Today in 1951, as Donald Kirk David rounds out his tenth year as dean, the Harvard School of Business Administration finds itself simultaneously at the peak of its nation-wide prestige and at the height of its financial wealth.

For 43 years the school has been turning out distinguished, prosperous business leaders: but Harvard's undisputed number one rating in this line has emerged only recently. And even more striking is that the amazing growth of the school's financial resources has taken place within just the two past years.

By far the most spectacular of the ten-year accomplishments of Dean David was his ability to raise over $12,000,000 during 1949 and 1950 for the school's future expansion. The impetus for this most intensive bit of fund-raising in recent Harvard history was, of course, the $5,000,000 given in June, 1919 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. on the condition that it be matched by an equal amount within a year.

In making the pledge, Rockefeller not only gave the school one of the best testimonials it has ever received, but he also hinted where Dean David might look as he sought to match the gift. "I am convinced." Rockefeller said, "that the Harvard Business School is making the most significant contribution of which I know toward the strengthening and perpetuation of enterprise based on individual initiative."

A complete breakdown of all the gifts received during the fund drive has never been revealed; but there is little doubt that Dean David raised much of the money by "selling" the Business School to business firms and foundations as a bulwark of "free enterprise."

Over 45 corporations are known to have voted Harvard as much as $300,000 and more: among them were General Electric, Filene's, and Bulova. And two weeks after Rockefeller's $5,000,000 had been matched, the Kresge Foundation added still another 2,000,000 to the school's coffers.

Why Do They Like Harvard?

Naturally there are important reasons for big business's great interest in Harvard. The two year diet of case system outfits Business School graduates with the skills and point of view of top management that usually make them prize catches in any job market. Only five other business schools in the country approach giving the same sort of program.

These six schools (Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, and, since 1949, Carnegie Tech) have been cited as the only pure "graduate professional" schools of business in the United States. There are upwards of 150 other undergraduate and graduate business schools, but most of these specialize either in the teaching of immediately salable technical skills or of abstract economic theory. This leaves only six schools which are really concerned with the broader program of developing general administrative skills and producing "leaders."

And yet, even among these six schools, company "ivory-hunters" are said to think Harvard turns out the best prospective young executives. Perhaps the feeling is based on the fact that Harvard is the pioneer and that most of the others have modelled their programs along Harvard lines. Or perhaps the feeling is simply that the school's broad curriculum, together with its advanced case system, create in the Harvard graduate a second nature of making executive decisions.

Whatever the various reasons, past results show that the expensive Harvard education, with its $800 tuition, can meet the increasing competition of be-paid-as-you-learn corporation training programs.

Of course, Harvard's logic of teaching young men to be executives before their time can lead to trouble. "We often find a good bright boy, say from Middlebury, more satisfactory," a company personnel man once reported. "These Harvard men walk in here on their first jobs and expect a desk twice as long as mine and with half a dozen push buttons."

Firms Can't Offer Enough

The "push button" case, is the exception and not the rule. Placement figures have always been high; and if anyone regrets the existence of the Business School, Fortune Magazine commented recently, it's probably the firms that can't offer enough to attract Harvard men into their organizations. Many banks and accounting firms can't easily afford starting salaries much over $250 a month; but the average firm operating through the school's Placement Office these days is bidding around $300 in starting salary.

Over 80 per cent of the Class of 1950 had landed jobs within three months after graduation. Only about a third of these positions were secured through the Placement Office, but 215 different firms were seeking men through the office.