History of Baruch College Book and Exhibit

1. Beginnings: From Free Academy to School of Business, 1847-1930

A Free Academy For A Growing Metropolis

Since its beginning in 1623, the business of New York City has been business. From its foundation as a fur-trading post and a base for privateers through its rise to eminence as the chief entrepot of the United States, the government and people of the city have been deeply committed to commerce. This was particularly true during the 1840's, when New York reaped the benefits of its extraordinary harbor and central location. The value of these natural assets was greatly augmented by the entrepreneurial spirit of its merchant class and by governmental investment in a canal that connected the city to its hinterland.

By the 1840's, [New York] handled over half the imports and nearly a third of the exports of the United States and these shares would grow larger over the next decades. It supplied the greatest variety of goods, the greatest number of ships, the greatest quantity of money, and the greatest range of commercial skills in a nation whose expanding society was increasingly infused with commerce.(1)

At the end of that remarkable decade, New York's population had more than doubled to a robust 650,000. Symbolic of the city's size and power was a grand new Merchant's Exchange, completed in 1841 at a cost of nearly $2 million to supply the growing business community with a meeting place. It was a member of that community, merchant Townsend Harris, who first suggested that the growing metropolis of New York needed to invest in free secondary education. Actually, Harris was thinking of the future; as late as 1855, the occupational structure of New York indicated that there was no great need for an educated work force. Only 15 percent of those employed, namely clerks, professionals and merchants, needed formal schooling beyond the eighth grade. The largest portion of the work force, mostly artisans and laborers, did not.(2) [See 1850 & 1860 NY State County Census.]

Rather than responding to an immediate demand, therefore, Harris was looking to the continued commercial expansion of New York. His initiative was also stimulated by the general climate of educational reform and enthusiasm about schooling that characterized the antebellum years in the United States. Furthermore, it was a time of educational change in New York City. As a result of what Diane Ravitch has called "the First School War," in 1847, the Protestant-oriented, publicly funded but privately controlled Public School Society lost its forty-year monopoly over education in the city. Although the society itself lingered on for another ten years, the real power was now in the hands of a central Board of Education, composed of elected trustees from the seventeen wards into which the city was then divided.(3)

During its long tenure, except for a Saturday normal school for potential teachers, the Public School Society had not established any classes beyond the eighth grade--secondary schools were not high on the new Board of Education's agenda. But Harris used his position as the first president of the board to arouse the interest of his colleagues and to enlist them in the battle for a free secondary school for New York City. On his initiative, a special committee of inquiry was established to look into the crucial matter of funding. The committee concluded that the New York City portion of the taxbased State Literature Fund would be the proper source, but it was currently being monopolized by two private institutions and one charitable school for deaf-mutes.(4)

Having located the source of funds, Harris and his supporters embarked on a campaign to gain access to them. They encountered substantial opposition: well-established Columbia and the youthful University of New York (later NYU) lobbied against the project in Albany and had considerable support from the Whig newspapers, particularly the Courier and Enquirer, which objected to the establishment of a free secondary institution on the grounds that it would become "onerous to the city finances [and] a fruitful source of strife among different classes." Other Whig arguments denied the need for the proposed institution, since the city had several private secondary schools for which scholarships were available. The bottom line, however, seemed to be that the "active, industrious and . . . affluent portion of the community [would be taxed for] the expense of furnishing a college education" to the rest.(5)

Harris and his associates, however, had the support of the Democrats in Albany and of Tammany in New York City. In the hope of blocking the Board of Education's proposal without seeming to do so, Whig legislators, who were in the majority in Albany, had added a referendum to the enabling bill. Their scheme, however, had failed. Tammany workers blanketed the city with posters and pamphlets saying "Vote for the Free Academy for the poor man's children," and the referendum passed. It would seem that the establishment of a free secondary school was an idea whose time had comes.(6)

Why were a wealthy merchant and his associates willing to be taxed for a Free Academy in New York? And why was the electorate, predominantly composed of middle-class artisans, also willing? Traditionally, the municipal colleges that grew out of Harris' initiative have claimed that a desire to provide upward mobility for working-class children was the motivation behind the establishment of the Academy. There have been differences of interpretation. Mainstream historians have accepted Harris' populist and idealistic statements at face value but, scholars on the Left have been more likely to see the interest of the business classes as stemming from a desire to contain possible unrest by offering a narrow road to improved economic and social status while assuring themselves a well-trained clerical force. Both interpretations, however, miss the mark.

Upward mobility was indeed the goal of everyone connected with the foundation of the Academy, but not for the sons of draymen, dock workers, servants and others who filled the lower ranks of the laboring class. Rather, it was the sons of the middle class who would attend and, it was hoped, profit from additional schooling. No one expected the children of the poor to appear at the Free Academy; they were unlikely to complete more than a few grades of elementary school (if they went to school at all), because their families needed what they could earn, and the city abounded with opportunities for child labor. The fact that in 1829 the Workingman's Party advocated free education until age eighteen should not be misinterpreted. The party was the voice of artisans, not laborers, and their concerns revolved around a perceived drop in status brought about by increased mass production and a consequent decrease in the need for skilled workers like themselves. In any case, although their underlying goals may have been different, the coalition of well-to-do merchants, whose sons would never enroll at the Free Academy, and artisans whose boys would attend, carried the day.(7)

Harris and his supporters visualized an institution that

while . . . in no way inferior to any of our colleges . . . [would] have more reference to the active duties of... life [and in which] the laboring class of our fellow citizens may have the opportunity of giving their children an education that will enable them to earn their daily bread.(8)

This statement shows that the founders of the Free Academy had ambivalent motives, which would eventually lead to years of struggle over its identity, function and curriculum. Was it to be a college, a high school or a trade school? In early discussions, Harris used the term college, but the State Literature Fund was available only to academies and thus the name Free Academy was chosen. Was this done for pragmatic reasons or did it have a deeper significance? Was the new institution really intended to be a college, modeled after Columbia and NYU? If so, it should offer a traditional curriculum, heavy on the classics. But where would the fourteen-year-old graduates of the public schools (the only students eligible to enter the Academy), acquire the background to cope with Latin and Greek? Furthermore, was a "gentleman's education" useful to the upwardly mobile artisans' sons who were expected to enroll? Pragmatism dictated a practical education, but would providing that not make the Free Academy inferior to the existing colleges? And why should the able son of an artisan receive a lesser education then the less capable son of a more affluent father?

