26 Facts About Shimer College

Shimer College has one of the highest alumni doctorate rates in the country.

Shimer College historically averaged 125 students, and enrolled 97 in 2014.

In 2016, Shimer announced an agreement to be acquired by North Central College.

In 1857, Wood married Henry Shimer College, a mason who was a creditor of the seminary.

Shimer College retired to Florida, never returning to the school, and died in 1901.

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University of Chicago president William Rainey Harper was the first to champion junior colleges in the United States, and in 1907 Shimer became one of the first schools to offer a junior-college program.

Shimer College had a precipitous decline in enrollment and financial stability during and after the Great Depression, weathering the storm under five successive presidents.

The great-books program at Shimer College continued, and the school enjoyed national recognition and a rapid growth in enrollment during the 1960s.

In 2006, Shimer College again moved to the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

Shimer College received national attention in 2009, when it was embroiled in "a battle over what some saw as a right-wing attempt to take over its board and administration".

In September 2014 Shimer again received media attention when Ben Miller of Washington Monthly ranked it as one of the worst colleges in America, according to a formula adjusting graduation rates to the percentage of minority and low-income students and factoring net expense to low-income students.

Shimer College, affiliated with the University of Chicago since 1896, adopted the Hutchins plan in 1950.

When Hutchins left the university in 1951 and it abandoned the Hutchins Plan, Shimer continued to use it and it is still reflected in the college's curriculum.

Shimer College students did not pursue traditional majors, instead having broad concentrations in the humanities, natural sciences or social sciences.

At Shimer College, the professor is a facilitator, a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage – encouraging each student to contribute to the intellectual light being kindled in every class.

Shimer College encouraged applications from home-schooled students, accommodating their lack of credentials such as transcripts.

In 2014, Shimer College had eleven full-time faculty and one part-time faculty member, and the student-faculty ratio was eight to one.

Shimer College instructors teach across disciplines; the "ideal is that any faculty member can teach any one of the core courses".

In 2017, seven Shimer faculty joined the Shimer School of Great Books at North Central College.

Shimer College applicants were evaluated according to their academic potential, and no minimum grade-point average or test score was required.

In 2007, Shimer joined a national effort by the Education Conservancy to boycott participation in college-ranking surveys.

Shimer College occupied 17,000 square feet on two floors of the former Institute of Gas Technology complex.

Until its move to become part of North Central College, "As a function of its mission to promote active citizenship" Shimer was "devoted to internal self-governance to an extent that is rare among institutions of higher education".

Since 1977, Shimer College has been governed internally by a body known as the Assembly.

Shimer College has a tradition of community meals dating back to the Waukegan campus, when the community would meet for potluck meals and discuss matters of general interest.

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Shimer College was administered locally, but subject to a chief administrator in Chicago for final decisions.