Facts about education and research at UChicago
The material below is intended to provide accurate facts about education, research, and investments at The University of Chicago.
Has the student-faculty ratio increased at the University of Chicago in the last two decades?
No. The College’s low student-faculty ratio of 5 students per faculty member has been stable over most of the last decade; it was 6 students per faculty member in 2010.
Does the University use the majority of its tuition revenue for purposes other than student education?
No. This misrepresents the overall cost of providing an exceptional education to a student body vs. the additional (or marginal) cost of adding one additional student. The University maintains extensive educational resources (including faculty, staff, buildings, labs, libraries, etc.) devoted to instruction, advising, career support, and more. Tuition does not cover the full cost of education: the University spends more than 100% of tuition revenue on education. For example, UChicago’s publicly available financial report for 2023-24 shows that the University took in a total of $611 million in tuition and fees (net of financial aid), while paying $873 million in academic salaries, plus employee benefits.
Is the University planning to teach courses, including those in the languages, using ChatGPT or by sending students to take courses at other institutions?
No. The College’s approach stands in clear contrast to this, as it places deep value on in-person instruction and provides outstanding language instruction. UChicago teaches more than 50 different languages per year. There have been inaccurate descriptions of a document provided to faculty members on June 16, 2025, titled “Languages Working Group Charge” – the document can be found here. The charge document consists of questions for the group to consider, including whether there are “opportunities for partnerships with peer institutions,” and, “how can we use technology more effectively to support and enhance language instruction, while maintaining institutional strengths and standards?” No faculty leadership, program directors, or senior administrators have proposed or considered replacing course instructors with LLMs such as ChatGPT. Since 2015, UChicago has participated in CourseShare, which allows students at other universities to take languages through UChicago that are not offered at their institutions, and for UChicago students to do the same, since no single institution teaches all the languages that students might need for research purposes.
Will the University offer and teach fewer subjects in the coming years?
No; in fact, the opposite is true. The College has created numerous, new faculty-led programs of study in recent years, responding to interests from students and areas of faculty research and expertise. New majors created in the last five years include Human Rights; Cognitive Science; Media, Arts and Design; Data Science; Climate and Sustainable Growth. Archeology is a new major starting in 2025-26. New minors created in this time include Democracy Studies; Science Communications; Business German; and Computational Social Science.
Has the University’s ranking in Computer Science declined?
No – the most commonly cited rankings in the field show that UChicago’s position has improved. UChicago has climbed from #51 in 2012 to #27 in the U.S. News ranking of U.S. Computer Science Schools. The University is #18 in Theoretical Computer Science and recently became ranked in Computer Systems (#18) for the first time in the department’s history. Since 2014, the University has been remarkably successful in recruiting outstanding computer science faculty. A recent piece by UChicago faculty details the success of the Computer Science department and the Data Science Institute, and the efforts of those units to build connections with faculty and students in the humanities and sciences.
Did the University lose money investing in crypto?
Contrary to a claim in one news report, the University of Chicago has not lost money on cryptocurrency investments. The University invests in a broad selection of investment vehicles to provide a stable and optimal long term return profile, and this specific investment has yielded strong returns to support our students and faculty. The University’s investment goal is to supply a steady source of income to help support University programs over the long term, to safeguard the future of the University.