Columbia University economist provides “the history of the movement which has culmination in the adoption of this project”, i.e. the founding of Columbia School of Business. The earlier resistence of the economics department to a School of Business is explained as well as the flip-flop to its support of opening of the School of Business in the autumn term of 1916.
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A UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
by Edwin R. A. Seligman
[I]
THE opening of the Columbia School of Business in the autumn of 1916 marks another milestone in university education. The history of the movement which has culminated in the adoption of this project is highly interesting.
Less than a generation ago the only opportunities offered in education for business were the classes in single and double bookkeeping, usually conducted both here and abroad under the high- sounding title of “Business Institutes.” All they did was to give a smattering of ordinary bookkeeping with occasionally some slight instruction in English or a foreign language thrown in. One or two farsighted men already at that early period appreciated the need of a more systematic preparation for business life; but theirs were voices crying in the wilderness. It was the time when any kind of institutional education, except for the ministry, counted but little, the time when the lawyer was supposed to prepare himself for his work by serving an apprenticeship in a law office, and when the college graduate desirous of entering business life was at a disadvantage in the estimation of the employer as compared with the youth who had started from the bottom and who had enjoyed a few years of business experience. One of the broad-minded exceptions was Mr. Joseph Wharton of Philadelphia, through whose liberality the Wharton School was created at the University of Pennsylvania in the early eighties. This school, however, had at first only a moderate success, as did the similar schools started from time to time by other colleges and universities. The time was not yet ripe. When Columbia came to consider the problem, it preferred to devote its energies to political science rather than to business, and to purely University or graduate rather than to undergraduate work. As a consequence there was initiated the School of Political Science, which on its pedagogical side became a training school for teachers of the social sciences and for governmental administrators.
In the meantime, the economic development of the United States as well as of Europe led to a constant broadening of the scale on which business enterprises were carried on, and the demand for really adequate commercial training became more and more insistent. Toward the end of the last century the interest thus awakened became so strong that the Chamber of Commerce of New York was ready to grant an annual subvention to Columbia if it should be decided to develop courses of the desired character. The situation was canvassed by a small committee; but it was finally decided not to accept the overtures made by the committee of the Chamber of Commerce for several reasons. In the first place, it was felt that the demand had not yet become sufficiently great to justify the expectation of a student body satisfactory in either quantity or quality. Secondly, we were convinced that a successful school of the character desired would have to be conducted along academic lines of a modified kind, and that the best results could be hoped for only by securing academic teachers with a business experience rather than business men without academic experience. It was, however, at the time impossible to find a sufficient number of qualified instructors. Moreover, the literature of the subject was as yet embryonic, and the proper curriculum of such a School had nowhere been thoroughly worked out. In the third place, it was realized that the most important consideration at the time in American educational development, and especially at Columbia, was to emphasize the purely scientific or graduate work in political science; and the Department of Economics feared lest there might be danger in diverting its energies from the scientific field to work of a technical or professional character, such as would be necessitated by a new School of the kind contemplated. Finally, the movement for the creation of commercial high schools had come to a head, and it was deemed wiser to ascertain how far the gap might be filled by the secondary schools before deciding as to what should be done by Columbia. For these reasons the project was postponed, and the entire energy of the Department of Economics was directed to the rounding out of the University courses in political science and to the improving and broadening of the tender of the undergraduate or college course in economics.
During the last fifteen years, however, an instructive development has occurred. In the first place, there was a growing recognition of the need for a broader and more adequate training for business. Chambers of Commerce and other commercial bodies both here and abroad began to grow more restless and more insistent in their demands. The old feeling of prejudice on the part of the successful business man toward the college graduate diminished, although he still maintained that the college curriculum might profitably be modified in some respects to give a better preparation for business. This demand, which emanated primarily from the commercial community, now found expression in the new commercial schools in England and even more in Germany, and a rich fund of knowledge was being accumulated from the experience of these foreign schools. In the United States, moreover, it was gradually recognized that the commercial high schools, however excellently managed, were not quite adequate to solve the problem.
In the course of time professional schools of the desired kind were initiated, although along widely varying lines, by several American universities, the most notable examples being those of New York University and of Harvard. In New York City the demand for the inception of courses of some kind at Columbia soon became so urgent that a modest beginning was made three or four years ago with a few evening courses. Owing to the high standards which were observed from the outset, these courses met with immediate success. They were conservatively increased from year to year, until during the past year the number of students and the character of the instructors became such as to justify the demand for their merger into a new and independent school, which should possess an identity of its own and which should become a regularly accredited part of the University.
