Business education

“ What better way to train to higher commercial standards the minds, not only of the youths who are seeking a university education and who have in view a business career, but also of the many already engaged in business who have not had the benefit of a college training? ”

“ Business education gives some sense of the interdependence of industry, personal ethics, and government. The broadly trained business man realizes that he is in a sense a servant of the community, that his property is wrapped up with the welfare of his fellow men, and that what he has is a trust which society grants to him to be conducted after the manner of a good steward. ”

“ Business is put above learning, administration above education, discipline and order above cultivation of genius and talent. Our schools and colleges are controlled by business men. The school-boards, the boards of trustees of almost every school and college in the country consist mainly of manufacturers, storekeepers, tradesmen, bulls and bears of Wall street and the market-place. What wonder that they bring with them the ideals and methods of the factory, the store, the bank and the saloon. If the saloon controls politics, the shop controls education. ”

“ If, then, the commercial and trades training, the business or manual, or whatever the course be called, can be found in actual commerce and trade; if a sufficient degree of scholastic education can there be added, and if with this the maturing man or woman shall gain a higher degree of technical skill and a safer knowledge of men and affairs, does not the plan of the school in business best meet the educational problem for at least a majority of childkind? ”

“ It is for educators to realize first of all that there can be no social progress while there is antagonism between growth in wealth (which is industry) and growth in individuals (which is education) ; that the fundamental antagonisms which are apparent in the current arrangement are not between industry and education but between education and business. They must know that as business regulates and controls industry for ulterior purposes, that is for other purposes than production of goods, it thwarts the development of individual lives and the evolution of society ”

“ Indeed, I am to discuss a great business industry, if you please, in which you and I are joint stockholders and for whose success we are alike responsible. And, too, I have been for so many years a teacher and so closely connected with educational work that I feel akin to every other man and woman engaged in that occupation. ”

“ With the extension of the sphere of commerce and the development of its organization that have taken place in the nineteenth century, it has come to be recognized that preparation is essential for a business career. Only recently, however, has this training been felt to be a proper function of the schools, since for many years it was opposed by educators as sordid and commercializing, and by business men as unpractical and ineffective. ”

“ This man and woman came to a strange land too late in life to acquire a business education. They can work and plan, but must depend upon those little boys to do business which requires bookkeeping or banking. All the boys know about American business is what they learn at the public schools. ”

“ The application of scientific method to business has created an entirely new relationship between business and education. Scientific analysis and social policy are establishing a new connection between the material and the human facts of business. In the new atmosphere the business executive requires those fine qualities of mind and spirit, and the ability to command these qualities for a given task, which peculiarly it is the work of the university to cultivate. ”

“ When the student passed to the professional study of business he would be expected to master the fundamentals of business organization and management, including the basic elements of subjects like accounting, finance, and other divisions of organization common to all lines of business. All of these studies would be pursued with constant reference to the fact that business is carried on in a community in which certain public policies are enforced and in recognition of the fact that business should conform to these policies and help to make them effective in contributing to public welfare. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ None of the advocates view the equipment of workers for industry in terms radically different from the terms in which they are viewed by business men; they offer them technique and matter of insignificance and indirection; they make no suggestion or move to open up the adventure of industry for the worker's actual participation in it; they accept the organization of industry which excludes their participation as an unalterable fact; even unalterable as an experience in the prevocational schemes of education. ”

“ The Practical-theoretical form of education is not limited to the apprentice or to the new employee but is equally valuable to the expert, the oldest employees, and the employer. This fact is taken advantage of most wisely by the National Cash Register Company. ”

“ Therefore, I say to all who have sons destined for a business career, let your cherished offspring have the advantage of early practical training in the particular line of business for which you may consider them best adapted, and do so, even to the partial neglect of their school and college education. Practical business is the best school and college in which they can possibly graduate. ”

“ No college on earth ever made a business man. The knowledge acquired in college has fitted thousands of men for professional success, but it has also unfitted other thousands for a practical business career. A college training is never wasted, although I have seen again and again five-thousand-dollar educations spent on five-hundred-dollar men. Where a young man can bring a college education to the requirements of a practical business knowledge, it is an advantage. ”

“ In consequence of these facts it is insisted that school instruction should be given to make good the absence of shop practice; that a general system of industrial education should be developed to give our workingmen systematic training in the various trades. ”

