The Experimental College

A classic in the history of American higher education The Experimental College is the record of a radical experiment in university education. Established at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1927 by innovative educational theorist Alexander Meiklejohn, the ""Experimental College"" itself was to be a small, residence-based program within the larger university that provided a core curriculum of liberal education for the first two years of college. Aimed at finding a method of teaching whereby students would gain ""intelligence in the conduct of their own lives,"" the Experimental College gave students unprecedented freedom. Discarding major requirements, exams, lectures, and mandatory attendance, the program reshaped the student-professor relationship, abolished conventional subject divisions, and attempted to broadly connect the democratic ideals and thinking of classical Athens with the dilemmas of daily life in modern industrial America. Meiklejohn's program closed its doors after only five years, but this book, his final report on the experiment, examines both its failures and its triumphs. This edition brings back into print Meiklejohn's original, unabridged text.