Walden College is a fictional educational institution (providing fictional education) in the comic strip Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau. Originally, it was a thinly-disguised version of Yale University, where the strip was set when it first began. However, over the years, it has become more and more different. While Yale remains one of the most respected institutions of higher learning, Walden has lost accreditation and has been deleted from the resumes of many of her alumni. The trouble began when the college lost a crucial lawsuit and was forced to grant every student a perfect score, regardless of merit, so as not to adversely affect the student's self-esteem. The leader of Walden, President King, was originally a parody of Kingman Brewster, at that time President of Yale. In looks they remain alike, but not in any other way. The founder of Walden, Elihu Walden, is named for Yale's namesake, Elihu Yale.