There were several reasons which led the Department of Economics now to welcome the movement to which it had been lukewarm a decade or two before. In the first place, the number of men qualified to serve as instructors in the new schools had become so numerous as to make it reasonably certain that the faculty could be filled by men of the first rank. Secondly, the literature of the subject had become so abundant as to make it possible to put academic teaching in business on a par with that of the other occupations or professions. Thirdly, experience with various types of schools had become so rich as to permit of what seemed to be a sound conclusion. Finally, the University work under the Faculty of Political Science had become so thoroughly established that there was no danger to be anticipated in any diversion of energy to the new institution. It was felt, therefore, that we were now quite ready to develop the technical or professional, rather than the purely scientific, sides of instruction in Economics.
It was for these reasons that the Department of Economics as well as the entire Faculty of Political Science cordially welcomed the project for the new School and that the report of the special committee appointed to consider the subject met with the unanimous approval of the University Council and was speedily adopted by the Board of Trustees.
II
In determining upon the character of the School, the committee considered with some care the different types in existence. There are in the United States at present three chief types: (1) the Wharton School, which has a curriculum of four years parallel to that of the college and which is essentially an undergraduate school; (2) the Harvard School of Business Administration, which has a two- years’ curriculum of a frankly graduate character; and (3) the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth, which admits students at the end of the junior year and carries them through a two-years course. No one of these types approved itself to the committee.
The Wharton School plan seemed to be open to criticism from several points of view. As a purely undergraduate school it necessarily becomes a rival to the college and to the extent that it succeeds, it is likely to weaken the college. In the second place, it begins professional or technical work at too early a period, whereas the whole tendency of recent development in the United States is to relegate the professional or technical education to a somewhat later stage. The change that has been going on during the last few years in the Engineering Schools and other Schools of Applied Science affords ample evidence of this tendency. What is needed in this country is a broad foundation for the technical or professional class, and the School of Business needs as broad a foundation as we are coming to demand for other professional schools. Thirdly, a purely undergraduate school of business excludes the possibility of any pronounced extension of the graduate or research courses, which are coming to be as important in applied economics as they are in pure economics. A four-years’ undergraduate curriculum in business courses virtually exhausts the subject and leaves practically nothing for the research student. It was largely for these reasons that the Wharton School type was discarded as a model.
On the other hand the Harvard type seemed to be open to criticism for opposite reasons. In the first place, the requirement of a college degree for entrance renders such a school impotent to serve the public which is clamoring for admission in large centers like New York. Comparatively few men who intend to go into business can afford, whether from the material or from any other point of view, to wait until they are twenty-four or twenty-five years of age before entering upon a practical business career. And it is questionable whether even a few captains of industry will be recruited from this class. A purely graduate school which can never expect more than a handful of students is thus abandoning its opportunity to serve the public in the largest measure. In the second place, not only must such a school from the very nature of the case be numerically insignificant, but it seems to be based upon an erroneous pedagogical principle. It is now rather widely recognized that the movement inaugurated by President Eliot a generation ago went too far for the best interests of American education. In attempting to convert the American college into a university, he ignored the fact that the principles of academic freedom—freedom of the student as well as freedom of the teacher—are applicable in full measure only to a real university doing advanced or research work. Moreover, although by pulling up, as he thought, the American college, to a higher or university level, he advanced the age of graduation to about twenty-two, he at the same time made the attainment of the college degree a prerequisite to professional or research work. The college thus came to occupy the contradictory position of a university and of something less than a university. The consequences soon disclosed themselves. As soon as the demands of the public for a better medical and legal preparation became imperious, the complications began; for the medical school course was gradually lengthened to five years, and the law school course to three years, with a possibility of soon becoming four years. To make, as was now done, entrance to the professional schools conditional upon a college degree therefore meant that the young lawyer could not begin his life’s work before the age of twenty-five or twenty-six and the young doctor before the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight.
This is an intolerable situation, which exists nowhere else in the civilized world and which it is out of the question to think will permanently continue in the United States. The first step away from this difficulty was taken by Columbia some twenty years ago when it introduced the so-called combined course into the professional schools, permitting the saving of at least one year. This combined-course idea rapidly spread throughout the country and is now adopted by most of the leading universities, barring a few conservative institutions in the East. A slight modification of this system was later introduced at Columbia in the Schools of Engineering, Mining, and Chemistry, which were put upon a basis of advanced standing requiring three years of college work for entrance, thus making possible a combined course of six years from entrance into the college up to the acquirement of the professional degree. Even this, however, was gradually found to be inadequate; and before long not only the School of Medicine but the School of Architecture, and the School of Journalism opened professional courses to students who had completed two years of college work.
