Wasting Away: Chicago’s Declining Core

The University of Chicago met widespread national opposition ten years ago after it instituted a new, less demanding core curriculum to make way for more electives. It was part of a plan to make the curriculum significantly less demanding in order to attract more students and improve the school’s bottom line in a time of putative budget deficits. In 2009, when the university is in a truly dire financial situation, the current president’s plans to meet its needs include no such curricular initiative.1 In the late 1990s, however, then-president Hugo Sonnenschein apparently was arguing that prospective students at the margin, those who were industrious enough to choose Chicago but who wanted more time for non-academic “fun” than the traditional Chicago experience allowed for, would be persuaded to apply for admission.

There were other arguments for changing the core, too,