From the day in January 1849 when it opened its doors, the Free Academy did not have a clear identity. By name it was not a college and it offered no degree, but its courses were mostly traditional and its architecture, as in the best style of European universities, was Gothic. The teachers were called professors, but their supervisor was designated principal, a title more often used in elementary and grammar schools. Nothing illustrated the confusion better than the curriculum. All first-year students were required to study mathematics, history, composition and declamation, moral science moral philosophy, the Constitution of the United States, Latin (Virgil, Caesar, and Xenophon), French and Spanish as well as mechanical drawing, phonography stenography) and bookkeeping. According to the president of the Board of Education who succeeded Harris, the latter subjects were included "to qualify young men for mercantile pursuits."(9)

The confusion was recognized by the Board of Education committee that was responsible for the Free Academy. In 1851 they "solved" the problem by stating that "unlike other academies that only bridged the gap between high school and college, the Free Academy was intended to be a substitute for both academy and the college"!(10)Their intentions were good, but the statement solved nothing. The Free Academy admitted many twelve-year olds to the introductory class. Were they to be considered college men and allowed to emerge with the baccalaureate at seventeen? Strange as it might seem, the state legislature apparently thought this was feasible, and in 1854 it authorized the Free Academy to grant the "usual" degrees to its graduates. This step brought the Academy much closer to college status, although it did not become one in name for another twelve years.

Most of the pressure to upgrade the Academy came from the faculty, who were also the group most attached to the classical curriculum. They, in common with many other American educators, had been much influenced by a report issued by Yale University in 1828, which had stressed the importance of an education in the classics. They were also influenced by their own desire for higher professional status, best achieved by emulating older, much respected universities. Once the Academy was able to offer a college degree, the professors apparently felt more secure and agreed to depart somewhat from the classical model. From this point on, the Academy would offer two different paths to the baccalaureate: a Bachelor of Arts based on Greek and Latin or a Bachelor of Science based on modern languages. Both required a one-year preparatory course called the introductory year.(11)

For most of the students (who had been admitted only after doing well in the stringent battery of entrance examinations), the nature of the degree was truly academic because they did not stay to graduate. Of the 160 students admitted before 1853, only twenty-five graduated, and only 14 percent of the introductory class admitted in 1855 survived to their senior year. Bernard Baruch reported that even in the 1880's only fifty out of the several hundred boys who had started with him stayed to graduate.

Their reasons for dropping out are not recorded, but the demanding curriculum may have been a major cause. The largest single group of students who entered between 1849 and 1853 were the sons or artisans and factory workers, and they, together with the handful whose fathers were laborers of various kinds, were the least likely to graduate. Sons of professionals and merchants were the most likely to earn a degree. Perhaps because their need to earn money was more important than higher education or because their interests were not met by the curriculum offered to them, most of the students from the less affluent ranks of society did not remain to graduate.(12)

Data for the first graduating class (1853) indicated that those who did graduate were more likely to become lawyers than to follow any other calling. When the number of lawyer alumni are combined with those who became clergymen, doctors, architects and teachers, it is clear that most of the early Free Academy graduates entered the professions. All of the remaining members of the class that finished the course in 1853 entered the city's business life as merchants, bookkeepers or insurance brokers. If the lawyers are assumed to have played a role in commerce, which seems likely, it appears that almost two-thirds of the graduates in this sample did what came naturally in mid-nineteenth-century New York City--they entered the mercantile life of the city at varying levels. The link between the business community and the first graduates of the city's only public secondary school was also strong for the class that graduated ten years later, in 1863. At that date teachers supplanted lawyers as the largest group in the professional sector, but when the latter were added to the merchants, clerks and bookkeepers, business careers still claimed almost two-thirds of the graduates.(13)

Although it may have been traumatic for some, leaving the Academy must have been welcomed by most. Graduation meant release from strict discipline, rote learning, public examinations and a very limited social or athletic life. The first principal of the Academy, Horace Webster, was a graduate of West Point and by all accounts a martinet. Demerits were awarded with a free hand, and boys who received too many were summarily expelled. Both the faculty and principal were inordinately concerned with the making and breaking of rules. To borrow a book from the library, for example, a student "had to fill out a detailed form and get it countersigned by at least three members of the faculty [and] most of the time at weekly faculty meetings was taken up with petty questions of student misconduct. "(14)

Some of the preoccupation with discipline may have been because Academy students were very young. As anyone who has spent time with adolescents knows, it is a turbulent period in life, marked by outward behavior that reflects the disorder within. But it is also true that the demanding curriculum which permitted no electives, and the rote learning in courses such as moral philosophy may have led to the disciplinary infractions that so disturbed Webster and his faculty.

Also, one of the longest-running problems in the history of public higher education in New York City, a meagre social and athletic life, may have been a cause of the pranks and misbehavior. As a day school (today called commuter college), most of the students did not remain in the building long enough to participate in the few activities available to them. The earliest extracurricular organizations were "literary societies," which were more interested in debate than literature. In the early 1850's they argued the pros and cons of the Hungarian revolution, French politics, slavery and the Homestead Act, establishing a tradition of concern with current affairs that became an important part of the fabric of municipal college life in later years. The debates served another purpose as well. Partly to justify the College's existence to the taxpayers, public oral examinations were held every February and June, an ordeal that those students with debate experience may have found somewhat less terrifying than their less outgoing peers.(15)

By the mid-1860's, the Academy was a college not unlike many other American collegiate institutions of the period, but it lacked the name, a fact which greatly distressed its students, faculty and alumni. Outside of New York City, an academy was a secondary school, not a college, and graduates of the Free Academy who settled in other states had difficulty demonstrating that they were truly college graduates. As a result, many young boys from families who could afford tuition began their higher education on 23rd Street but later transferred to an institution such as Columbia that was unequivocally a college. In spite of all the problems, there was considerable opposition to a name change. The Board of Education feared that it would be supplanted by trustees (the usual governing body of a college), and Dr. Webster, proud of his own education, insisted that the word "academy" did not signify a lower educational status than did the word "college."

In the end, the Academy's well-placed alumni carried the day. In 1866 the legislature and governor agreed that a "separate and distinct organization" to be known as the College of the City of New York (CCNY), was to be established, to be governed by a Board of Trustees made up of the members of the Board of Education. The latter provision was a master stroke of diplomacy since it preserved the power of the Board while satisfying the Academy's desire to be governed by the more prestigious sounding "trustees".(16)

Laying the Foundation for a School of Business

The renaming of the Academy took place at the start of a period of unprecedented change in American life. In the thirty years that followed the Civil War, the United States went from being a predominately agricultural nation to the strongest of the industrial powers. This transformation produced enormous repercussions in American society, not the least of which were the effects on higher education. For most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American colleges were sectarian training schools for the clergy, and although they gradually became more secularized, before the war they continued to offer an education that was "considered appropriate for embryo clergymen." Prior to 1865, however, the gap between the changes taking place in American society and the offerings of American colleges had not been much noticed. Formal education was not essential for either the professions or business, and grammar school graduates had ample job opportunities. "The characteristic form of business [and professional] education was an apprenticeship . . . and the man who aspired to start a new business [or to become a doctor or lawyer] was about as well off if he spent his later teens in actual business practice," rather than in more formal training."(17)

The coming of the large corporation, an outstanding development of the age of industrialization, changed all this. Business success was now associated with high managerial positions, and to attain such a position, apprenticeship was not enough. That was the view from the bottom but there was a parallel view from the top. Because of the "intricacies propounded by the growing industrialization of the country," large corporations required specialized expertise. It came to be accepted that this was best gained through a formal business education.(18)

