Education for Management

The 62-year storyof Amos Tuck School

In June of 1901 Dartmouth's Tuck School - the first graduate school of business administration in the United States - granted degrees to the three young men who made up the first graduating class. One of those men entered railroading at an annual salary of $540; a second joined the American Trading Company at a yearly salary of $416; and the third was employed by Dartmouth College at $600 a year. This month 73 Tuck men will receive their Master of Business Administration degrees. Each of them will have had his choice of a variety of jobs and their annual wages in the first year after graduation will range from $6300 to $B400.

These are striking facts. But they are only gross indicators of the changes in American business enterprise and education over the past sixty years. They are, as well, only rough measures of the foresight and wisdom that went into the founding of the Tuck School in 1900.

From the vantage point of 1962, the world into which those first Tuck graduates moved seems relatively uncomplicated. But to two forward-looking men of that day - one a scholar and educator, the other an international financier and patron of the arts - the signs were clear: Business was becoming increasingly important in American culture and there would be a growing need for young men educated to assume leadership in the business world. At the end of the nineteenth century President William Jewett Tucker of Dartmouth saw that liberal arts graduates were turning away from the traditional career choices of the law, medicine, the ministry, and teaching, and were turning more and more toward careers in business. To his friend, Edward Tuck, Class of 1862, he proposed the establishment of the "Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance" at Dartmouth. Together, the two men mapped out the basic concepts which were to serve as a guide for more detailed planning. Mr. Tuck in 1899 provided funds for making the school a reality, as a memorial to his father, the Honorable Amos Tuck of the Class of 1835.

Prof. Karl A. Hill '3B, who came to the Tuck School in 1946 and became Dean in 1957, points out today that "few leaders in education or in business in 1900 shared the faith Mr. Tucker and Mr. Tuck had in the growing need for broadly educated men in management." That faith has been abundantly justified over the past six decades and, Dean Hill adds, "in spite of the vast changes which have taken place both in American business and in education for business, the basic objectives of Tuck School have remained remarkably close to the pattern set by its founders. The primary aim in 1900, as it is today, was to give the student a broad and solid base on which he could build - to provide him with analytical tools, skills, and attitudes toward learning that would help him not only in his first job but make him a better executive thirty years later as well."

An interesting account of the first two decades of graduate education in management appears in Pierson's book, TheEducation of American Businessmen.1 The author notes that as other colleges and universities followed Dartmouth into the field the new schools faced many problems in trying to tailor their curriculums to meet the immediate needs of the business world. Before World War I many of these new schools overemphasized specific areas of business practice, losing sight of the original objectives of this kind of education and lowering academic standards. Dartmouth kept its head, however, and, according to Piers on, "The Tuck School probably went further than any other institution in the prewar period in putting its work on a demanding intellectual level." By the end of World War I the "Tuck pattern" was firmly established and many of the new business schools settled down to follow that pattern.

Tuck Today

In a variety of ways the Tuck School of 1962 would be unrecognizable to the three men who attended those first classes in 1900. At the turn of the century the Tuck student roomed in dormitories along with undergraduates. He shared his faculty and classrooms with the College students and he had no library of his own. He had only two classmates and the only thing that distinguished him from a Dartmouth undergraduate was the fact that he was, after all, a "Tuck man."

Today Tuck Drive and the School's campus are highlights on any scenic tour of Dartmouth. The handsome buildings and wide lawns overlook the Connecticut River and Vermont hills and the visitor senses a brisk purpose in the young men who live and work there.

The 1962 man still has access to the College library and faculty, but in addition he has a faculty of some eighteen scholars whose teaching interests and efforts focus on the Tuck School alone; he has annual contact with as many as fifty visiting lecturers from other educational institutions and from business, labor, and government; he spends much of his time on the Tuck grounds - a campus comp lete with dormitories, dining hall, administration building, classrooms and laboratories, and a fine technical library.* What's more, the 1962 man has 162 fellow students with whom to share the distinction of being a "Tuck man."

Keeping pace with these physical signs of growth and change have been equally dramatic changes in the curriculum, in faculty research and teaching, and in the problems which the students face.

The Teaching at Tuck

The School's academic program has continuously struck a balance between influences from the past and visions of the future. While many of the guide lines which have shaped the program are provided by history, the faculty has constantly adjusted the curriculum to reflect the changing technology and environment of the world of business practice. Throughout the School's history the societal, political, and economic environment of business and its executives has rec eived major attention. In recent years this emphasis has been increased not only in courses dealing with elements of business administration but also in new courses. To a substantial degree the mat erials included in these new courses have been developed by members of the Tuck faculty.

