Happy Experiment

Probably those liberals who were around when the Business School was founded in 1908 expected it to degenerate into a fortress of reaction, sending forth grim-mouthed young capitalists, armed with a bull whips with which to scourge labor. But the School has, happily, avoided the pitfalls and temptations to which any incubator for young executives is heir; and now, when it is being given over completely to the needs of the armed forces, it can safely be called one of Harvard's most successful experiments.

Many of the School's innovations were indeed bits of derring-do in the field of business training. It introduced the case system, which tries to give men an idea of the innumerable industrial activities they can eventually engage in. It offered courses in human problems in industrial management, thereby discouraging a purely mechanistic, little-cog-in-a-big-machine approach to Big Business. And, the School sought to demonstrate to the fledglings that their responsibility was to their government as well as to their company. Visitors who came to look in on the new methods found classrooms concerned with public administration in addition to such standard things as the big companies' graphs.

With this comprehensive training in government and business, the Master of Business Administration could almost hand-pick his career. When the Business School announces at some future time that it is open to applications, it will undoubtedly be swamped with them and deservedly so.