The Wharton School, organized at the University of Pennsylvania in 1881, was the first such school of business to be established, followed by the College of Commerce and Politics established at the University of Chicago in 1898 and four more schools at the University of Wisconsin, Dartmouth, the University of Virginia and New York University in 1900. In the next decade, the number of collegiate schools of business grew at the rate of one per year. In 1916 they organized themselves into an Association of Collegiate Schools of Business. This proliferation reflected consistent enrollment increases, which culminated in a phenomenal 100 percent increase in the years immediately after World War I.(19)

In spite of their popularity with students and boards of trustees, collegiate business schools had to wage an uphill battle for professional status. As one historian tactfully put it, "they occupied a low rung on the ladder of academic prestige" because they were considered too utilitarian. This attitude persisted for a long time; until quite recently undergraduate education for business has been seen as not having the same intellectual status as studies in the humanities, sciences or arts.(20)

The view from inside academia was colored, at least in part, by internal struggles for money and support, but such difficulties did not prevent students from voting with their feet. Indeed, because of student interest, many institutions were offering business courses long before such courses were organized into specialized curricula. They were usually staffed by members of economics departments and were most often conducted in the evening. Some of the earliest were extension programs of land-grant colleges, but no matter where they were provided, evening business classes were the norm because both faculty and students were otherwise employed during the day.(21)

The first School of Commerce in New York City, established at New York University, began in exactly this way. At the urging of the profession, accounting classes had been offered for some time and were organized into a school in August 1900. Courses were taught between 8:00 and 10:00 P.M., and only to mature students who received academic credit for business experience. Completion of the course of study required three years, at the end of which the degree of Bachelor of Commercial Science was awarded. A day division was not begun until 1912. Even then it was persistently understaffed, because it continued to be extremely difficult to recruit full-time faculty.

At the same time that New York University was developing its School of Commerce, a New York City public high school with a similar name was established. It opened in 1901 and offered a five year course of study that included both "tool" courses and the usual academic ones. By the early twentieth century, therefore, the business headquarters of the United States, New York City, had at least two organized business education programs. Interested students could also register for a small number of separate business courses offered by the College of the City of New York, located after 1907 at a new uptown campus on St. Nicholas Terrace.

Given the needs of New York City's commercial life, the pragmatic goals of its founders and the social class of its students, CCNY should have preceded New York University in establishing a school of commerce. In a sense it did. A one-year commercial course was introduced in 1871 as an alternative to the classical subfreshman year and was intended for students who did not plan to remain at the college for the full five years or to earn a degree. The course included modern languages, arithmetic, bookkeeping, elementary physics, composition, penmanship, geometry and "business transactions." It was extremely unpopular with the faculty as a whole and even with a portion of the student body, who declared that the presence of commercially oriented students "lowers the tone of the college." Equally opposed by the chairman of the Board of Education's Executive Committee, CCNY's commercial course was first modified and then dropped completely in 1881.(22)

Although, beginning in 1907, a few courses related to business were offered in the Economics division of the Department of Political Science, nothing more was done to organize commercial education at CCNY for thirty years. Some interest, however, always existed. In 1912, for example, President John Finley urged the Board of Trustees (separated in 1900 from the Board of Education) to use the recently vacated Academy building at 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue for an expanded business curriculum, and the Board responded with an appropriation of $50,000 for the building's renovation. Before further action could be taken, however, Mortimer Schiff, acting for the New York State Chamber of Commerce, offered up to $500,000 "for the erection of a College of Commerce and Administration and up to $200,000 for the equipping of a Museum of Commerce and Civics" in the same 23rd Street building.(23)The president and trustees, then headed by alumnus Bernard M. Baruch, were enthusiastic and labored all through 1913 and into the spring of 1914 to bring the new college into being, even going so far as to obtain estimates for the renovation of the neglected and unsafe Academy building. In the end the plan fell through because it proved impossible to harmonize the demands for partial control advanced by the Chamber of Commerce with the requirements of a public institution that would have to be maintained with taxpayer funds. There was also much doubt as to the availability of such funds since the Board of Estimate was not enthusiastic about the project.(24)

The Chamber of Commerce offer that so pleased Finley and the trustees resulted from their discovery that in Great Britain, the London Chamber of Commerce, the University of London and the London County Council together supported commercial education at the university and secondary school levels and that the Chamber participated in the examination procedures required for certification. This knowledge led the New York Chamber to establish a Commercial Education Council, one of whose members was George Monroe Brett, then a mathematics instructor at CCNY but later to become the chairman of the accounting department and a most important member of the faculty.

The Council was to raise funds and "to provide, in connection with and under the auspices of, one of the already established institutions of learning in the city, an adequate, well-equipped and well-managed College of Commerce on a scale commensurate with the dignity and importance of the commerce of the country." The statement went on to say that the college should train "properly equipped men for our growing domestic and international trade and [also] train teachers of commercial education."(25)

As indicated in the remarks of President A. Barton Hepburn and other members, the Chamber of Commerce, operating in a social darwinistic world, seemed to fear that American merchants would not be able to take advantage of the Open Door policy proclaimed a decade earlier and successfully compete with the more experienced and better prepared British, French and German traders. For this reason, they insisted that modern foreign languages be emphasized in the proposed college's curriculum. Although they clearly wanted a well-trained work force, they seemed much more interested in educating professionals who could thrust American business onto the world scene. Their attitudes reflected the burgeoning American expansionism of the pre-World War I years, characterized by a growing navy, annexation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico and an active search for markets."(26)

Although it failed to bear fruit, the Chamber of Commerce's offer set currents in motion that five years later culminated in the establishment of a School of Business and Civic Administration at 23rd Street. The process had actually begun in 1909 when an evening session was established at CCNY, followed by the admission of non-matriculated students into evening session classes and the further use of those classes to prepare municipal employees for promotion via civil-service examinations. By 1916, these various extension courses, supported by fees that went into a "special fund" differentiated from tax levy revenues, had proliferated to the point where they could be organized into a separate division of the college. In September 1917, therefore, the Division of Vocational Subjects and Civic Administration, to operate in the evening at a partially renovated 23rd Street building, was established."(27)

One member of the faculty, Frederick W. Robinson, was very much involved in all these early developments. It therefore comes as no surprise to find that he was made the director of the new division and three years later became the first dean of the School of Business and Civic Administration. Robinson had originally come to CCNY as an instructor in public speaking but realizing, sooner than most, in which direction the wind was blowing, switched to the economics division of the political science department. An excellent administrator and extremely ambitious, he saw that his future lay with the new initiatives the college was undertaking, and, as events proved, he was right.

During his administration of the vocational division, a mini-business curriculum had been established, utilizing a number of credit-bearing courses offered by the economics division of the Department of Political Science. Among these were accounting, auditing, commercial law, marketing and auxiliary subjects such as business English and public speaking. According to Robinson, all the new business classes were filled, indeed oversubscribed. No baccalaureate degree was offered, but an immensely popular Diploma of Graduate in Accounting could be earned by students willing to take two-hundred hours of work in accounting, forty-eight in law, forty-eight in economics and sixty-four in English and public speaking. There was also a much shorter course of study leading to a certificate in junior accounting.

