102 NAVAL OFFICERS STUDYING WAR RECONVERSION PROBLEM

Now assuming greater importance than ever, the Business School's Navy War Administration Course, only Navy training of its kind in the United States, is entering its second year. Under the direction of Malcolm P. McNair, professor of Marketing, who is responsible for developing the curriculum and supervising the program, 20 of the Business School's 100 civilian faculty members are engaged in the instruction of 102 officers stationed with this unit.

According to a statement by Navy officials, the aim of the course is ". . . to train Supply Corps Officers to analyze business situations to the end that the Navy's surplus disposal and war adjustment program may be handled with the same degree of care and judgment that is required by sound business practices."

National Significance

The importance of the course is not solely Naval, for it will have a telling effect on the country at large. Upon completion of the four-month course these officers will be making decisions and taking action which may well have far reaching implications on the future of individual industrial companies employing thousands of people.

Five hundred sixty-eight officers, have taken the four-month course since its inception on June 1, 1945, when it was set up under the direction of the Chief of the Navy Bureau of Supplies and Accounts and the Director of the Navy Material Redistribution and Disposal Administration.

Contract Termination Is Crux

The curriculum of the course, which is being adjusted continually to reflect changes in field operations, consists of classes in problems of surplus disposal, cost analysis, government problems in war adjustment. Navy and industrial termination problems, and Navy appropriation and store accounting. The course as a whole deals with problems of Navy and industrial organization, with the economic problems, of the transition period, the operation of government controls in the transition economy, and with government policies controlling the termination of industrial contracts and the reconversion of the country's industrial Organization.

The officers entered in the course fall, in general, into two classifications. The first and by far the largest is composed of Lieutenant Commanders and Lieutenants who have completed an average of 20 to 24 months at sea or service at foreign bases, with a second group made up of officers between the ages of 35 and 40 who have recently been commissioned by the Navy on the basis of their specialized business experience.

In addition to having served overseas, men in the first group are not only college graduates, but had several years of business experience before enlisting in the Navy. Following enlistment and prior to overseas assignment, they completed a four-month course in the Navy Supply Corps School, which is located at the Business School and is operated by a Navy faculty under the command of Captain Kenneth C. McIntosh, USN