The most important question on this campus seems to be not one about social responsibility or pay, but "will I be able to do something which is a challenge, an intellectual exercise, something creative and useful?" No matter what business offers a man in terms of salary or benefits, if it can't offer him a personal challenge and the freedom of action to accept and master this challenge within the frame-work of his job, he is not going to go into business as a career. If the business community really wishes to attract the best young men from the liberal arts colleges it must begin to pay them in intangibles as well as with money, pension plans, and memberships in the company country club. Able young men must be paid with the intangible currency of responsibility, of freedom, and of the chance to make mistakes. They must be allowed to ask the crucial question of "Why?" as well as the usual one, "How?"

Another reason that the more academically bright students at Harvard shun business is that, as Professor Kenneth Andrews has pointed out, although professional education for managers has progressed considerably, only recently has it been accepted as a legitimate "academic discipline." Graduate education has sky-rocketed in recent years, and has become mandatory for most of the professions. Law, medicine and scholarship all have necessary and accepted disciplines, where the structure and thought of the particular profession are taught. One must study at graduate school for these professions; one must embrace the discipline involved.

In business, this has not always been so. One needed only to go out and join the great free-enterprise system to become a businessman in the past. Even before a student chooses a career, he is concerned with the legitimacy of his graduate studies. Only recently has management become a teachable science, and even more recently an accepted form of academic endeavor. All problems of undergraduate views of business aside, it is then easy to see why the most academically oriented students, questioning the validity of this upstart graduate discipline, turn to the older, more established courses of graduate study. This problem will persist until scholars are convinced that the study of management as a profession has every bit as much intellectual content as the other graduate studies. The skepticism of undergraduates must be transformed into critical appraisal. This change is rapidly occurring as the "management way of thinking" becomes more and more accepted in government and other non-business fields.

Another major factor keeping "top" students, as well as many others, from business is the growing range of alternatives for both graduate study and career choice. The world is growing in complexity at a fantastic rate. The information explosion has been supercharged by the advent of the computer. The need for scholars and academics in all fields of human enterprise has boomed. The alternatives to business, therefore, have become increasingly attractive, especially for the man dominated by intellectual curiosity and possessing high academic ability. Bright college graduates are facing heavy demand from everywhere, not just from business.

A final explanation for undergraduates' lack of enthusiasm is what Professor Joseph Bower, Faculty Coordinator of the Harvard Business School Summer Internship Program this summer, calls the problem of the role of the businessman. This concept seems to encompass both the intellectual and societal hang-ups of undergraduates in regard to business. The role of the doctor or the role of the lawyer are academically and socially defined and accepted. Most undergraduates today neither understand nor accept the concept of the role of the businessman. It has for too long been ambiguous. The role of the professional manager can now be well defined by the graduate business school, but is still quite confusing and undefined to the undergraduate.

The manager is a producer of goods and services. He makes money. But what are the intellectual processes involved in his role? In what way does he function in, and personally contribute to, society? What good does he do, aside from manufacturing widgits and making everyone want a widgits of his own? How does he behave? What is expected of him? Until this concept of role has been better assimilated by undergraduates many will continue to shun business.

So the more academically inclined students are not turned on by business. Is this a problem? Would the most academically and intellectually motivated students be good for business? Or are the best people for business the ones who are going into it now, the less academic students, perhaps as intelligent, but using their intelligence in a problem-solving way? Would the brilliant thinker, the conceptualize, alone, be any good as a manager, or does business really want the man seasoned with other, more pragmatic qualities and goals? I leave this for business to decide, suggesting that the problem is not as bad as it would seem, and go on to maintain a few ways by which more, and maybe even "brighter" undergraduates could be lured into the ranks of professional management.

First of all, business must stop the panic itself. It must not make a crisis out of a problem. Students don't hate it; they're going into the profession more than ever. Robert Galvin, Chairman of the Board of Motorola, made an expensive attempt at bridging the gap last year through a dialogue in campus newspapers across the country. Unfortunately, Galvin made the problem seem much greater than it actually is. What needs to be done is to stop stressing what students think is wrong with business and start emphasizing what is right with business. Business can certainly compete with other occupations in terms of challenge and reward, if it lets students know where these challenges lie and how the rewards are determined. It's important to continue to stress business's social responsibility, bnt even more to let students know how they can fulfill their own responsibilities.

Management is indeed an academic profession. The role of the manager must be stressed in this light. A manager applies the intellectual training he has received in business school to the problems of the distribution of goods and services in much the same way that the lawyer applies his legal training to the problems of the achievement of justice. The room for great personal challenge in the profession of management must be made clear. The role of the manager must be put across in these terms. Finally, the quality of students now in business schools must not be underrated. Class standing and grades are not