The actual creation of the School of Business and Civic Administration followed a request by the Board of Trustees in December 1918 for a report on the multitude of vocational courses being offered in the day, evening and extension divisions of CCNY. The result was a recommendation that separate degree-granting schools of technology, commerce and education be established, and in June, 1919, this was done.(28)

ORGANIZING THE NEW SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

The vocational division had been Robinson's fiefdom, and he had run it with a minimum of faculty input. Unlike its predecessor, however, the new School of Business and Civic Administration would offer credit-bearing courses to students who would matriculate for the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree. As a consequence, the participating faculty, primarily members of the economics division of the political science department, wanted to be certain that they, like the CCNY faculty in the newly renamed College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) uptown, would have a voice in establishing the curriculum and scholarship standards of the new school.

Their goal was achieved. The faculty of the School of Business consisted of a dean, members of the economics segment of the Department of Political Science who held faculty rank and "others from among those who teach subjects peculiar to this school."(29)Among the latter were instructors from the government and sociology divisions of the political science department, as well as from the Departments of History, Education, Modern Languages, English and Public Speaking. They were a hardworking group who met frequently, and always in the evening, since that was when almost all the courses were offered. Essential committees, such as Curriculum and Course and Standing (responsible for academic rules regarding grades and credits), were established during the first semester, fall 1919, at the same time that representatives to the Council of Delegates, the unifying body of the three CCNY divisions (Liberal Arts, Business and Technology), were chosen.(30)

Under normal circumstances, change in academia is very slow, and for that reason the speed with which the CCNY professional schools were created is nothing short of remarkable. But circumstances at the college were not normal in 1918, and this accounts for the swift and decisive actions that were taken. For one thing, enrollments were much larger than they had been before World War I, and many of the new students wanted to earn degrees in technical disciplines, which the College had grouped into the vocational division rather than in the traditional liberal arts or sciences. For another, wartime needs had stimulated interest in expanding technical knowledge and had raised standards in professions such as engineering and accountancy, which quieted many of the objections formerly raised in regard to vocational education at the college level.

But most important, the groundwork for the specialized schools had been laid much earlier. In 1912, before the Chamber of Commerce offer, President Finley had been planning for a business school and the renovation of the 23rd Street building, as well as for an engineering school. His successor, Sidney Mezes, did not move for change, but the framework was in place from 1916 on and when the trustees asked for recommendations, Robinson and his staff were ready. But even if they had not been, the establishment of professional schools would not have been much delayed, because for many years such courses had been offered in a variety of guises. The creation of the new School of Business and Civic Administration, therefore, was the result of a process of evolution and not a radical change.

Further development, however, was the result of its immediate popularity and a number of extrinsic factors, both national and local. After a difficult but brief postwar adjustment, the American economy recovered, and by 1922, a seven-year period of expansion and prosperity was underway. The multiplier effect of new technology, new forms of business organization and new uses of credit led to unprecedented consumer demand and a higher standard of living for the nation as a whole. Following secretary of commerce and soon to be President Herbert Hoover's neomercantilist theories, the federal government put its stamp of approval on the dictum that what was good for business was good for America. Advertising pioneer Bruce Barton's best-selling book, The Man Nobody Knows, published in 1925, which referred to Jesus as "the founder of modern business" because he picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world," reflected the prevailing climate.(31)

Small wonder, therefore, that the twenties saw a huge growth in collegiate schools of business. One expert spoke of a" veritable craze for business education" and proved it with statistics. Between 1919 and 1924, 117 such schools appeared, and the number of male graduates increased from 1,397 to 5,474. Reflecting other changes in women's status during the decade, the number of women graduates grew from 162 to 1,147. As was the case at CCNY's School of Business and Civic Administration, most of these students attended in the evening, taking courses that had originated in the Department of Economics.(32)

Although the first Bulletin of the School placed the objectives of the new school on the highest possible plane, that is, "to impart a broad understanding of the inter-relation of individuals, business enterprise and the government, as they play their parts in modern civilization," the students who flocked to 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue had more mundane objectives in mind. In 1919, when the School of Business opened its doors, and 2,833 people studied there from 8:00 to 10:00 P.M. every night but Sunday, the great majority were candidates for the diploma in accounting or its junior version."(33)

After 1926, however, the number of degree candidates slowly grew, and this trend was to continue. Changing social and economic patterns in the city accounted for the increase. A larger number of ambitious students were now able to attend full-time and work toward the BBA, because New York was sharing in the national prosperity, making it possible for more families to manage without their children's financial contributions. As had been true for students of CCNY all through its development, those who attended in the twenties were able to look for further upward mobility because their parents had already left the ranks of the very poor. They were predominately the children of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who had arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1914. Although far from wealthy, by 1920 the great majority of these immigrants had achieved a bottom-line security through the unionization of the garment trades in which many were employed, or by petty entrepreneurship.

The attractiveness of training beyond high school--especially in fields, such as accountancy, that offered immediate white-collar employment in the small businesses that were so prolific and important in New York City--led many young men and an increasing number of young women to the aged, crowded building on 23rd Street. Even in 1930, most attended in the evening and aimed only at receiving a diploma in accountancy. Whether they were full-or part-time students, candidates for the degree or a diploma, they were all motivated by the same forces that shaped the twenties nationwide--an optimistic belief in the ability of the capitalist system to provide a good life and a powerful desire to share in it. Nowhere did the possibility of reaping rewards seem greater than in New York, where a burgeoning stock market, a powerful financial sector, and extensive small-scale industrial activity symbolized the national prosperity and encouraged hard-working youths to aim at the pot of gold said to await them at the end of their training.

The School of Business and Civic Administration had been established to make their expectations become reality. The most ambitious students could enroll for a five-year course that would lead to a Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA) as well as the BBA; those with lower aspirations could become accountants with all the necessary credentials, although without a baccalaureate degree. Many young men, including the future mayor of New York, Abraham D. Beame, earned their diploma first and then continued on for the more prestigious degree. In addition, training was offered to potential teachers of commercial subjects, aspirants for betterpaying civil-service positions and a huge mass of nonmatriculants who were hoping to transfer to degree programs or simply pick up a stray course or two to increase their employability, income or status. Candidates for the degree could study in the day or evening; others in either the late afternoon or evening.(34)

All nondegree students had to pay fees -- a registration fee of ten dollars a year for two hours a week of instruction and an additional $2.50 if they wanted to enroll for more. In addition, each course carried its own charges, ranging from a low of $5 to a high of $20. Government employees paid less and got more: $10 for six hours and only $1.25 for each additional hour. The student could choose from a wide variety of courses grouped under three headings: Vocational and Professional Courses Related to Business; Textiles; and Stenography and Typing, including some classes in French and Spanish stenography. Many of the offerings were directly related to New York's major industries, such as printing and the garment trades, and some of the courses ("Cost Reduction," for example) were specifically directed toward the small entrepreneur. Other courses were designed to meet new needs: "Civics for Women" was a case in point. Still others were for personal improvement. Business English, Photography and Investments were examples of the latter.

