 81% (source: 2002 US News College Rankings, https://web.archive.org/web/20010331105027/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/natunivs/natu_a2.htm)
In 2016, the College had a six-year graduation rate of 93% (source: http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-chicago/academic-life/graduation-and-retention/#)
So the six-year graduation rate has gone up 11% in 14 years.
In 2002, 79% of incoming freshman were in the top ten percent of their hs class (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20010331105027/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/natunivs/natu_a2.htm)
In 2016, 97% of incoming freshman were in the top ten percent of their hs class (source: https://colleges.niche.com/university-of-chicago/statistics/)
So, in 14 years, 18% more of the incoming students hail from the top 10% of the class.
In 1999, Chicago’s average GPA was a 3.26 (compared to a 3.42 at Harvard or a 3.33 at Duke). By 2006, Chicago’s avg. GPA was a 3.35 (compared to 3.45 at Harvard and 3.42 at Duke). Source: http://www.gradeinflation.com
Chicago doesn’t offer any current data on average GPAs, but it’s completely reasonable to think that, if the avg. GPA was 3.35 10 years ago, it’s comfortably in the 3.5 range now. (Duke’s avg. GPA now is about 3.5.)
So, in about 18 years, the GPA gap has gone from being noticeable to being negligible.
I don’t have time to assess physical changes to the college, but I imagine Chicago’s building spree exceeds what you’ll see almost anywhere else for their non-STEM plant in the past 15 years. They’ve built 3 new dorms (Max, South, and North), built a brand new gym, built an arts center, are building a major conference space, will see and assist with the installation of a major Presidential Library blocks from campus, and much more.
Yes, other colleges are expanding, and yes, other colleges have experienced quantifiable changes. Moreover, cultural shifts occur at schools all the time, for reasons sometimes unrelated to admin decisions.
Has any other school seen the types of changes I’ve outlined above, though, in such a short period of time?
Finally @HydeSnark said that, in 30 years, Chicago won’t be Princeton or Stanford. That’s hardly my concern. Here’s something that worries me about Chicago, and it’s perhaps the most telling change.
In 1928, Chicago’s endowment was #2 in the nation (behind only Harvard).
In 1958, Chicago’s endowment was #3 in the nation (behind only Harvard and Yale).
In 1998, Chicago’s endowment was #16 in the nation, and less than one third the endowment size of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.
In 2013, Chicago’s endowment was #16 in the nation, and less than one fifth the size of Harvard’s endowment.
No university in modern history has started off so wealthy and lost so much ground over the period of half a century. The story of the University of Chicago, then, in some ways, is the story of mismanagement.
(Sources: https://magazine.uchicago.edu/9904/html/curriculum.htm and https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73)
So, @HydeSnark I say, there’s hardly a worry that Chicago will be Princeton or Stanford in 30 years. To the contrary, a very real concern is: Chicago in 30 years could be like Michigan or Wisconsin now - universities that were once bona fide preeminent institutions, who now are “merely” very good universities - noticeably behind the very first rank.
To sum, I don’t think I have a problem with the bulk of the changes - the pace is startling, but the changes are probably good. I wouldn’t really have a problem with Chicago’s college resembling Stanford or Harvard, either - people exaggerate the importance of a College’s specific culture for the climate of a large research institution. If Chicago’s college resembles Stanford’s or Harvard’s in 30 years, that probably means the College is lucrative and healthy - that’s the most important part for a college in a research uni. My worry, however, is that the school will continue losing more ground - ground it’s been losing for 50 years.
@Cue7 , I certainly didn’t mean to deny that Chicago has changed faster and harder over the past 20 years than any other comparable university undergraduate program. I would note, however, that some of its peers had pretty significant changes, too, if you go back 50 years or so. Women, Jews . . . .
Re endowment: I am not certain what you mean by mismanagement. As of the late 70s, no one’s endowment was that impressive by today’s standards (except, maybe, for the University of Texas, which had a great deal of oil). Endowments, including Chicago’s, had wonderful investment performance beginning in the 1980s. I think the Chicago endowment fell behind so much in the 80s and 90s because of the neat-collapse of the College in the early 50s, a time when its peers were positively booming. All those people who weren’t graduating from Chicago in the 50s and 60s weren’t donating their Reagan/Clinton era wealth in the 80s and 90s, and the people who did graduate then often felt ambivalent about their alma mater and had poor giving performance.