DEAN DONHAM REPORTS ON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Calling attention to the tremendous increase in size of the undergraduate business schools of the United States during the past two years, and to the competition to which these schools are subjecting the older four-year liberal arts course, Dean Wallace Brett Donham '99, of the Graduate School of Business Administration, says in his annual report, made public today, that "the future integrity of the old-fashioned college courses depends to an extent little realized" upon graduate school of business, such as that at the University.

Dean Donham stated that the inadequate housing of the Graduate School of Business Administration, its limited endowment, and its rapid growth will probably make it necessary in the near future to limit the number of students admitted to the School. "The alternative", he continued, "would be a reduction in educational standards. It will be, however, a source of most serious regret if the opportunity here given to college graduates to lesson the difficulties of the transition from college to business must be long denied to any properly prepared candidates.

Business Training for College Graduates

"If opportunities such as are offered here are closed to competent college graduates, there will be inevitably an increased tendency for men who intend to enter business to substitute for the regular college course, programs which are partly in Liberal Arts and partly vocational. Such courses are now offered in many institutions, and while we are thoroughly convinced of the wisdom of such combined college and business courses for men who would otherwise not go to college at all, it is of major importance that the best preparation for business should be open to the man who takes a full four-year liberal course.

"This is peculiarly the function of our School, as it is the only school in the country where the college graduate may get his business training among men of like maturity in a university operating its business school solely as a graduate school. We can hardly shirk the responsibilities so presented and provision should be made at once for such growth in numbers as the situation may lead to. The school must be equipped with an adequate building and an enlarged staff."

Dean Donham states that more than twenty of the universities and colleges of the country, including most of the larger institutions, have new well organized courses or departments for the teaching of business. "The enrollment of all the collegiate business schools in the country prior to 1910 was so small that it was a negligible factor in our educational system," reports Mr. Donham. "After that year there was a considerable growth, but the striking increase is literally in the academic year 1919-20. Several of the leading schools this year had entering classes from 50 to 100 percent larger than ever before, and their total enrollment runs into the thousands. The development seems likely to be not toward fewer students, but toward still further radical increase in numbers in the near future.

Business Displacing Profession

"Business has displaced the professions of the ministry, medicine and the law as the occupational choice of a large and increasing percentage of college graduates, but while schools of theology, medicine and law have been of recoginized value for many years, until very recently no effective method of training for the transition from college to business had been devised. Yet this transition is unquestionably more difficult than the similar transition from the technical school to the engineering positions. In the ministry, the law, and the medicine, experience has proved that the shortest and most effctive way to absorb the fundamental facts, principles, and standards of the particular profession and to prepare for its practice is in a good school. The busy practitioner of any profession has neither the time, the specialized training, nor the equipment for the systematic instruction of beginners. This is particularly true of business men. In a very real sense rapid training for executive positions is possible to most men only under controlled conditions such as may be found in a competent school."

In his report Dean Donham discusses at length the development of the problem method of instruction in the school, which is similar to the case system of study originated at Harvard and employed now in most law schools, and also emphasizes the new five-year program in engineering administration which is being jointly conducted by the Business School and the Harvard Engineering School