"On Test": Postgraduate Training of Engineers at General Electric, 1892-1961

Abstract

The General Electric Student Engineering Program ("the Test") was a pioneering effort at entry-level trainii HE GREAT ing the electrical manufacturing industry. No mere extension of, or model for, college training, it sought not to educate, but to initiate, indoctrinate, and select. Through rotating assignments, it initiated the employee into a new work environment that stressed job completion and results, not learning experiences. It indoctrinated the employee with the company's values and it helped the company select future leaders. A review of the antecedents of the program in the early electrical manufacturing industry of the 1880s and 1890s, the evolution of the program in the early decades of the twentieth century, the extension of the program into advanced engineering education, and the ultimate maturity and decline of the program demonstrates that it was shaped by economics, images of engineering professionalism, and the managerial and ideological needs of a large corporation-not by theories of education, however valid.