The only American college to adopt an Oxford-style tutorial system

Countries & Cities · Published 12 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In 1918, Rhodes College underwent a radical academic transformation. By hiring Oxford-trained scholars to implement a tutorial system—where students study subjects in individual sessions with professors—it became one of only two colleges in the United States to use this elite model, fundamentally shaping its modern curriculum.

The college's journey to this academic model was born of necessity. Originally established in the mid-1830s as an all-male academy in Clarksville, Tennessee, the institution suffered devastating damage and looting during the American Civil War. It spent decades struggling to recover financially and academically until the early 20th century, when the board of directors hired Charles E. Diehl as president. Diehl initiated a series of aggressive reforms to save the college. In 1917, he admitted women, and in 1918, he established an honor code. Most significantly, he recruited over a dozen Oxford-educated scholars to lead an "Oxford-Cambridge style of education." This tutorial system, which prioritizes intimate, one-on-one academic engagement, remains a cornerstone of the Rhodes experience today, supported by a 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio and an average class size of 14. The college eventually moved to its current 123-acre wooded campus in Memphis in 1925. Under the subsequent presidency of Peyton N. Rhodes (1948–1964), the school expanded its physical footprint and began admitting its first Black students. Today, the institution balances this rigorous academic tradition with a heavy emphasis on community engagement, with over 80 percent of students involved in service. The campus hosts the nation's most enduring student-operated soup kitchen alongside Habitat for Humanity's earliest collegiate branch.

The current number of majors is cited as over 50 in S1 and over 70 in S4. I will use the S1 figure for the deep text to maintain consistency with the primary source.

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