“ Like the practical experience for which it is constituted, education points to the precise reward and fulfillment, not to vague ideals that prove hollow after the student has paid tens of thousands of dollars to learn them. Vested in the benefits of a company whose potential depends on their future performance, students can be better motivated. Will business cooperate? As things stand now, business is in the paradoxical situation of criticizing the inadequacies of an education that has many of the same characteristics as outmoded ways of doing business. ”

“ The first great element of training which the university can give to future business men is a mastery of scientific method as a means of analyzing problems and synthesizing results. Quite as fundamental as this is the development of an intelligent and sympathetic approach to questions of human relationship. Only the beginning steps in the direction of business efficiency can be taken while attention is confined to the material and mechanistic side of business organization. ”

“ Through the business relation the student quickly feels the necessity of good finish, rapid work, and responsibility to deliver on time. The businesslike appearance of the shop at work on the orders, and the experience trade has had with the product, have increased the confidence of employers of labor in the ability of the school to train practical workers for the trades.... The business organization and management required in the adequate conduct of a large order department can itself be utilized for educational purposes. ”

“ This preëminently would be the business of employers and not of education which is concerned with the growth of the individual. On such a basis, it is inconceivable that educators would concern themselves with preparing people for industry. If, however, these limitations are not native, but are due to some incompatibility between the institution of industry and the interest of the labor force, then the limitations of workers and of industry are a matter of paramount importance in the field of education. ”

“ Industrial higher education in this or some other form is the secondary hope of manufacturing business in the United States, the primary hope being in a decent commercial liberty to buy their supplies and to sell their products in the best markets wherever these are to be found. ”

“ This circumstance has a very marked bearing on the nature of our task, when we try to approach business from the standpoint of education.
There are strong historical and temperamental reasons why nineteenth-century Americans were inclined to take a short-time view of business situations. Our fathers were pioneers, and the pioneer has neither the time, the capital, the information, the social insight, nor the need to build policies for a distant future. ”

“ A final, and probably in the long-run the most permanent, influence making for the extension of scientific method in business has been the new viewpoint from which universities have been approaching the task of educating men for business. Prior to 1900, university education for business in the few universities that attempted anything of the sort was confined to such branches of applied economics as money and banking, transportation, corporation finance, commercial geography, with accounting and business law to give it a professional flavor. ”

“ Primary economic proposition #2 The second economic proposition posed by OER is a riskier challenge – to abandon the pervasive economic logic that education should be treated as a business, governed by the same rules and incentives as the commercial and retail sector. ”

“ And if the methods employed are necessarily different, the requirements are precisely the same. It is a story of hard work in every case, of close application and of a patient mastery of the problem in hand. Advantages of education will come in at times and push one man ahead of another. But a practical business knowledge is apt to be a greater possession. ”

“ I say, therefore, to the young man of the rising generation, while you don’t relax any effort to procure all the education that your time and means will afford, above all things, don’t neglect the paramount importance of business training. ”

“ In proportion as universities have vigorously undertaken this work, and have applied scientific method to their own problem of articulating it with higher education in general, the line of approach to professional business training has become increasingly clear. Among the notable developments of the past decade has been a shifting of emphasis from the training of specialists to the training of business executives. ”

“ Schools of Com′merce. Commercial education in the United States is conducted by four classes of institutions: private business and commercial schools; public high schools; endowed schools, which often have an industrial as well as a commercial bias; and colleges and universities. The need for special commercial education increases with the complexity of modern business methods. ”

“ As the student advances, the course would proceed toward greater and greater specialization, and would finally culminate in an intensive study of some fairly narrow business problem, pursued until the student has mastered it in principle and in detail. ”

“ This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day; and thus I repaired, in some degree, the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me. Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolics of any kind, and my industry in my business continued as indefatigable as it was necessary. ”

“ I think it is a rule that men in business should not be taught other things. Any one will be almost sure to make money who has no other idea in his head. A college education, or intense study of abstract truth, will not enable a man to drive a bargain, to overreach another, or even to guard himself from being overreached. ”

“ CHAPTER IV EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRY AND ASSOCIATED ENTERPRISE As capital and so far labor have failed to make industry an expansive experience it becomes, as Professor Dewey has pointed out, the business of educators concerned with the growth of individuals to cultivate the field. ”

“ In current discussions in the press and elsewhere, many of the more fundamental principles of commerce, and the training which is requisite to enable our young men to cope with the problems which may arise in their business, have been adequately considered. ”

“ 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. ”