University of Utopia

by Robert Maynard Hutchins

Genres: Education

Paperback

Published January 1, 1964

About the author

Robert Maynard Hutchins (LL.B., Yale Law School, 1925; B.A., Yale University, 1921) was an educational philosopher, dean of Yale Law School (1927-1929), and president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago.

While he was president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins implemented wide-ranging and controversial reforms of the University, including the elimination of varsity football. The most far-reaching reforms involved the undergraduate College of the University of Chicago, which was retooled into a novel pedagogical system built on Great Books, Socratic dialogue, comprehensive examinations and early entrance to college. Although the substance of this Hutchins Plan was abandoned by the University shortly after Hutchins resigned in 1951, an adapted version of the program survives at Shimer College in Chicago.

Editor-in-Chief of Great Books of the Western World and Gateway to the Great Books; co-editor of The Great Ideas Today; Chairman of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (1943-1974).
He was the husband of novelist Maude Hutchins.