College of the University of Chicago in the context of "Great Books of the Western World"

The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, UChi, or U of C) is a private research university in the Hyde Park community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States.

The university is composed of an undergraduate college and four graduate research divisions: the Arts & Humanities Division, the Biological Sciences Division, the Physical Sciences Division, and the Social Sciences Division, all of which include various organized departments and institutes. In addition, the university operates seven professional schools in the fields of business, social work, theology, public policy, law, medicine, and molecular engineering, and a school of continuing studies. The university maintains satellite campuses and centers in London, Hong Kong, Paris, Beijing, Delhi, Luxor, and downtown Chicago.

Robert Maynard Hutchins (January 17, 1899 – May 14, 1977) was an American educational philosopher. He was the 5th president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago, and earlier dean of Yale Law School (1927–1929). His first wife was the novelist Maude Hutchins. Although his father and grandfather were both Presbyterian ministers, Hutchins became one of the most influential members of the school of secular perennialism.

A graduate of Yale College and the law school of Yale University, Hutchins joined the law faculty and soon was named dean. While dean, he gained notice for Yale's development of the philosophy of legal realism. Hutchins was thirty years old when he became Chicago's president in 1929, and implemented wide-ranging and sometimes controversial reforms of the university, including the elimination of varsity football. He supported interdisciplinary programs, including during World War II, establishing the Metallurgical Laboratory. His most far-reaching academic 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 parts of the Hutchins Plan were abandoned by the University shortly after Hutchins left in 1951, an adapted version of the program survived at Shimer College.