Higher Education and Business Standards

by Willard E. Hotchkiss

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. 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.

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. The result of his study would be set forth in dignified readable English which an intelligent layman could comprehend and which would make the article acceptable for publication in a journal of standing.

Professional study of business, then, should give students a comprehensive many-sided survey of business and a thorough grasp of scientific method as used in analyzing business facts. It should prepare the student to think complicated business problems through to the end and to put the results of his thinking together into an effective working plan. Finally, it should maintain an atmosphere in which business problems are regarded in a large and public-spirited way.

We are well under way with professional training for business; but if students fail to get the general educational foundation for it, it will not accomplish the best results. If the two, three, or four years of college study is regarded as something purely ornamental and irrelevant, while they are getting it, if it fails to arouse an appreciation both of scientific method and of human values, or if these values are thought of as something to forget when the student comes to the analysis of practical problems, the university will not have done what it might do for the promotion of high standards of efficiency in business.

In all of the discussions I have tried to point out how emphasis in business is gradually shifting from acquisition, to production and service; how there are gradually evolving in business, professional standards of fitness, of conduct, and of motive; and how more and more these standards enter into the measuring of business success. Our educational assumptions still rest too largely on the old dollar standard of success with its well-known inferences about the blood-and-iron equipment with which that success can be attained.

Psychologists tell us that we tend to get what we expect. If we fail to create enthusiasm for the opportunity for service in business; if we assume that young persons who enter business are going to measure their returns in dollars alone; or if we continue to feature, as we have done, the break between the so-called "cultural" and the professional parts of the university course, there will be danger that we shall continue to get the thing for which we plan.

There can be no doubt that many of our old assumptions about the relative dignity and social distinction attaching to different kinds of study, as well as the assumption of a purely mercenary motive in business, have impeded a wholesome reaction between higher education and business standards. These assumptions have created an atmosphere—an objective and subjective attitude of mind, a set of motives and desires, of appreciations and valuations, all of which stand in the way of the most far-reaching educational results.

So far as these assumptions can be rationally explained, they rest on ideas that are in part mistaken, in part exaggerated, and in part obsolete. 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.

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. As preparation for executive work comes to be generally recognized as an appropriate field for systematic professional study, the standards that scientific method has already achieved will become fixed and better standards of business efficiency and service will emerge.

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
U · S · A