Program Overview

Program Overview

The Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults is a four-year, non-credit certificate program designed for individuals with a wide range of educational and professional backgrounds. The program is open to anyone interested in engaging with Great Books, with no application required. New students can register for the Year One Autumn or Winter course for the upcoming year.

Program Structure

• Students take one course each quarter of the Academic year (Autumn, Winter, Spring).
• Courses are 10 weeks long and typically meet either once per week for three hours or twice per week for 90 minutes.
• Class time is split between a 90-minute Seminar, covering three to five texts, and a 90-minute Tutorial, which typically involves in-depth analysis of one or two texts.
• Students read a weekly assignment before each class, but there are no tests, papers, or grades.
• Students take the curriculum in order, starting with Autumn of Year 1 and progressing with their classmates from quarter to quarter and year to year.

Program Benefits

• Form close connections with other intellectually curious adults
• Read the Great Books, including the works of Aristotle, Dante, de Tocqueville, Morrison, Plato, Shakespeare, Woolf, and others.
• Learn in small groups guided by outstanding instructors.
• Improve your critical thinking through close reading and dynamic discussions.
• Choose from in-person or synchronous online classes offered at times that fit your schedule.
• Earn a non-credit certificate upon completion of the four-year program, which confers UChicago alumni status.
• Gain access to Basic Program alumni classes and travel-study opportunities.

Curriculum

The program covers influential works from ancient to modern times, including texts by:

• Aristotle
• Austen
• Dante
• Descartes
• de Tocqueville
• Homer
• Plato
• Shakespeare
• and more.

Sample Four-Year Program of Study

Year 1

• Autumn: Introduction; Sophocles, Plato, Apology and Crito, Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
• Winter: Herodotus, The History (selections), Aeschylus, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
• Spring: Machiavelli, The Prince (selections), Hobbes, Rousseau, Second Discourse, Shakespeare, The Tempest

Year 2

• Autumn: Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Aristotle, Euripides, The Bacchae, Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
• Winter: Homer, The Odyssey, Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
• Spring: Montaigne, Pascal, Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (selections)

Year 3

• Autumn: Euclid, Descartes
• Winter: Aristotle, Lucretius, The Nature of Things, Newton, Darwin, On the Origin of Species (selections)
• Spring: Aquinas, Treatise on Law (selections), Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals

Year 4

• Autumn: Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (selections), Plato, Austen, Pride and Prejudice
• Winter: Aristotle, Smith, Wealth of Nations (selections), Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The Communist Manifesto and Capital (selections)
• Spring: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Federalist 10 + 51, de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (selections), Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, Second Inaugural, Toni Morrison

Instructors

The program features a diverse range of instructors, including:

• Joseph Alulis
• Lin Atnip
• Paul Cato
• Noah Chafets
• Joshua Daniel
• Zoë Eisenman
• Amy Thomas Elder
• Charles Elder
• Eva Fernandez
• Albert B. Fernandez
• Simon Friedland
• Timothy Gutmann
• Stephen Hall
• Richard Hoskins
• Michael Jones
• Elliott Krick
• Zack Loveless
• Julia Mueller
• Moira O’Shea
• Clare Pearson
• Cynthia Rutz
• Kendall Sharp
• David Shiner
• Aaron Tugendhaft
• Jacqueline Victor
• Austin Walker
• Stephen Walker
• Michael Weinman

Continuing Studies

The program offers exclusive opportunities for students who have completed at least two years of the Basic Program Core Curriculum, including:

• Alumni Sequences: Two-year, curated courses of study centering on a specific era, culture, or region.
• Travel Study: Opportunities to travel with instructors and experience firsthand many of the historic places encountered in the Core Curriculum readings.