 Students outside Adams Hall, 1930 | |
| Active | 1927–1932 |
|---|---|
| Director | Alexander Meiklejohn |
| Location | , , United States |
| Affiliations | University of Wisconsin |
The University of Wisconsin Experimental College was a two-year college designed and led by Alexander Meiklejohn inside the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a great books, liberal arts curriculum. It was established in 1927 and closed in 1932. Meiklejohn proposed the idea for an alternative college in a 1925 Century magazine article. The magazine's editor-in-chief, Glenn Frank, became the University of Wisconsin's president and invited Meiklejohn to begin the college within the university. Despite pushback from the faculty, the college opened in the fall of 1927 with a self-governing community of 119 students and less than a dozen faculty. Students followed a uniform curriculum: Periclean Athens for freshmen and modern America for sophomores. The program sought to teach democracy and to foster an intrinsic love of learning within its students.
The college's students became known as free spirited outsiders within the university for their different dress, apathetic demeanor, and greater interest in reading books. The college's demographics were unlike the rest of the university, with students largely not from Wisconsin and disproportionately of Jewish and East Coast families. The college developed a reputation for radicalism and wanton anarchy, especially within Wisconsin. The students lived and worked with their teachers, called advisers, in Adams Hall, away from the heart of the university. They had no fixed schedule, no compulsory lessons, and no semesterly grades, though they read from a common syllabus. The advisers taught primarily through tutorial instead of lectures. Extracurricular groups, including philosophy, law, and theater clubs, were entirely student led.
The Great Depression and lack of outreach to Wisconsinites and UW faculty led to the college's slow decline. Enrollment decreased every year since the program began, which its statewide reputation exacerbated. After his son was expelled in 1931 by dean and Experimental College critic George Sellery, Meiklejohn recommended the college's dissolution. Public criticism of the college included student radicalism, lack of discipline, administrative issues, and financial issues. Meiklejohn wrote a retrospective of the college, which philosopher John Dewey reviewed favorably and noted for its contribution to educational philosophy. University of Wisconsin faculty and regents voted to dissolve the college in May 1932. Some advisers stayed to teach in the university, and Meiklejohn remained briefly before moving to Berkeley, California. The Experimental College influenced programs internal to the university, and was the precursor to its Integrated Liberal Studies undergraduate program.