University of Chicago founding president William Rainey Harper believed that correspondence study should be an integral part of the great university he founded. Universities should not only discover and generate new knowledge. They also should disseminate it, he believed. Thereby, they could advance one of the chief progressive causes of the day, the democratization of higher education. The inclusion of correspondence study in the University of Chicago's design gave this teaching format a credibility within the academy that it otherwise would never have had. While Harper gave correspondence study a toehold, and a modicum of respect, he also left it vulnerable to elitism and academic snobbery. It was outside the "University Proper." Unlike any other instructional program at Chicago, it had to generate its own funds. Students were limited in the number of correspondence courses they could apply to a degree program. All of these limitations gave it a second-class status in the university community. This article describes the long, sad history of correspondence study at the University of Chicago. (Contains 2 notes.)