By many it was recognized that here is the proper dividing line between the ordinary cultural and preparatory courses on the one hand, and the technical or professional courses on the other. To those who hold to this opinion, it seems entirely probable that sooner or later the combined or Columbia plan, which has now spread throughout the country, will be replaced by the newer or still more distinctive Columbia plan, which is in harmony not only with the educational practice of the rest of the world, but with sound educational theory. The Harvard School of Business Administration, therefore, appeared to the committee to embody the same erroneous principle which had been applied to the law and medical schools. The country has broken away from the Harvard plan in legal and medical education. It seems unlikely that it will follow Harvard in the new form of business education. At all events, the system seemed to be quite inapplicable to conditions at Columbia.
The third type of business school is represented by the Amos Tuck School, which does, indeed, accept the principle of a dividing line below the close of the college curriculum. The Amos Tuck School, however, has turned out to be distinctly restricted in scope and attracts few students outside of Dartmouth itself. What it does is to provide an alternate year for Dartmouth seniors, with an opportunity of proceeding for an additional year. It does not succeed in drawing from other colleges students who have completed three years of college work. Moreover, it suffers from the same defect as the Harvard School in that it offers an inadequate curriculum of only two years in length.
Since therefore none of the existing types seemed to be either suitable to Columbia conditions or in harmony with sound pedagogical principles, it was decided to put the dividing line between college and professional work at the end of the second year, largely for the reasons mentioned above. Students will therefore be admitted to the Columbia School who have completed two years of college work or its equivalent, and the School of Business will be put on the same basis as the Medical School, the School of Architecture, and the School of Journalism. This arrangement makes possible the attainment of several results. In the first place, every student who enters the Business School as a candidate for a degree will be sure of having pursued those general cultural and disciplinary college courses which are considered obligatory upon every cultivated man in Europe as in America. In the second place, on this broad basis there will be erected a carefully devised professional or technical curriculum after the completion of which the graduate can enter upon his business career at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three,—about the ordinary age abroad. In the third place, the three-year course, which is midway between the exaggerated four-year Wharton course and the inadequate two-year Harvard and Amos Tuck courses, will permit a comprehensive and well-rounded sequence of studies. The type of school finally adopted thus seems to combine a maximum of advantages with a minimum of defects. It will moreover enable the School to serve much more varied classes of students than can be found in any other type.
Among these classes are, first, students who have spent two years in Columbia College or in some other college of equivalent rank and who are candidates for a degree. It is expected that not a few college students, both at Columbia and elsewhere, who have decided by the end of the second year to pursue a distinctively business career, will enter the new School and thus secure a better preparation for their life work than if they were to continue in a more or less desultory fashion through the remainder of their college career.
In the second place, the School will afford abundant opportunity in its upper reaches for graduate students who desire to prepare themselves for the teaching profession or who are inclined to devote time to purely research courses. Such students will be able to combine a more technical or professional course in the School of Business with graduate courses given in the School of Political Science, and there will therefore be offered for the first time in the United States a unique combination of pure and of applied science, or of theoretical and of practical economics, which will doubtless turn out to be fruitful of results.
In the third place, the School will afford an opportunity to graduates of high schools, who for some reason do not desire to go to college, to take courses in the Department of Extension Teaching at Columbia, in either day or evening courses, and to complete work equivalent to that offered by Columbia College in its first two years.
In the fourth place, there are in New York City many men and some women actively engaged in business who are eager to learn more about the real foundation of their business life. Students of this character, if over twenty-one years of age, who have shown their qualifications to undertake certain courses may be admitted as special students in particular subjects, but will, of course, not be candidates for a degree.
It is therefore believed that the type of school finally adopted is the one which will minister most successfully to the needs of the New York public, and which will, at the same time, provide on the broadest possible basis a curriculum which will attract students from all parts of the country.
III
Before we proceed to discuss the curriculum a word must be said about the name of the new institution. Most of the existing institutions are called Schools of Commerce or of Commercial Science. Such an appellation seemed, however, unsatisfactory. For in the first place what is taught in such a school is not primarily science at all, but art; or even if the purely scientific problems may be taken up in the later years of the School, the earlier years must naturally devote themselves primarily to the practical applications. But, more important than this, the term commerce seems to be ill-chosen. There are many problems of business management which have only a slight relation to commerce as such; and the Supreme Court of the United States has told us in a leading decision that insurance is not commerce at all. As in every School of this kind the problems connected with insurance must occupy a prominent place, it seems objectionable to apply a generic name in connection with a particular division to which the generic name is, as we are instructed, wholly inapplicable. On the other hand, some schools call themselves Schools of Business Administration. This title, however, is equally open to criticism. If we object to the term commercial science on the ground that a great part of the work is not science at all, we can equally object to the term business administration on the ground that a great part of the work far transcends purely administrative problems. What such a School has to deal with is the principles underlying business practice, as well as the best method of putting those principles into operation. It is partly science and partly administration; it is more than science and more than administration. Since, therefore, the real object of such a School is to deal with business problems in their varied and comprehensive aspects, it seemed wise to take the simple and obvious name of School of Business. In the Law School we study law; in the Medical School we study medicine; in the School of Architecture we study architecture; in the School of Engineering we study engineering; and consequently the obvious place in which to study business is the School of Business. The name is simple, inclusive, and comprehensive.
