Advertisement

College Education in Business.

The following is the substance of an excellent editorial which recently appeared in the Darimouth:

"The remark was recently made by President Eliot of Harvard, that: "In no field does college education tell more than in the field of business." This is, we believe, contrary to the opinion that prevails among men of average education, not college graduates; but it appears to us to contain a vast truth, and it is probable that public sentiment is being gradually modified in this direction. It has been a common thing for men of means to refuse to send their sons to college on the ground that they were going into business, where, according to their view, a college education would be worse than useless. If there were anything connected with any kind of business which called for dull wits and a narrow mind, then there might be some sense of such a position. But the opposite being true, it is important to observe that college training of the present day aims at developing the best qualities in a man, and at giving him personal independance, outside of mere technical instruction. It is not a new, but a very true saying, that nowhere can a man get a more thorough knowledge of human nature than during his college life. Business wants all the men it can get equipped in just this way. Special training is of course required after graduation, but the college man has acquired the ability to learn better and more quickly a particular branch of trade than a non-graduate, and is usually much more efficient after he has learned it. One trouble is, that in estimating college graduates, business men, as well as some others, are apt to pick out, as a standard, the few cheap characters which every college sends out, and which neither education nor anything short of re-creation could fit for a prominent sphere of action."

Advertisement
Advertisement