The chart on page 21 presents an outline of Tuck's present two-year M.B.A. program. The courses with time-honored names have undergone their share of changes in content and method - witn ess the marriage of Accounting and Fin ance. But change is most dramatically illustrated by the many course titles which have appeared in the Tuck catalogue only in the past ten years. Some highlights are these:

BUSINESS AND SOCIETY: An analysis of the differing political, social, and economic environments in which the businessman has operated and a study of the growing responsibilities facing the company and its leaders.

BUSINESS POLICY: A study of policy formulation and action at the highest corporate levels; an analysis of the role and function of the board of directors and chief executive; the integration of functional specialties with broad objectives of the enterprise.

ADMINISTRATION: A study of psychological and sociological factors in organizational life; the effects of personality, human relationships, organization structure, and technology on the management of change in a business firm; the diagnosis of decision problems involving human elements.

MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS: An examination of the use of micro-economic tools to analyze the behavior of firms in a modern economy.

CASE ANALYSIS AND WRITTEN EXPRESSION: A course to teach facility in written expression, analytical skills, and the integration of concepts from various functional courses, by demanding a series of written analyses of case problems throughout the first year.

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS FOR DECISIONS: A study of decision making under conditions of uncertainty, using concepts and tools of finite mathematics and Baysian statistics. A critical examination of the logic and limitations of concepts of probability, conditional and expected values, cost models, and the criterion of minimizing expected cost.

BUSINESS DATA AND DECISIONS: A cross-disciplinary approach to cost accounting, alternative choice problems, and electronic data processing.

TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT: A forward look at the major changes the student can expect in the future technical and managerial environment of industry. A look in depth at research and development programs and their evaluation.

TOPICS IN OPERATIONS RESEARCH: An introduction to linear programming, game theory, dynamic programming, queuing theory, and simulation.

TAXATION AND BUSINESS POLICY: A study of today's Federal tax policy and its influence on business decisions.

MARKETING RESEARCH: An examination of modern programs of gathering and interpreting data relative to the variety of problems faced by marketing managers.

Tuck's faculty has managed, to an impressive degree, to coordinate its teaching efforts so that the work being done in each course calls upon the knowledge and techniques mastered in other courses. Traditional subject matter, under this method, is treated not as isolated areas of knowledge, but as branches of a broader subject: management. The size of the faculty is small enough to encourage cooperation and allow flexibility, and it is large enough to have a varied representation from all relevant fields of academic interest.

The student-faculty ratio of approximately 10 to 1 is an important factor in making possible this integration of teaching and the relatively small size of the student body implements the School's exceptionally strong student-faculty relationships. Tuck's teachers have many opportunities to meet with small groups and to work closely with individuals. Students and faculty alike find this stimulating and one example of the enthusiasm with which the two groups get together is high attendance at the daily half-hour coffee break in the School's dining hall.

Professors use many teaching methods at Tuck, in various combinations. The case study method has been widely used, and one of its recent adaptations has been in simulating the activities of business firms, using a computer-based business game. Regardless of specific teaching forms, one of the most persistent hallmarks of Tuck is extensive student participation in class discussion.

Faculty Research

An effective faculty can't be measured solely in terms of its teaching methods and its opportunities to work closely with students. One of the major dilemmas of higher education during the past few decades has been that of the "teacher-scholar." The ideal faculty member is both and many a college and graduate-school administrator has struggled with the problem of helping his teachers to find time and funds to pursue their scholarly interests. In his term as Dean, Pro- fessor Hill has done much to strengthen and encourage faculty research. At the same time he has recruited top-ranking men with broad experience in both teaching and research.

As at most major graduate schools of business, faculty research involves a wide range of subjects of interest to the academic and business worlds. A partial listing of projects in progress at Tuck this year ranges from a study of value systems in decision making to an investigation of the economic consequences of collective bargaining in the auto industry; from a study of the "Molly McGuires"' (an Irish secret society which had great influence in the Pennsylvania coal fields late in the last century) to an investigation of the problems involved in applying new mathematical techniques to the analysis of modern business problems.

The happy union of research and teaching is well illustrated by two Tuck projects in particular: Prof. Kenneth R. Davis has spent two years studying decision making among chief marketing executives in large corporations and this project is leading directly to a revision of his Sales Management course and the introduction of some important findings from the behavioral sciences into his teaching. Prof. J. Brian Quinn has conducted an exhaustive study of the management of research and development activities in industry; one result has been his unique Technology and Management course, in which selected students get rigorous experience in projecting the future's technical and managerial environment.

