Education and Careers
THE proper influence of intended career on education has entered a further stage of public reflection with the formation of an Oxford Society and with recent letters to The Times. Sir Robert Waley-Cohen and Sir Francis Goodenough, regretting the present dearth of business leaders, have urged that young men of intellect will only cease to look down on business as a career when they themselves are treated with more consideration by business men. The Chairman of the Headmasters' Conference repudiated the suggestion that the Public School boy of to-day regarded business as in any way beneath him, and dwelt on the obstacles put in the way of entering business by the absence of some central recruiting agency such as the Civil Service Commission. This complaint, according to the Headmaster of Stowe Lnd the Minister of Labour, hardly did justice to the achievements of the Headmasters' Employment Com- mittee and the Public School Careers' Association. Sir Robert Witt, Vice-Chairman of the Institute of Industrial Psychology, Professor Bowie and Mr. Jules Meneken, Head of the Department of Business Adminis- tration, London School of Economics, explained respec- t ively the help the Institute could offer to those uncertain of their bent, the unique combination of qualities required in business, and the use now being made in this country of the Case Method of Business Instruction.
On the wide range of subject here represented, we hope during the next few months to throw new light from -various angles. Meanwhile, preliminary fog can be dispelled by rescue of the matter from the region of benign aspiration in which it is left by such catch- words as " the right man in the right place," and even by such an otherwise helpful report as that of the Com- mittee on Education for Salesmanship. Distinct objectives must be recognized at once, as must the controversies that the business of reaching most of them involves ; the separate problems of " Training " and " Placing," first in business and then in other careers ; the difficulty experienced by business in securing the best man, or at any rate the man that it thinks it would like most. These are largely questions of mechanism, but behind them lurk others where there is little common ground. Here we will confine ourselves to two aspects of the discussion. How far can training for Business, as distinct from other careers, be effective, and if effective, how far legitimate ? And how is business to get a larger share than at present of the best that our Universities produce ?
But first a few inadequate words on Placing from the Universities. Appointments Boards have pro- gressed at varying speeds. At Cambridge individual genius and in London peculiar chances of contact have accomplished what has proved beyond the power of Oxford handicapped for lack of funds. Oxford has most leeway to make up, and she is at the moment the most constructive in outlook. The new Oxford Society deserves every penny it can collect for these as for its other pur- poses.
The problems connected with training for business are brought to a head in examining the Department of Business Administration founded in 1930 with generous assistance from business and from the Institute of Industrial Psychology. The Department which selects its students either from graduates or from employees seconded by appreciative firms is passing through an experimental and most interesting period. At present it claims for its courses purely vocational value (though it should be remembered that it teaches not only business in the narrow sense of Commercial Law, &c., but Business Administration, with the emphasis laid on the managerial aspect of the latter). The present prospectus, however, does not set a limit on the hopes of its faculty. They hold, and their experience is confirming belief, that there is after all a science of Business Management inchoate, not yet worked out, but with principles accessible to research. If and when those principles stand revealed, instruction in Business Management will provide not only vocational training but education of unehallengeable scientific standing.
Until that day comes the new Department does well to be modest. The suspicion with which Business training is viewed in this country is to be attributed to extravagant advertisement and premature claim. There has just been published a collection of papers, called Business and Scienee, which were delivered at the Centenary Meeting of the British Association, and in which we find it being laid down that " Business Management is a complicated Science." No one is going to disparage the work of Mr. Rowntree and the Management Research Groups, &c., but when we read, for example, the ideals of Professor Sargant Florence for the Birmingham Faculty of Commerce, our thoughts stray back to Dr. Flexner's scathing analysis of the weaknesses of certain American Universities. We recall their Degree courses in " Judo " and " Family Meals," their theses on " Buying Women's Garments by Mail," and the notorious " Time and Motion Comparison on four methods of Dish Wash- ing." This may be business, but is it science ? There may be administrative reasons maintaining a geo- graphical liaison between vocational and educational studies. If so, it is all the more imperative that the line between the two should be emphasized and reiterated.
How, finally, can the best brains be directed into busi- ness ? Business can resign herself, with or without regret, to losing most of what is arresting in undergraduate intel- lect. Literature and learning must remain the richer. But business may legitimately endeavour to seduce from the Bar, journalism, politics and the Stage brains that would be perfectly well adapted to her special needs. Her success will depend partly upon the placing machinery provided in co-operation with the schools and Universities, but far more on her independent policy. The following are but a few of the indispensable reforms. Recruitment of as regular numbers as possible, at a fxed time in the year, and that time not later than May. Selection far more according to the opinion of those who know them than to the chances of appearance and deportment at an interview. A grant immediately on joining of a salary on which they can live without other means. The promise of responsible work after a year or two of probationary apprenticeship. An indication of the limit which it is intended to set on nepotism in making the higher appointments.
But there is a further, more intimate condition, whose fulfilment the faithful anticipate. The combination of ambition and academic distinction leads as often as not to some branch of the law, where there is no more question than in business of public service and where the early years are yet more barren and precarious. The law attracts because even its simplest problem provides the highly educated mind with scope, and because the old academic criteria of thought still to a great extent apply.
It rests with those who are evolving the science of business administration to render business problems subject to quasi-exact calculation ; only so will they secure for busi- ness scientists and philosophers as kings.
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