All of the students at 23rd Street, it would appear, were seeking to advance themselves in some way, but upward mobility, at least for those aiming at the degree, was not to come easily. Determined to avoid any stigma of inferiority, the faculty of the School of Business established high standards for entry, retention and graduation. Admission requirements were the same as those for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: "completion of an approved four year high school course [and] presentation of fifteen college entrance units" divided among English, history, foreign languages, mathematics and electives. A variation on the uptown requirement was the provision that some of the latter be in commercial subjects such as bookkeeping, accounting, stenography, typing, office practice, commercial law, commercial geography, foreign trade or marketing. After 1924, prospective students had to pass entry exams in English, mathematics, foreign languages and history, as well as Bingham's Psychological Aptitude Test.(35)

Once enrolled, it was hoped that the matriculant would undertake the five-year, 160-credit BBA/MBA course. It required eighty credits in the liberal arts, sciences and social sciences with a heavy emphasis on foreign languages (important to international trade), science (important for production management) and social sciences (important for government management). To this would be added additional "foundational credits," which resembled the requirements for the Bachelor of Social Science degree offered at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences but included additional work in economics such as money and banking, as well as courses in business organization, accounting and business law. Finally, there was the all-important group specialization or major, to be chosen from "General Business, Public Service, Foreign Trade and Consular Service or Accounting."(36)

As would be expected, considering the times and the socio-economic profile of the student body, the number of candidates for the five year course was minuscule. Anxious to attract additional graduate students, the faculty did not insist that all five years be completed in the School of Business and Civic Administration but rather welcomed holders of any kind of baccalaureate from other institutions, requiring only that a specialization group be completed at the School. Even this liberality, however, did not attract more than a handful of graduate students until after World War II.

Why was the faculty so concerned with the MBA degree? At this stage in its development, with many pressing problems of space and money as well as the need to prove its viability as a collegiate institution, why spend time and effort on a graduate program that did not seem to be of much value to the bulk of the student body? But concerned they were. At their second meeting as a faculty, they resolved to offer a "5th Year" degree in Business and Civic Administration (not yet labeled an MBA) and at their very next meeting, approved a full five-year curriculum.

They were certainly not the only American business school faculty to do this. As two critics pointed out in 1931, "too many collegiate schools of business, themselves not yet well developed" were offering an additional year of graduate work.(37)The authors of this report assumed that the reason for the unfortunate proliferation was the desire to keep up with the Joneses, in this case Harvard, Columbia and Stanford, all of which offered much respected graduate programs in business. The same impulse, exacerbated by its need to overcome its junior status vis-a-vis the College of Liberal Arts of CCNY as soon as possible, undoubtedly motivated the faculty of the new School of Business. The predecessor of the august institution that now sat on St. Nicholas Terrace, after all, had awarded its first graduate degree in 1856.(38)

THE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS DEVELOPS

A degree in accountancy, like a diploma or certificate in that discipline, offered the most direct route to professional status and was, therefore, the most popular specialization choice. But there were also other roads to follow. Although the prevailing image of the twenties is that it was a period of laissez faire and isolation, the School of Business and Civic Administration offered majors in foreign trade and public administration, reflecting the abundant employment and investment opportunities in those fields. Bureaucracies, a legacy of the Progressive Era, were still part of city, state and federal governments, and some were even expanding. Herbert Hoover's belief in the importance of government support to business, for example, led to the establishment of the United States Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, which eventually grew into thirty-seven divisions with forty-two units overseas and forty-six in the United States. This growth was accompanied by a five-fold increase in its employees, all 15, 000 of whom were engaged in guiding and assisting American business at home and abroad by means of statistics, marketing and investment information.

At the same time, under the leadership of Governor Alfred E. Smith, New York State was expanding its regulatory functions. Municipal responsibility for at least some aspects of the general welfare, such as housing regulation, had been established even earlier. As its dual name indicated, the new School of Business and Civic Administration was linked to public service from its start. The increase in international trade courses, offered for some time by the economics section of the political science department, reflected another kind of postwar reality. The United States was now a wealthy, industrialized creditor nation; of necessity, it played a role in world markets and finances and required trained practitioners to do so. Far from being isolationist, the American business sector looked for opportunities abroad, and business schools, including the new one on 23rd Street, shared its view.(39)

The curriculum committee responsible for the various courses of study viewed the BBA candidates of the evening session as markedly different from their day-session counterparts and consequently constructed a separate but still quite demanding curriculum for them. Some of these requirements were the result of the faculty's desire to distinguish their school from the only other New York City institution offering the BBA at night, New York University's School of Commerce, which, they said, offered only a "meagre (three year) and superficial course with a very low requirement for graduation."(40)

At 23rd Street, the evening session BBA candidate was expected to earn 120 credits, half of which would consist of the same kind of liberal arts and foundational courses taken by the day session student. The choice of majors was also the same, but because it was assumed that the student was already employed, 6 to 24 credits of actual business experience could be used in lieu of classroom work and be counted toward the degree. The exact number of credits received for the business experience would be decided by the Committee on Course and Standing, based on how much initiative and judgement the applicant had been required to use: "Credit will not be given for mere routine service in a commercial house."(41)

Business experience credit became an issue between the faculty of the School of Business, their colleagues uptown and the CCNY trustees. The latter two groups considered six credits far too little and urged a more generous policy. More than mere credits was involved; crucial matters such as money and status were the real issues. An open-handed policy regarding credit for outside experience meant fewer students in business courses and thus less need for money to staff the courses offered downtown. But it also meant a smaller theoretical base for business education, making it more vocational and less scientific, decidedly not the image desired by the newly created school. "Downtown" eventually won on this issue. Near the end of the decade, the State Department of Education ruled that no more than eight credits could be awarded.(42)

The severity of the standards adopted on business experience stood in sharp contrast to the quite liberal requirements for graduation. Evening-session BBA candidates could receive a "D" grade in as much as 50 percent of the credits they took at the school and yet, if they could maintain a "C" average in the rest, earn their degree. Requirements for day-session students included the completion of a thesis and were, overall, higher. Both groups were bound by attendance and lateness rules. Too many violations could lead to exclusion from class, to suspension, even expulsion. However, in spite of the pleas of Director Paul Linehan, the rules were not applied with the same rigor for evening-session students. The reason was a totally pragmatic one.(43)

It seems clear that from its earliest years, the nondegree students (seeking diplomas or simply credits) in the evening session were the "bread and butter" of the school because of the fees they paid and the fact that their enrollment produced the credits that determined the budget. The financial value of non-matriculated students was amply demonstrated during New York City's depression-induced fiscal crisis in 1931. Pressed for funds, Robinson introduced the idea of second-tier students, known as limited matriculants, who met the proper subject matter requirements for entry but had not earned sufficiently high grades in the battery of entrance examinations required of all applicants. They were allowed to register for all classes and could apply for matriculation (which would free them from tuition) when they earned an acceptable average. The definition of "acceptable" fluctuated with the space available in day-session classes. In the meantime, they paid half of the fee charged to nonmatriculants, $2.50 per credit. Later called qualifying nonmatriculants, these students were the nucleus of a much larger program that developed after World War II under which a students could earn an Associate of Applied Science(AAS) degree after two years at college.

