Business college

“ The work of the College of Commerce, accordingly, is a peculiarly futile line of endeavour for any public institution, in that it serves neither the intellectual advancement nor the material welfare of the community.
The greater the number and the higher the proficiency of the community's businessmen, other things equal, the worse must the rest of the community come off in that game of skilled bargaining and shrewd management by which the businessmen get their gains. Gratuitous or partly gratuitous training for business will presumably increase the number of highly proficient businessmen. ”

“ Whether the college of commerce in America be a private institution or one supported by the public, it should form some sympathetic contact with the leading business organizations. Of course certain business associations have their own technical schools of training. The American Bankers' Association conducts its own courses, drawing upon various universities for lecturers in some subjects and drawing upon experts in business for other kinds of technical work. ”

“ They have left no stone unturned for the benefit of their pupils. The business practice department has ten offices; Retail, commission, real estate, insurance, bank, etc., each having a different set of books. In this way the pupils become familiar with all phases of bookkeeping, from the simplest to the most complicated transactions.
This college possesses the unique feature of being the only college in the United States that equips each of its offices with a typewriter. The bank is equipped with an adding machine, the only one used by a business college west of the Mississippi River. ”

“ Every business-man knows that a business-college training is of very little account in enabling one to fight the battle of life, and that college-bred men have a great advantage even in fields where mere education is a secondary matter. ”

“ It is reasonably to be expected that one or the other result should follow: either the college of commerce must remain, somewhat as in practice it now is, something in the way of an academic division, with an academic routine and standards, and with an unfulfilled ambition to serve the higher needs of business training ”

“ So also various corporations have their corporation schools which seek to develop business executives by progressive courses of training for those in the lower ranks.
Nevertheless, the collegiate institutions offering organized courses in commerce will do well to keep in touch with business men. Another way in which such schools and colleges can keep abreast of the times is to employ lecturers who do not make teaching their main business of life but who are expert in certain particular fields. ”

“ Now the captain of industry may be necessary in the business world, where, perhaps, most men are fit only to be led. And I do not doubt that the modern college will need an executive head, whatever be his relations, on the one hand to the trustees, and to the faculty on the other. But that the college professor should himself adopt the entrepreneur-theory of the office, as he frequently does, and should even glorify "the rule of the strong man "—over himself, can stand only for an utter contradiction between the idea of his profession and its present actuality. ”

“ But I will say this: a young man need not feel that the lack of a college education will stand in any respect whatever in the way of his success in the business world. No college on earth ever made a business man. ”

“ College-bred men, and men who never had college advantages, have succeeded in about equal ratios. The men occupying the most important commercial positions in New York to-day are self-made, whose only education has come to them from contact with that greatest college of all, the business world. Far be it from me to depreciate the value of a college education. I believe in its advantages too firmly. But no young man need feel hampered because of the lack of it. If business qualities are in him they will come to the surface. It is not the college education; it is the young man. ”

“ During the summer months I travel as field representative for the Pittsburg Business College. In this way I make enough to buy my clothing and pay incidental expenses during the winter.
Every man who makes his way for three or four years in a college of any kind realizes in a full measure the value of his time and money. He learns to have confidence in himself; he learns to be more dependent upon himself; and in many ways he learns the ways of the world. ”

“ The school of experience is by no means to be despised. To many it is the only school available. But unhappily its teachings are apt to come too late, and often they are fatally expensive. Whoever can attain the needed knowledge in a quicker and cheaper way will obviously do well so to obtain it; and the supplying of such practical knowledge, and the training which may largely take the place of experience in actual business, is the proper function of the true business college. ”

“ The creation and maintenance of such a College of Commerce, on such a scale as will make it anything more than a dubious make-believe, would manifestly appear to be beyond the powers of any existing university. ”

“ But since the university and the college are, in point of formal status and of administrative machinery, divisions of the same establishment and subject to the same executive control; and since, under competitive business principles, the collegiate division is held to be of greater importance, and requires the greater share of attention; it comes about that the college in great measure sets the pace for the whole, and that the undergraduate scheme of credits, detailed accountancy, and mechanical segmentation of the work, is carried over into the university work proper. ”

“ But now continuation schools, free evening courses, and private classes have sprung up, and in a few large cities commercial schools of secondary and even higher grade In the United States ‘business colleges,’ have been established. In the United States commercial training began by the middle of the nineteenth century through private enterprise with classes in bookkeeping, and later with ‘business colleges.’ Despite the name of the latter, the course is narrow and is generally shaped by and secondary and higher courses. ”

“ That was where I caught the connection between a college education and business. I’ve always made it a rule to buy brains, and I’ve learned now that the better trained they are the faster they find reasons for getting their salaries raised. The fellow who hasn’t had the training may be just as [Pg 041] smart, but he’s apt to paw the air when he’s reaching for ideas. ”

