Shimer College Is Gone But The School Lives On

In 1988, Reader staff writer Harold Henderson wrote a memorable 7,300-word cover story on tiny, financially strapped Shimer College. It was a happy thing just to know that a place as unlikely as Shimer—which, eschewing textbooks and lectures, assigned only primary texts, taught through discussion, and admitted promising students without ACT scores or high school degrees—could exist.

Now there’s been a final move: when the fall term opens, on September 11, Shimer students will be trekking out to Naperville, where they’ll attend the Shimer School of Great Books at North Central College.

It was hoped that Shimer’s move to IIT a decade ago would create a synergy between the Great Books program and high-tech institutions, and that the urban environment would lead to enrollment growth. But two unwelcome events created headwinds. The first, in 2009, was an attempted takeover of the board that would have given the college a politically hard-right tilt. Alarmed students, faculty, and alumni succeeded in defeating that threat, but then, in 2014, Shimer turned up at the top of Washington Monthly‘s annual list of the worst colleges in America.

As for the move to Naperville, alumni board member Jon Goldman told me last week that he toured the North Central campus and “was really pleased to see that it reminded me of the old campus in Mount Carroll.”