Diploma candidates and nonmatriculants, of course, were not what Robinson and his faculty wanted for their school in the long run. In order to achieve the high standing of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and "other institutions of higher learning in the East," more BBA students would have to enroll. Until that occurred, however, the part-time, already employed, vocationally oriented evening-session student was essential to the college and had to be treated with as much respect and consideration as the institution could muster.

In the meantime, the demonstrated popularity of the diploma program (in accounting, for example) led to a decision to issue diplomas for studies in other business areas, such as management, marketing, advertising, public utilities, finance and real estate, on the same fee-paying basis applicable to the diploma in accountancy. There was also expansion on another front. In 1931, when the Board of Education upgraded its requirements for the license of Teacher of Commercial Subjects, the School of Business adopted a new course of study for commercial education, leading to the BBA with a certification to teach.(44)

In both cases, the faculty at 23rd Street was responding to new conditions around them. Changing requirements for the teaching of commercial subjects, for example, reflected both the perceived need for more teachers trained in these areas as well as the attractiveness of teaching in general to a generation whose entrepreurial opportunities were severely limited by the Great Depression. The expansion of opportunities to earn a diploma, on the other hand, was intended for those individuals who might have to "re-tool" as the prosperous twenties came to an end. Such sensitivity to conditions in the larger community, displayed again and again, was to be a hallmark of the history of the School of Business.

Day-session BBA candidates, scarce as they were, remained the center of faculty interest all through the twenties as curriculum committees and deans pruned, added to and otherwise modified the curriculum. One of the most visible changes was the separation of the MBA from the BBA. The faculty remained interested in offering a high-quality advanced degree in business, mostly to distinguish their School from NYU, which gave the Master of Commercial Science degree after only 12 post-baccalaureate credits. Very few students at 23rd Street were interested, however, and as early as February 1921, the five-year combination became a 120-credit BBA and a 30-credit MBA.

There were many other changes. At the same time as the School of Business and Civic Administration had spun off from CCNY, a Department of Economics had been created to house all of the business courses previously listed under the rubric of the Department of Political Science. This was the start of a pattern of subdivision, which resulted in the establishment of a separate accountancy department in June 1927. By that date, the economics department was tacitly, if not officially, divided into eleven disciplines: advertising, credit, finance, insurance, investments, real estate, statistics, international trade, law, management and marketing; three of which, law, finance and international trade, offered as many courses as their parent department. A process of proliferation that had begun after the creation of the School of Business resulted in a very large menu of business courses for degree candidates, fee-paying students and prospective teachers.(45)

There were more changes to come. A rather puzzling case is the course in Russian Markets that was offered up to 1929, a period during which the United States had no diplomatic relations and very little trade with the USSR; the course was not given thereafter, even though Washington recognized the USSR in 1933 partly to capitalize on that market. Public Relations was a new offering, appearing in mid-decade and reflecting 1920's boosterism, just as an increase in number of specialized securities courses reflected the stock market boom. Accountancy grew from fifteen courses in 1920 to twenty-six by 1928, including specialized courses in taxation required by the increasing complexity of the recently instituted federal income tax.

Major curriculum revision, as opposed to the addition of new courses and tinkering with the old ones, was undertaken when the School of Business first got underway and again in 1925 and 1928. In one sense, the changes were not so major; the basic structure of general education courses, business base, specialization and electives remained the same throughout the decade. What was periodically revamped were credits and specific requirements. By 1929, for example, 128 credits, up from the previous 120, were required for graduation, probably to absorb the 8 credits for business experience without eliminating theoretical courses.

Students had to take more credits in written English and mathematics in 1929, but fewer in English literature, speech and accounting. Certain courses, notably market geography and a business seminar, disappeared, but statistics, laboratory science and physical education were added, and the thesis requirement was continued. Specialization group credits were reduced to twenty-four from twenty-eight and free electives, including those drawn on a reciprocal basis from other CCNY units, were limited by the proviso that no more than thirty credits could be of a "highly technical nature." Foreign-language requirements were slightly reduced, which raised some alarm among the faculty who appeared anxious to retain the same cultural base as was required by the College of Liberal Arts.

The entire staff, administrative and instructional, shared a major concern: to keep the State Education Department satisfied. It was this agency that had to approve the accounting curriculum in order for the School's graduates to sit for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) examination. After 1926, when the faculty established eight academic credits as the maximum permitted for business experience, the Department had recognized and registered the BBA degree, which allowed graduates of the School of Business and Civic Administration to enter law school and obtain permanent licenses as teachers of commercial subjects, something they could not do before.(46)

Although the School of Business was born out of the Division of Vocational Subjects and Civic Administration, only 20 percent of the faculty that moved to 23rd Street had taught in that division. The rest of the instructional staff, totalling seventy-one in all, were either regular members of the CCNY staff or had been hired specifically for the new school. Only 28 percent were in the professorial ranks. This did not, however, compare unfavorably with the situation on the main campus, where only 38 percent of the faculty had such status. On both campuses, most of the teachers were instructors or tutors, but the School of Business and Civic Administration also had twelve lecturers, a special category that was almost completely limited to teachers of business subjects in the evening session, where they joined others in the lower ranks to teach the great majority of students.

On paper at least, the 23rd Street faculty was well prepared; twenty-three of the thirty-five listed in 1924 held doctoral degrees, seventeen were CPA's, fifteen held a master's degree of one kind or another and nine were law school graduates. As was true for collegiate schools of business everywhere, because most of the activity occurred in the evening, the faculty were often practicing professionals who also wanted to teach. They brought their practical experience into the classroom, something that many students valued, but it made them less available for committee service and other faculty responsibilities.

The School of Business was the creature of the College of the City of New York, not an equal partner, and it did not enjoy the same privileges as the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from which it had been separated. For this reason, the final word on personnel and budget matters came from uptown, an irksome situation from the beginning. The first three deans of the School, Frederick Robinson, George Edwards and Justin Moore, requested that new appointments and promotions be made through them, but this proved impossible to achieve except in the case of Accountancy, which did all its work at 23rd Street. Dean Moore, recognizing a stone wall when he saw one, plaintively asked that when personnel matters were decided by the heads of departments at the main campus, he should at least receive a copy of the recommendation; most of the time, this was done.(47)

A NEW BUILDING FOR THE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Tenure, rank and salaries are usually of the utmost importance to faculty, but to the instructors teaching at 23rd Street when the School of Business began, physical conditions took precedence. When CCNY had moved uptown in 1907, the old four-story building, usually called the College Building, was virtually abandoned. Parts of it were used for first-year Townsend Harris High School students, who lived on the East Side of Manhattan south of 110th Street or on the West Side south of 59th, but most of the building lacked lights, heat and water and was considered unsafe. President Finley's 1912 initiative, which had led the Board of Estimate and Apportionment to authorize the issuance of $50,000 of municipal stock for repairs on the old building, had come to naught amidst the controversy over the Chamber of Commerce's offer. The organization of the Division of Vocational Subjects and Civic Administration in 1916 stimulated renewed interest in using at least a portion of the money to repair the 23rd Street building. Though contracts were let, U.S. entry into World War I delayed the actual work until the spring of 1919.