“ The advancement of material interests constitutes civilization to him. He unconsciously infuses the ideas and methods of business into anything that he touches. It has thus come about in America that our universities are beginning to be run as business colleges. They advertise, they compete with each other, they pretend to give good value to their customers. They desire to increase their trade, they offer social advantages and business openings to their patrons. ”

“ The cultural aim of business courses is consciously kept in mind by the makers of curricula for colleges of liberal arts and sciences which permit a rather free choice of electives in the department of Economics and Business or of Political Science, according to the departmental organization of the institution. Here, of course, we find Economics, which bears to practical business much the relation which Philosophy bears to active life in general. ”

“ The institute in question is one which will in every respect, socially and mentally, elevate the business man or practical man to a level with the college graduate or the practitioner in the three learned professions. It will stimulate progress by still further refining industry, and ally the action of capital to the advance of intellect. ”

“ In fine, the scholars should take the public into their confidence and dominate the business men on our college boards. This will be found more easy than at first appears, because the money element, the millionaire element, is very sensitive to public feeling, and once the millionaire succumbs, the college president will succumb also. The step beyond this would consist in the scholars’ taking charge of the college themselves, merely making use of certain business men on their boards for purposes of financial administration. ”

“ A student coming from one of our constantly improving high schools of commerce is checked for two years and given time to forget all the bookkeeping and other commercial work which he has learned and on which advanced commercial instruction may be built, while he pursues an academic course. It would be far better to continue the modern languages, the mathematics, and natural sciences, along with business courses. ”

“ It is a business age. The educational impulse of school and college is in the direction of business education rather than classical or general education. Technical schools are much more popular. Business schools are conducted by large corporations, by banks, by chambers of commerce. Banks, insurance companies, the railroad organizations, and big business concerns maintain statistical and information departments and publish pamphlets and periodical literature. Men competent to produce information are in demand and those of newspaper experience are preferred. ”

“ Apart from a large and costly material equipment, such a college would also, under current conditions, have to be provided with a virtually unlimited fund for travelling expenses, to carry its staff and its students to the several typical seats and centres of business traffic and maintain them there for that requisite personal contact with affairs that alone can contribute to a practical comprehension of business strategy. ”

“ So that men who have been trained to the round of things that so go to make up the conventional scheme of undergraduate interests can not well look to a career in the higher learning as a possible outcome of their residence in college. On the other hand, young men habitually, and no doubt rightly, expect a business career to yield an income somewhat above the average of incomes in the community, and more particularly in excess of the commonplace incomes of academic men ”

“ As for the trustees, there can be no doubt that they are earnestly loyal to the college and devoted to its interests, and their own careers attest them good business men; yet the business management of our college is notoriously poor. College property that might have been made to return an excellent rental has been allowed to lie unproductive for years, and finally sold off bit by bit to pay running expenses; debt has been recklessly incurred; and there has never been any settled or consistent financial policy. The board, indeed, is too big a body to work well. ”

“ That is a business in itself, yet, it is managed, financed and edited entirely by students, many of whom find it difficult to get interested in the routine of the college curriculum. When you multiply these business and serious activities, you find the students actually doing profitable and character-forming tasks outside of the classrooms which few critics of the college take the trouble to notice. ”

“ It now owns and controls school, church and manse properties that represent a value of one and a half million dollars. [Pg 95]
Its permanent investments, that bring an annual income for the promotion of its work however, are yet only $200,202.50. In these days of big business, the evidence of unusual prosperity, it ought to have an endowment of one million dollars.
Education is the most costly of all philanthropic enterprises. The following reason recently expressed for a large endowment of the College Board applies with equal force to the Freedmen's Board. ”

“ Without such foundations, secured either in college or out, analysis of problems in a specialized business field is almost sure to be one-sided and incomplete.
The kind of professional training that I would suggest for the future business executive would be laid on the foundation of a college course of two, three, or four years in which the viewpoint and the varied methods of study in several diverse branches of knowledge had been thoroughly instilled. ”

“ The last big fight we have been having is over the business colleges, some of which are directed by mere charlatans, and others by those who are giving admirable instruction, doing their work well. But they have outlived their time. ”

“ We are only on the edge of the future of applied science.
We need, also, to carry our culture and training into business careers. Business is conducted by different methods than in the past. The management affords a broader field for judgment and thought. Many, in the future, may succeed without a collegePage 224 education, but they will work at a disadvantage. The chances are always in favor of the man who is well educated. It is a common belief that a college education unfits a man for practical work. ”

“ In view of the speedy discomfiture of the deluded graduates of such schools when brought face to face with actual business affairs, and the disgust of their employers who had engaged them on the strength of their alleged business training, one is not so much surprised that prejudice against business colleges still prevails in many quarters, as that the relatively few genuine institutions should have been able to gain any creditable footing at all. ”