Most of the projects carried out by Tuck teachers are financed by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. And most of this research eventually leads to publication. Through a series of bulletins and reprints the Tuck, School has, since 1953, distributed over 200,000 copies of 27 research reports to business executives and teachers in other institutions. The steadily growing list of journal articles, books, bulletins, and reports credited to members of the Tuck staff testifies to the vigor and high quality of their work. Dean Hill considers the Sloan Foundation grants the single most important factor in the development of the School in recent years.

Student Financial Aid andCareer Planning

Today's Tuck man, along with his fellow students at other schools, faces two non-academic problems which were undreamed of by his predecessors at the turn of the century. First of these is the cost of his graduate education.

In 1900 tuition, room, and board cost between $300 and $550 per year. Expenses for today's student amount to about $3000 annually. In addition, as Dean Hill points out, "there has been a real shift in public attitudes toward financing graduate education. It's now quite generally accepted that graduate school costs must, to a significant degree, be financed by student loans rather than by parents and friends of students."

George P. Drowne Jr. '33, Tuck's director of admissions and student personnel, reports that currently 38% of Tuck's student body gets financial help from the School, mostly in the form of loans. This kind of aid now amounts to an average of $50,000 a year and is still increasing in volume. When he graduates, the 1962 man who has received loans from the School will have an average indebtedness of $2000 and it will take him about five years to pay it back. During the past three years Dean Hill's office has had a 500% increase in requests for loans and the demand has just about exhausted the School's resources. In order to continue to provide help to qualified students, Tuck is planning to work out arrangements for bank loans at subsidized rates, and the School is seeking additional scholarship and loan funds from individl and corporate donors to meet the needs of incoming students who could not attend graduate school without help.

Another major concern of the 1962 man is that of military service. In the peaceful world of 1901 the new graduate could step directly from the campus to his new office. But 42 of the 73 men who graduate this month have military obligations ahead of them. (Twenty of the remaining men have already completed their military service; the rest are exempt for reasons of marital status, physical disability, or plans to continue graduate school.) For the 42 who still have to serve, their terms will range from six months to five years.

Helping to overcome the disadvantages of such gaps between graduation and entering the business world, the School has recently extended its placement service. This office was originally instituted many years ago as a dual service to the business community in search of promising young men and to new M.B.A.'s in search of jobs. Mr. Drowne reports that more than 100 companies interviewed students at Tuck this year, from all branches of commerce and industry. As a result, the average Tuck graduate chooses among five or six firm job offers. In addition, Tuck maintains an active placement service for alumni. Men coming out of the armed forces are welcome to use the same processes as the graduating M.B.A. Older alumni, interested in relocating, use Mr. Drowne's office to get in touch with companies seeking experienced people. This matching of alumni and new opportunities is an increasingly important function of Tuck's placement service.

The Decade Ahead

Under the guidance of men such as H. S. Person, W. R. Gray '04, H. V. Olsen '22, N. G. Burleigh '11, and A. R. Upgren, leadership in education for management has been the Tuck pattern for more than six decades. Looking forward to the next ten years, Dean Hill remarks that "Tuck has distinctive opportunities and challenges to meet." To formulate plans for development, the School has faculty study groups investigating ways to meet the future's challenges. Aided by reports from a subcommittee of the Dartmouth Trustees Planning Committee, a visiting committee of scholars, and its own Board of Overseers, these faculty groups have been considering several critical issues.

Enrollment Program

One of the aims of the past few years has been to broaden the enrollment base at Tuck, and this goal should be achieved by 1965. Traditionally, over 95% of the first-year students entered as Dartmouth seniors. This year more than 50% of the entering class came with B.A. or B.S. degrees from some twenty other colleges and universities; and the School hopes, within the next three years, to reach a ratio of approximately 25% Dartmouth men to 75% graduates of other schools. Tuck will continue to welcome applications from all qualified Dartmouth juniors, but the shift In balance is designed to convert the School substantially to a postgraduate two-year school.

Along with this conversion goes a plan to increase the size of the student body, from the present level of 165 to 225. This should be reached by 1970, and careful study has shown that the jump in enrollment can be accomplished without new building requirements and with no sacrifice of close student-faculty relationships.

Tuck plans to continue to seek out the best M.B.A. candidates it can find and, realistically, expects that task to become increasingly competitive over the next few years. Dean Hill and Mr. Drowne have set up a program of alumni enrollment committees and campus visits as key parts of the admissions system. Alumni groups in New York, Boston, and Chicago have been appointed to help with student recruitment and individual alumni in these and other cities will also help to attract top candidates for admission to the School.

Beyond the M.B.A.