When the new School got underway in September of that year, classes could be held on all but the particularly shaky third floor. In spite of the fact that the classrooms were used by the School only in the late afternoon and evening, leaving the space to the youngest Townsend Harris boys during regular school hours, the number of students exceeded the capacity of the newly refurbished rooms and the basement had to be used as well. Some courses were farmed out to the Municipal Building at Chambers and Center Streets. Clearly, as Dean Robinson said to his faculty, more and better space was essential if the newly created School of Business and Public Administration was to fulfill its potential.

Robinson was a powerful figure at CCNY (indeed in 1927 he left the School of Business in the hands of finance professor George Edwards in order to become first acting and then permanent president of the entire College), but his request for a new or greatly altered building did not bear fruit until the emphasis was changed from space to safety. In 1923 CCNY became concerned with the risk of continuing classes in the aged, patched-up building. Indeed, there was apparently some danger that it might actually collapse. Alarmed, the Board of Trustees ordered an architectural examination, and at the same time engineers of the Board of Estimate and the Bureau of Buildings made their own survey.

The private architects thought that the first and second floors were "fairly sound [but that] the condition of the third was dubious." The Board of Estimate engineers went further, saying that it would cost too much to put the building in safe condition and that the "only alternative [was] to construct a new building. " Superintendent Brady of the Manhattan Bureau of Buildings, however, was much less alarmed. Citing only five violations, all of them having to do with fire hazards, he offered to issue a certificate of safe occupancy if only four of them were removed. To no one's surprise, a decision was made in favor of the least expensive option, and for the next few years, nothing changed, spacewise, at 23rd Street.(48)

In June 1926, however, following a warning from the fire department, the Board of Estimate acted on the now two-year-old report of its committee and authorized the issuance of $1,500,000 worth of bonds "to be used by the trustees for the erection, furnishing and equipment of a new building at 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue. "(49) In spite of this wording, the president of the Board, Joseph McKee, wanted the college to find a less valuable site and to sell the property at 23rd Street, which, as the business district had moved uptown, had become a very desirable piece of real estate. Robinson, by now the acting president of the College, complied and found a satisfactory site at East 51st Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. McKee's own engineers, however, argued that it was far more economical to build at 23rd Street and share the heat from the furnaces in the adjacent Children's Court building. By the end of 1926, work was underway.(50)

The need for economy dominated the entire process. Knowing this, the Board of Trustees had originally promised to go on using part of the old building while the new one was being constructed, but by the time the Board of Estimate approved the proposal, they had second thoughts and decided to move operations to rented space at Grand Central Palace, an office building at 42nd Street. The School of Business and Civic Administration occupied the eighth floor of that building for four long and uncomfortable years. To begin with, conditions were very crowded because the School was able to rent only twenty classrooms. Lack of space put an automatic cap on the number of courses that could be offered, considerably delaying student progress. Furthermore, although facilities at 23rd Street had been grim, those at 42nd Street were worse. Students characterized Grand Central Palace as a "dark, gloomy cement campus [with] incommodious elevator service, bare walls and no place to study."(51)

The discomforts would have been easier to bear if there was assurance that the new building would truly meet the needs of the school, but quite the opposite was the case. CCNY's original request had been for $2 million, estimated to be enough for the sixteen-story, building they thought was needed. The Board of Estimate, as we have seen, appropriated less than that amount and authorized a building of roughly half the size planned: eight stories with a "penthouse on the ninth." All through the years of exile at Grand Central Palace, Robinson and the trustees pushed for a sixteen-story building. At one point, without authorization from the Board of Estimate, they directed the architects to plan a steel frame "sufficiently strong to carry additional floors at some subsequent time," as well as a basement large enough to "hold equipment capable of heating a building of approximately sixteen stories."(52)

In their eagerness for a taller building, the trustees offered to house other city departments "until such time as the growing activities of the College would require such space for College uses." When this ploy failed to achieve results, they used the ultimate weapon, economy. Gathering data from four different contractors, they were able to demonstrate that if the scaffolding, hoists and other facilities for construction then in place were used to build the additional stories, thousands of dollars would be saved over the cost of re-erecting them later when the building would surely have to be enlarged. It is doubtful that the latter argument moved Mayor Jimmy Walker (known to be a spendthrift) to recommend the expansion of the new building when he laid the cornerstone in December 1928, but in any case, his support led the Board of Estimate to appropriate an additional $875,000 for the construction of a building large enough for 10,000 students. The enlargement, however welcome, caused many subsequent problems at 23rd Street because the eight additional stories merely added classroom space. The auxiliary services needed for a doubled population, such as the library, swimming pool and gymnasium, remained as originally planned.

In September 1929, while optimism regarding the future of American business was still high, the first eight floors of the new building were opened. As the trustees had originally ordered, it was built of a warm tan brick in the Northern Italian style of architecture. It occupied almost the entire area of the plot of 24,400 square feet, but the "exterior courts and setbacks required by the New York City zoning law reduced the bulk." Arched windows, designed to admit light into the library reading rooms, also helped to achieve that goal. The completed portion of the building was occupied while the upper floors were still under construction. A year and a half after it opened, Robinson, now provost of the Board of Higher Education (established in 1929 to oversee the growing municipal college system), as well as president of CCNY, reported that work on the extra stories was progressing satisfactorily and that the building now stretched to fourteen floors.(53)

In spite of the inconvenience the ongoing construction must have caused, the students and faculty rejoiced in their new facilities. The library on the second and third floors, the science laboratories, the special rooms for accounting and statistics classes, as well as faculty offices and a faculty lounge, made the new building a far cry from its antiquated predecessor. The general euphoria was so great, the City College trustees asked the Board of Higher Education to abrogate a 1917 "no poaching" agreement they had made with Hunter, under which women would be excluded from all the day-session programs at City College and men would not be admitted to Hunter. Women would now be eligible to enter the day session of the School of Business. If, as was expected, demands for admission increased, male applicants would get first preference. The Board's response was favorable and couched in words that were for that day quite liberal: "Women of high school graduation age or over, who proposed to pursue a business or professional course, need not be segregated as to sex in order to do their best work as students."(54)

Boys and girls together, therefore, including Townsend Harris boys, age-segregated on the upper floors of the new building, went about the business of education in their new quarters. In contrast to earlier years, all Townsend Harris students were at 23rd Street because the uptown campus of CCNY, where the high school had its own building, was now swamped with students and the new downtown building, as we have seen, had space. As had been true since the School of Business and Civic Administration began, the overwhelming majority of students, whether in the degree, diploma or nonmatriculant program, were Jewish. In 1927, 100 percent of those who received diplomas in accounting were Jewish, and the same was true for all of the thirty-four BBA graduates in 1930. Reflecting the assimilative attitudes of the times, as well as anti-Semitic hiring practices, numerous Jewish graduates chose American-sounding names after they left CCNY and kept the faculty busy with requests to change their college records in order to reflect the change in their surface ethnicity.(55)

By the time this happened, the 1920's boom had ended and it was clear that hard times were ahead. What meaning did this have for the School of Business, created at a time when the prospects of the American economy seemed unlimited? Would the bright new building, "the largest structure anywhere devoted to the teaching of modern business methods," be able to fill its shiny new seats? Not to worry, as the British say; the Depression, calamitous as it was for so many American institutions, saw the expansion of all the municipal colleges, including the School of Business and Civic Administration.

