SCHOOL AND BUSINESS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 671, 25 October 1933, Page 6

SCHOOL AND BUSINESS

POSSIBILITIES OF TRAINING IN UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE Lond'on, Sept. 13. The limitations as well as the possibilities of the university as a training ground for business were discussed in the education section of the British Association by Professor H. Stewart, Vice-Chancellor of University College, Nottingham. Professor Stewart said that a university course might with propriety include a treatment of the principles underlying business organisation such as economies, but should exclude not only the technique of particular businesses, but also more general, but still highly specialised, subjects such as mai'keting and saies management. These latter subjects might be taken in full-time post-graduate courses or in part-time classes. University training for business must be theoretical rather than vocational. The qualities required in big business houses to-day were not dissimilar from those required of the administrative official. Experience proved ■that arts or science graduates were not inferior in business capacity to economies or commerce graduates. It appeared, therefore, that the best course for the business student was that which was most likely to give the best mental training, and that it was in no way essential that he should be confined to a course with a commercial bias. The university could not im'plant the indispensable qualities of character nor the business instinct. Captains of industry were born, not made; but the university reinforced character and personality by an intellectual training which could definitely enhance a man's value in business. The main advantage, apart from the mental training, was the development of character in the students' communal life. Like the public school, the university promoted a sense of public spirit and a sense of •loyalty which would attach themselves in due course to the firm. Mr. T. Kingdom, headmaster of the Wyggeston Grammar School, Leicester, urged that if secondary schools were in any special sense to train boys for business they should keep them for at least- a year after they were 16 and give them a suitable course of study, whether they had passed the school certificate examination or not. If business was to find its future lead'ers and managers in the secondary schools, such future leaders should have had some experience of sixth form work, some chance of becoming prefects, some opportunity of holding executive positions, such as society or house secretaryships.. He suggested that the curriculum should include modern languages, economies, manual work, and perhaps shorthand.