OK - Snooping around the internet and and connecting some dots, I think I’ve sourced Cue’s “McKinsey Report.” First a quote from Boyer to set the stage:
“How different is our world? Our first-year attrition rate is nowadays 9 percent—still far too high in my personal opinion, but a vast improvement over even the recent past. We have built no new dorms, but we do have the splendid Shoreland and other readapted properties which seem very popular with our students. Our admissions pool is larger, but we still accept far more of our applicants than most of our peers, and as in the 1950s and 1960s they tend to be needier than the student populations of our peers. Much has already been accomplished. But the findings of Susan Kidwell’s task force, as well as the results of Richard Taub’s research, reveal that we have a considerable way to go.” - John Boyer, “Three Views of Continuity and Change at the University of Chicago,” 1996
What is Boyer comparing the 1996 College to? Well, to the 1969 College in the wake of the decision to decrease enrollments. Too many students complaining about the quality of instruction (the Hutchins Core) and the increasingly poor quality of campus and residential life over the years led to this decision. As Boyer points out, the decision was detrimental to the financial health of the university. By the 80’s this reality was very apparent - Hannah Gray managed to increase enrollment during her tenure - and by the 90’s they knew something had to be done to reverse this. Enter Hugo Sonnenshein who was the catalyst that, really, saved the university from falling into mediocrity. That’s not an exaggeration.
One of Sonnenschein’s first steps was to convene three committees: two on undergraduate and graduate education chaired by Geoff Stone (who might have been provost at the time? Not sure) and the third, on the quality of student experience, by Susan Kidwell, professor of geophysical sciences. Prof. Kidwell, upon being presented with a prestigious award from the Paleontological Society in 1996, was noted to be working on her most difficult challenge yet: “getting the University of Chicago’s undergraduate students to party.” (I’m pretty sure that got quite a bit of laughter from the crowd of paleontologists.)
Kidwell’s task force, combined with prior survey research by Prof. Richard Taub a few years earlier (the survey that revealed how 35% of the undergraduates had considered transferring at one point), served as the basis of many of the changes the University undertook to improve student life and make the College more attractive to top candidates. They had to. The university was planning to expand the size of the College.
Boyer open his “Three Views” treatise with the following words, specifically referencing McKinsey’s assistance in this endeavor:
“Last year will also go down in local history as the year of the self-study. The work of Richard Taub, Susan Kidwell and her colleagues, Andy Abbott, and the folks from McKinsey all shed various streams of light on the culture of our students and ourselves. The evidence presented in these studies and reports was sometimes contradictory, but I think that there is wide agreement that we offer a splendid academic education, one that our alumni applaud and defend, but that we may be doing so in ways—sometimes intentionally, but often unintentionally—that contribute to unproductive stress and that occasionally even engender unhealthy levels of competitiveness among our students. We have also learned that we have been recruiting a number of students to the College for whom Chicago is clearly a second or third choice or even a back-up school, and that some part of the dissatisfaction expressed by our students is related to such factors. Bluntly put, we have a wonderful College, one that is marked by the capacity of colleagues to think in general terms about liberal education in ways that our peers really envy, but, along with many of our peers, we also have problems and we need to address those problems if we are to take full advantage of the bright possibilities of our future.”
And THAT is where McKinsey came in. They assisted the task force in the mid 90’s so that President Sonnenschein could proceed with the expansion.
Here is Mohn’s comment so that we can compare what we know from the Sonnenschein initiaves to what he read in the Chronicle (or whichever mag it was that was mailed to him): University of Chicago Admit Rate and SAT relative to Ivy/Competitive Set - #113 by MohnGedachtnis - University of Chicago - College Confidential Forums
To me, pretty much all of these points are recaps of what was being discussed in the 1990’s among the university faculty and administration. References to the planned growth, the need to attract “less needy” students, turn UChicago into a school of first choice, and the need to improve the quality of student life . . . all sourced in the Sonnenschein era.
Pretty sure none of it was initiated by McKinsey (the way that, say, Lexus would require it’s assistance in figuring out why people weren’t purchasing their cars). People at UChi KNEW what was wrong. It had been decades in the making. However, no doubt that McKinsey assisted shedding some of that light that Boyer referred to.
@Cue7 - this was all happening during your time there!!!
For fun reading:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040827114410/http://www.uchicago.edu/docs/education/continuity-change/index.html#contents