NOTES

(1) Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 2.

(2) Carl F. Kaestle, The Evolution of an Urban School System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 102-103.

(3) Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 83; Kaestle, Urban School System, 104.

(4) S. Willis Rudy, The College of the City of New York (New York: City College Press, 1949), 12.

(5) Ibid., 19, 20.

(6) Ibid., 20, 21.

(7) Sherry Gorelick, City College and the Jewish Poor (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981), 62; Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York (Port Washington, N.Y.: Ira J. Friedman, Inc., 1949), 18.

(8) Rudy, City College, 13.

(9) Ibid., 26, 27-28.

(10) Ibid., 33.

(11) Ibid., 39.

(12) Kaestle, Urban School System, 107; James Grant, Bernard Baruch (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 27.

(13) Kaestle, Urban School System, 108; Rudy, City College, 82.

(14) Rudy, City College, 49, 72.

(15) Ibid., 49, 60-62, 71, 76.

(16) Rudy, City College, 90-91.

(17) Richard Hofstadter and C. DeWitt Hardy, The Development and Scope of Higher Education in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 9, 91.

(18) John Brubacher and S. Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 208.

(19) Benjamin Haynes and Harry Jackson, A History of Business Education in the United States (New York: SW Publishing Co., 1935), 83; L. C. Marshall, The Collegiate School of Business (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1928), 47, 54, 56, 62, 63.

(20) Hofstadter and Hardy, Development of Higher Education, 90.

(21) Brubacher and Rudy, Higher Education, 209; Marshall, Collegiate School, 56; Frank Pierson, et al., The Education of American Businessmen (New York: McGraw Hill, 1959), 35, 36, 610-611.

(22) Theodore F. Jones, ed., New York University 1832-1932 (New York: New York University Press, 1933), 356-378 passim; Haynes and Jackson, Business Education, 65; Gorelick, Jewish Poor, 64; Rudy, City College, 164, 166, 168.

(23) College of the City of New York, Register, 1907-1908, 63; Rudy, City College, 326; College of the City of New York, Proceedings of the Trustees (November 24, 1913), 153; Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, Review of the Year 1913-1914, viii.

(24) Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, Proceedings (May 12, 1912), 18; Rudy, City College, 326-327.

(25) Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, Proceedings, May 4, 1911, pp. 6-7; November 2, 1911, p. 87; February 15, 1912, p. 227; February 1, 1912, p. 178.

(26) Ibid., January 4, 1912, p.165.

(27) Board of Trustees for the College of the City of New York, Proceedings, September 27, 1915, p. 172; March 6, 1919, p. 67; Rudy, City College, 314, 325, 361.

(28) College of the City of New York, Register, 1916, pp. 200-201; Trustees. Proceedings, January 16, 1917, p. 19; March 7, 1918, p. 33; March 18, 1919, pp. 73-74; College of the City of New York, School of Business and Civic Administration, "Faculty Minutes," September 19, 1919, p. 3; Rudy, City College, 370-71.

(29) College of the City of New York, School of Business and Civic Administration, "Faculty Minutes," September 19, 1919, p. 3.

(30) Trustees, Proceedings, January 21, 1919, p. 31; February 18, 1919, P. 6: June 17, 1919, p. 131; "Faculty Minutes," November 13, 1919, pp. 9l0. The creation of the new professional schools caused the liberal arts and science departments to assert a separate identity.

(31) Rudy, City College, 369; Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925), 140.

(32) James Bossard and Frederic Dewhurst, University Education for Business (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931), 251-252.

(33) Register, 1919-20, p. 31; 1920-21, p. 10, 14; 1923-24, p. 67.

(34) Selina Berrol, "Education and Economic Mobility," American Jewish Historical Quarterly 65 (March 1976), 257-272; "Faculty Minutes," May 1920, p. 32.

(35) Register, 1919-1920, p. 31; "Faculty Minutes,"January 1, 1920, pp, 14, 17, 22, 24; February 2, 1921, p. 38; Florence Neumann, "Access to Free Public Higher Education in New York City, 1847-1961," unpublished Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1984, p. 142.

(36) Register, 1920, pp. 178-183.

(37) Bossard and Dewhurst, University Education, 261.

(38) "Faculty Minutes," November 13, 1919, p. 11.

(39) Joan Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975), 86.

(40) "Faculty Minutes," January 20, 1920, p.21.

(41) Ibid., 24.

(42) "Faculty Minutes," January 20, 1920, p. 28; March 9, 1928, p. 92.

(43) "Faculty Minutes," January 20, 1920, p. 24; May 19, 1920, pp. 3031; November 29, 1921, p.47.

(44) College of the City of New York, School of Business and Civic Administration, Bulletin, 1930-31, p. 22, "Faculty Minutes," January 20, 1920 (quotation), p. 15; March 16, 1929, p. 110; November 26, 1929, p. 117; March 5, 1931, p. 129; March 24, 1932, pp. 149-151 November 11, 1932, p. 157.

(45) "Faculty Minutes," February 2, 1921, p. 38; May 1, 1928, p. 98; March 9, 1928, p. 94; Bulletin, 1929-1930, pp. 52-53.

(46) Register, 1920-1929, passim; "Faculty Minutes," February 26, 1929, pp. 106-108, March 15, 1926, p. 74; Trustees, Proceedings, February 18, 1926, pp. 46-47.

(47) Register, 1921-1924, and passim 1920-1929; "Faculty Minutes," March 24, 1932, p. 147; January 12, 1939, p. 1.

(48) "Faculty Minutes," January 20, 1920, p. 4; Rudy, City College, 389-390. Townsend Harris High School was a special secondary school for gifted boys.

(49) City of New York, Board of Estimate, Minutes', 1926, p. 5465.

(50) Trustees, Proceedings, September 23, 1926, pp. 203-206, 207; October 18, 1928, p. 426.

(51) Lexicon, the Senior Yearbook of the School of Business and Civic Administration, 1930.

(52) Bulletin, 1930, p. 11; Trustees, Proceedings, June 7, 1927, pp. 5. 6; October 10, 1928, pp. 424-425.

(53) Rudy, City College, 390; Board of Higher Education, Proceedings. January 21, 1930, pp. 61-62.

(54) Board of Higher Education, Proceedings, January 21, 1930, p. 62.

(55) "Faculty Minutes," June 20, 1927, p. 87; Bulletin, 1927, 1930, passim.