Adler University is a private not-for-profit university, with two campuses in North America. The university’s flagship campus is in Chicago, Illinois, and its satellite campus is located in Vancouver, British Columbia. The university also offers online classes and degree programs online for both masters and doctoral students.

Adler University is named for Alfred Adler (1870–1937), a physician, psychotherapist, and founder of Adlerian psychology, which is sometimes called individual psychology. He is considered the first community psychologist, because his work pioneered attention to community life, prevention, and population health.

Among Adler’s advocates and followers was Adler University founder Rudolf Dreikurs (1897–1972), a psychiatrist who immigrated to Chicago in 1937 after Adler’s death. Dreikurs lived and worked in Chicago’s Hull House, and he was instrumental in the child guidance movement in the U.S.

In 1952, Dreikurs founded the Institute of Adlerian Psychology that, in 1954, changed its name to the Alfred Adler Institute of Chicago, and in 1991 became known as the Adler School of Professional Psychology, and in 2015 as Adler University. Early instructors and founders of the institute were also Bernard Shulman, Harold Mosak, Bina Rosenberg, and Robert Powers.

In 1963, the institute was chartered as a not-for-profit Illinois corporation and approved as a post-secondary educational provider. A year later, the institute created a group therapy program for those incarcerated at Cook County Jail, a program that was a precursor to the school’s later focus on the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated. In 1972, the institute established its on-campus Dreikurs Psychological Services Center, a community mental health center and training site for students, which was the precursor to today’s Adler Community Health Services (ACHS), directed by Dan Barnes. In 1973, the Illinois Office of Education granted the institute the authority to award the Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. The institute received full accreditation of masters level programs and awarded its first M.A. degrees in 1978. It received doctoral level accreditation in 1987, and awarded its first Psy.D. degrees in 1990. The Psy.D. program was accredited by the American Psychological Association in 1998.

Master and doctoral programs are offered at both the Chicago and Vancouver campuses. In fall 2013, the Vancouver campus began offering a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology—the first traditional Psy.D. program in Canada.

Adler University’s Chicago campus is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and the American Psychological Association.

All of Adler University’s masters and doctoral programs offered at the Vancouver campus are offered under the written consent of the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education, having undergone a quality assessment process and been found to meet the criteria established by the Ministry. Doctoral programs at the University’s Vancouver campus are not currently accredited by the Canadian Psychological Association