One faculty group is studying the possibility of a doctoral program at Tuck. To date this committee has surveyed Ph.D. programs at other graduate business schools and has raised caveats for Tuck to consider. Because the School does not want to institute "just another Ph.D. program," the committee has been instructed to recommend against Tuck doctoral work unless it sees a clear way in which Tuck can set up a distinctive program for providing an important new direction in advanced study.

Another group is investigating a variety of ideas for adult education. Nearly all members of Tuck's faculty have taught in management development programs and their accumulated experience has led to great interest in developing a continuing education program at the School. Currently, this study group is attempting to determine what unique contribution Tuck can make in adult education; next they will consider how and when to make such programs part of the School.

Curriculum Change

Recognizing that curriculum planning in professional schools is a major factor in successful education, Tuck has kept its curriculum under continuous review. More than ever in the coming decade such planning will have to be carefully done to prepare students for careers in a fast-moving and fast-changing world. An ad hoc faculty committee under the leadership of Associate Dean John Hennessey has been working on a major study of the first-year program. This study will result in a proposal for a model curriculum to serve for the next five years. The committee has already endorsed this year's experiment in tailoring the length of a course to its content, ignoring term boundaries, so that course materials are emphasized in proportion to their roles in the total curriculum rather than stretched out or truncated to fit the academic calendar.

This committee's work has also encouraged plans for revising several key courses and changing the sequence of courses. Out of its work is coming a proposal to add a required first-year course in Professor Broehl's area of Business and Society, with some focus on the world role of American business. The final report probably will contain recommendations for new prerequisites for Tuck's M.B.A. program. Recently, for example, the group has been giving special attention to the question of requiring student preparation in finite mathematics.

Next September a high-speed electronic computer will be installed at Tuck, to meet the growing needs of faculty research and teaching. With this new facility there will be increased emphasis on the use of the computer in teaching in such fields as accounting, finance, and statistics. Experimentation with business games as a special teaching device will also be accelerated.

Finally, the faculty will be studying several possibilities for introducing new learning experiences not provided by course work. It is hoped that special reading programs may be introduced, and ideas for student internships in business and public affairs are being considered.

Science, Engineering, and Management

The School is also searching out new ways of meeting the special needs of M.B.A. candidates with scientific or engineering backgrounds during the next decade. Building on experience gained in the combined Tuck-Thayer program in engineering and business administration offered since 1942, Tuck is hoping to broaden its work with such students and is planning to develop a program which gives science and technical graduates a broad exposure to management, with curriculum emphases appropriate for men with strong backgrounds in mathematics, science, and engineering.

Financing the Future

The discussion above indicates some of the directions in which Tuck will be moving during the next few years. Since each of these opportunities for continued leadership carries with it a need for increased operating funds, a look at the present financial base of the School may be in order. Today Tuck draws its income from three main sources: tuition (48%), unrestricted gifts and endowment income, including a share of Alumni Fund income (38%), and grants for research and related activities (14%).

To meet the anticipated increases in operating costs, two steps will be necessary: upward adjustments in tuition (present tuition is $1550) and a broader base of corporate and individual contributions to support the School's programs. In recent months, Tuck men have been discussing these needs with alumni and with corporate officials interested in the School and its continued development. The current academic year marked the start of Tuck's first active program for soliciting funds from corporations, financial institutions, other business firms, and individuals and foundations interested in education for management. Research monies, course development costs, and student loan funds are being given priority in this initial effort.

Since the turn of the century the Tuck School's success has depended on several factors: the leadership of the College Trustees and administration, the wisdom and abilities of its faculty, the quality of its students, and its financial strength. Today more than at any other time in its 62-year history, the School's ability to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future rests on its capacity to obtain the financial support necessary for continued leadership in education for management.

1 Pierson, et al., New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1959. This book is the result of a study supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation and is part of the series entitled "The Carnegie Series in American Education."

* Mr. Tuck's original gift provided for the erection and equipment of "Tuck Hall," for the use of the School and allied departments. This building, completed in 1904, served as headquarters for the School until the close of the year 1929-30. In 1929 Mr. Tuck made an additional gift for a separate group of buildings for the exclusive use of the School. The original "Tuck Hall" is now known as McNutt Hall and houses College classrooms and the College Placement and Student Counselling offices.

Prof. Karl A. Hill '38 (r), Dean of Tuck School, with Prof. John W. Hennessey Jr.,Associate Dean, who is currently directing a study of the School's curriculum.

The daily coffee break assembles students and faculty in St ell Hall.

The student-faculty relationships mentioned in the article areexemplified here in Professor Louis O. Foster's classroom.

The lecturer is Prof. J. Brian Quinn whose research dealswith the impact of technology upon industrial management.

Tuck students get the chance to visitnearby industries, watch operations, andtalk to the production men on the job.