The University of Wisconsin Experimental College was a two-year college designed and led by Alexander Meiklejohn inside the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a great books, liberal arts curriculum. It was established in 1927 and closed in 1932. Meiklejohn proposed the idea for an alternative college in a 1925 Century magazine article. The magazine's editor-in-chief, Glenn Frank, became the University of Wisconsin's president and invited Meiklejohn to begin the college within the university. Despite pushback from the faculty, the college opened in the fall of 1927 with a self-governing community of 119 students and less than a dozen faculty. Students followed a uniform curriculum: Periclean Athens for freshmen and modern America for sophomores. The program sought to teach democracy and to foster an intrinsic love of learning within its students.

Alexander Meiklejohn was a philosopher, university administrator, educational reformer, and free-speech advocate, best known as president of Amherst College.