U tNIVERSITY training for business has come of age. Even a comparatively young institution, like our own, has already had 23 years of experimenting with the big problem of fitting a college program to modern business needs. It is certainly time that we take stock and make a complete survey of our past program and record, and also, a new curriculum for the future, based upon the experience of the past. We appreciate the privilege of being permitted to discuss our problems on the same program with the oldest and best-known of America's collegiate schools of business. Besides the contrast between infancy and middle age, the environment or setting is equally diverse. Philadelphia, the ancient capital of American culture and refinement and the present center of American industry and trade, contrasts sharply with Denver, the small frontier city. We venture to hope that we also exemplify some of the virtues of the pioneer. It is most fortunate for us all that the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, organized in i88i, and with more than I,670 graduates replying to their questionnaire, has recently made a careful statistical study of the records of these graduates and of their opinions about university training for business, based upon their own actual experience in business. If we are scientifically minded, we should not be wholly unprepared to see some of our most cherished delusions overturned. But, we do hope that our friendly enemies of the liberal arts forces may not derive too much aid and comfort from our confusion. We who try to uphold the gospel of a business education for a business career all know too well how it feels to be under suspicion of the heresy of commercialism. We well remember the sly jokes at Soldiers' Field when the stage was set for congratulations and compliments. We have heard similar whisperings on other campuses. Wharton finds, for instance, that most of their students did not know, upon registration, their own occupational preference; that, of those who did express an occupational preference, less than half actually followed the specialized curriculum designed to meet their needs,
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Mar 1, 1953
Norman S Fink 
Open Access
