Business Education in the Colleges
FOUR deans agreed recently that schools of business have an important task ahead - to provide the nation with a philosophical understanding of what is today called business. Attempts made previously to describe the business system, notably those of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, are inadequate-primarily because of their failure to recognize completely and take into account the complexity of motivations involved in the workings of business enterprises. The business schools need to bridge the intellectual gap, to provide the theoretical structure for the institutions of business.
This challenge to the schools was made at the 1955 annual meeting of the Amos Tuck School Clearing House, New York branch, held on March 8. Participants in the panel discussion were Dean Courtney Brown '26, of the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University; Dean G. Rowland Collins of the School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance, New York University; Dean Thomas L. Norton '23, of the Bernard Baruch School of Business and Public Administration, City College of New York, and Dean Arthur Upgren of the Tuck School. The moderator was Lawrence Fertig, economist and columnist. The panel discussion on "Business Education in the Colleges - Is It Doing Its Job?" was arranged by Orton H. Hicks '21.
Dean Brown saw a dual function in the job of business education: (1) Training young men and women for positions of increasing responsibility in the business world - a task in which over-specialization needs to be avoided and in which professional subjects need to be taught in a liberal fashion and in a liberal tradition. This is the broadening side of business education. (2) The second function is to describe more adequately than has been done to date the field of economics and business - which operates with different motives than Adam Smith attributed to the single entrepreneur. Here the challenge for business schools is to develop an adequate philosophy of enterprise.
Dean Collins found no categorical answer to the question of the job being done by business education and asserted that more was unknown about this job than was currently known. Business schools need to develop and justify answers to three criticisms: (1) "Business does not belong in the curriculum, no matter how well offered," (2) "colleges should separate the tasks of making a life and making a living," and (3) "graduate education in business may be satisfactory, but undergraduate is not."
Since ours is a technical society in which business institutions are dominant, there need be no apology for studying business, according to Dean Collins. Further, he saw the struggle of business education to gain acceptance as analogous to the earlier struggle of the physical sciences to gain a position in the curriculum. Graduate schools need not apologize for vocational and specialized education, since such is the purpose of all graduate schools. It is in the undergraduate school that the student needs to examine the philosophical core of the subject, learning the practices of living and the philosophy of these practices that go into the art of making a life.
Dean Norton expressed the view that the job of business education is to get away from the domination of economics as a parent discipline. He asked what are the sources of knowledge of business and its ways? Business education needs breadth and broadening to the applications of sociology, psychology and political science.
After mentioning various types of institutions, undergraduate colleges as well as graduate schools offering broad or specialized training, Dean Upgren went on to examine the task of the Tuck School. The limits in size of the Tuck School are in accordance with the major aims of (1) self-education and (2) independent work rather than the absorption of organized statements of a teacher and a textbook. These goals require close attention to the student's individual development and are furthered by the instructional method of giving the man practice in analysis of the functions of the business system. Allied with the aim of self-education is the attempt to expose the student to the horizons of business - to the relationship of business institutions to social, political and cultural institutions. An objective is to have the student come out as a better citizen as well as a man capable of assuming positions of increasing responsibility in business.
Mr. Fertig emphasized that a primary job of business education is to give the student a proper training for success in the business world. He felt that as a minimum graduates should certainly be competent in the technical functions of business. Beyond that, the student needs to have a liberal education in the philosphy of enterprise. Marx's view of business enterprise as a system of exploitation has not been successfully combated and still has influence.
In summary, Dean Brown noted that Marxian terminology still predominates. In view of its inadequacy to describe the real world of business affairs, a repointing, a recapitulation, is a prime need. This restatement is a serious task of business education.
PANEL MEMBERS and alumni officers at the Tuck School Clearing House meeting inNew York, March 8. Front row (l to r): Dean Arthur Upgren of Tuck School; Charles F.McGougrhran '20, Secretary, Sinclair Oil Corp.; Courtney Brown '26, Dean, GraduateSchool 'of Business, Columbia University; Thomas L. Norton '23, Dean The BernardBaruch School of Business and Public Administration, City College of New York Backrow (l to r): G. Harry Chamberlaine T'22, president, New York Clearing House; MalcolmMcLoud T'47, Sales Manager, U. S. Rubber Co.; B. V. Brooks, Jr. T'49 Secretary, NewYork Clearing House; Sumner B. Emerson '17, partner, Morgan Stanley &Co and Overseer of Tuck School; Lawrence Fertig, columnist and economist; Robert P. Fisher T' 48,Vice President, George F. Fisher, Inc.; G. Rowland Collins, Dean, School of Commerce,Accounts and Finance, New York University.