When we come to discuss the curriculum of the new School, several points are to be noted. In the first place, an attempt is made to steer between the rigid and fixed curriculum found in some of the American professional schools and the very elastic schemes that are found in the ordinary university courses here and abroad. It was attempted to strike a happy medium by requiring in the first year from all candidates for a degree a certain number of courses aggregating one-half or two-thirds of the whole. Every student who intends to go into business should know something about general economics, accounting, finance and business organization, and should also have a command of some of the foreign languages. When, however, the foundation has been laid in this way, students are allowed a free choice, subject to the condition, however, that their course be approved by the Director. The Director of the School is presumed to have a personal acquaintance with each of the students, and to be able in person or through delegation to give to each proper advice. Students who desire to have a general business course will find such a curriculum mapped out for them. Others who may prefer to specialize will find a sequence of courses in a variety of subjects: accounting, banking, finance, transportation, commerce and trade, business organization and management, manufactures, advertising and salesmanship, and the like. At the end of the second year, the degree of Bachelor of Science will be awarded so that those who do not care to defer their entrance into a practical business career may start in at the age of the ordinary college graduate. It is expected, however, that a large proportion of the students will continue for a third year, at the end of which the Master’s degree will be conferred.
This third year, it is hoped, will be the most valuable, as it will be the most unique, year in the School. It will correspond approximately to the clinical year which is now being added to our best medical schools. It goes without saying that in the City of New York, the centre of American wealth, the business problems are on a particularly gigantic scale and of a specially intricate character. It is proposed to make the courses in this third year not alone research courses in the more refined and difficult principles underlying business practice, but also practical courses where each student will have an opportunity of intimate personal contact with business life. Arrangements have already been made with the National City Bank whereby a certain number of students will be afforded an opportunity to prepare themselves for the service of the Bank in foreign fields. It is proposed to broaden and generalize these opportunities so that ultimately every student will be enabled and expected to do some field work in that particular department of business life in which he is especially interested. In almost every phase of “big business” in New York today the need is experienced for more expert and thorough training; and it is hoped in the advanced courses of the School to bring about a close cooperation between the corps of instructors on the one hand and the business community on the other. It is here that the School of Business will find an unexampled opportunity and perform an unexampled service. Just as the finest medical schools can exist only where there are the greatest hospitals, that is, in the large centres of population, so the most successful schools of business in the future may be expected to be found in the great centres of business life.
In order to accomplish these results and to realize the expectations which have been formed, it goes without saying that the new School of Business must be put on the highest possible standard of educational efficiency. So far as the students are concerned, this result has been guaranteed by the determination to make the scholastic standard as high as it is in the other departments of Columbia. We are fortunate in having in Dr. Egbert, as Director of the School, a man who is not only one of the great administrators in the country, but who has shown in both the Summer Session and the Extension work his adherence to these high standards. The continually growing reputation of those phases of the work to which Dr. Egbert has hitherto addressed himself are the surest guarantee of success in this new field.
High standards, however, depend not only upon the student body, but upon the corps of instructors. In order to avoid the difficulty which has unfortunately been experienced by so many American institutions, it is proposed that a professor must have one at least of two qualifications. If he is recruited from the academic ranks, he must possess the degree of Ph.D., to show that he has attained the highest academic honors, together with a reasonable business experience or an acquaintance with actual business problems. If, on the other hand, he is selected from the ranks of those who have devoted themselves primarily to business, he must not only have written a book which is an acknowledged authority in its field, but must give evidence of ability successfully to present the subject to the professional student. Although the corps of instructors is by no means entirely complete, it will be found that the selection has in every case been in accordance with the above considerations. The numerous additions to the teaching staff which are being planned for in the near future are confidently expected to conform to the same high principles.
Thus from every point of view, we feel that the problem has been carefully considered and solved with a reasonable hope of success. In the character of the student body, in the selection of the present and future teaching force, in the rounded sequence of courses, in the judicious union of practical and research work, in the rich possibilities of cooperation with the other departments of the University and the business life of the community, and last but not least, in the tried administrative experience of the Director, we have reason to believe that we possess a unique combination of factors which cannot fail to put the Columbia School of Business in the front rank of similar institutions here and abroad.
Source: Columbia University Quarterly, Volume XVIII, June 1916, pp. 241-252.
Image Source: From American Economic Review, 1943.
