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| St. John's College |
St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the school received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States. Since 1937, it has followed an unusual curriculum, the Great Books Program, based on discussion of works from the Western philosophic, scientific and literary canon; this program is probably that for which the school is best known.
The school grants only one bachelor's degree, in Liberal Arts. Two master's degrees are currently available through the college's Graduate Institute—one in Liberal Arts, which is a modified version of the undergraduate curriculum (differing mostly in that the graduate students do not take a language and are not restricted to a set sequence of courses), and a parallel course of studies in Eastern Classics, which applies most of the features of the undergraduate curriculum (seminars, preceptorials, language study and a set sequence of courses) to a list of classic works from India, China and Japan.
Despite its name and the inclusion of major Christian texts and philosophers in the program, St. John's College has no religious affiliation.
Great Books program
The Great Books program (often called simply "the Program" or "the New Program" at St. John's) was developed at the University of Chicago by Stringfellow Barr, Scott Buchanan, Robert Hutchins, and Mortimer Adler in the mid-1930s as an alternative form of education to the then rapidly changing undergraduate curriculum. St. John's adopted the Great Books program in 1937, when the college was facing the possibility of financial and academic ruin. The Great Books program in use today was also influenced by Jacob Klein, who was dean of the college in the 1940s and 1950s.
Unlike mainstream U.S. colleges, St. John's avoids modern textbooks, lectures, and examinations. Instead of textbooks, in addition to primary materials, the College relies on a series of manuals. While traditional (A through F) grades are given, the culture of the school de-emphasizes their importance and grades are released only at the request of the student. Grading is based largely on class participation and papers. Tutors, as faculty members are called at the College, play a non-directive role in the classroom, compared to mainstream colleges. However, at St. John's this does vary somewhat by course and instructor.
Class size is small on both campuses, with a student to tutor ratio of 8:1. Seminar is the largest class, with around 20 students, but led by two tutors. Daytime tutorials are smaller, typically ranging between 12 to 16 students and are led by one tutor. Preceptorials are the smallest class size, ranging between 3 and 9 students.