History of Baruch College Book and Exhibit

4. Troubled Years for the Baruch School, 1955-1962

On June 13, 1955, amid many encomiums and expressions of sadness, Dean Thomas Norton said goodbye to the faculty of the Baruch School and moved downtown to become the Dean of New York University's School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance. Several reasons, including ambition, motivated his move. Although his ten-year administration had been a relative oasis of tranquility in the history of the School of Business and Civic Administration, stirrings within the municipal college system and changes in the demography and economy of New York City indicated that turbulent years lay ahead. Furthermore, in the very year that Norton achieved a safe berth at Washington Square, the School of Business was examined by the Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges and, although somewhat grudgingly accredited, was found wanting in many respects. All things considered, 1955 was a good year for a dean to move onward.(1)

The difficulties that bedeviled the School in the late fifties and early sixties were in large measure a continuation of the long-term problems of inadequate space, lack of funds, absence of autonomy and questionable educational quality identified much earlier by Herman Feldman and others. There were, however, some new developments, both bad and good. Enrollments dropped somewhat, and the relatively independent municipal colleges were joined together in a new university. In the nation as a whole, there was considerable unrest, as beatniks gave way to flower children and then to campus radicals and antiwar protesters, and blacks moved toward militance. Nevertheless, until the late sixties, the Baruch School was not much affected. At 23rd Street, making modest changes and coping with familiar problems absorbed most of the available energy. In essence, during these years the School was in a holding pattern, awaiting momentous changes to come.

Dean Emanuel Saxe Takes Charge

In spite of the tepid Middle States evaluation, an uneventful interregnum, presided over by Acting Dean Lewis Mayers, followed Norton's timely departure. In the fall of 1956, after a "nation wide search," Emanuel Saxe, the chairman of the Accounting Department, was named dean and began a twelve-year administration that was by far the most difficult period in the history of the School of Business. A lesser man might not have survived the torrent of reports, studies, committee meetings and words that were the prelude to the creation of a separate college, but Saxe had the strength, sensibility and experience to cope with the numerous crises that enlivened his term of office. Eventually, he led his beloved school to a relatively safe harbor.

The newly named dean could trace his own connection to the City College back to 1923, when he received a Diploma in Accountancy from the School of Business. Years earlier, however, his father had earned a baccalaureate at City College and had later become a member of the Department of Philosophy. Although he became a CPA and accountancy remained his profession, the younger Saxe also completed the work for a Bachelor of Science in the social sciences on the main campus and later earned the Ph.D. and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree as well. He came to his original alma mater first as a special instructor in Accountancy in 1928 and later became part of the full-time staff. In the next two decades, Saxe worked his way through the ranks, becoming chairman of the department in 1950. But this brief recital of his progress up the career ladder does not do justice to the man. He was also an author, a fine teacher and an outstanding leader of the faculty long before he became dean.

His appointment was a first in several ways. As a born and bred New Yorker, a practicing Jew, a representative of the largest and most important department in the School and thus recruited from the "inside" (in spite of the concern with "inbreeding" that continually surfaced at the Board of Higher Education), his was an unusual appointment. It was, however, apparently a popular one; Saxe had been the secretary of the Faculty since 1941 and knew everyone at the School and they knew him to be efficient, well-informed and collegial. He was yet more popular with students. Several years before his elevation to the deanship, a House Plan had been named for his father--an indirect tribute to him as well--and even after he had been in office for several years and presumably had enforced some unpopular decisions, Lexicon complimented him for being a dean "whose door was always open," in contrast with Justin Moore, "the Dean whom no one knew" because he remained hidden from the students.(2)

A Ticker reporter entered Saxe's open door in June 1964 and spent a day observing the dean at work, on the basis of which he wrote an affectionate portrait.(3) Saxe reciprocated in kind. In general, he liked students very much and enjoyed his contacts with them. Having been forced to abandon premedical studies upon his father's untimely death, he was sympathetic to their financial problems. He also loved to place able graduates in jobs. As a result, the numbers of successful middle-aged and retired adults of both sexes who can say that "Manny Saxe helped me get my first job" is legion. Extremely loyal to City College and its School of Business, he kept in touch with hundreds of former students, attending class reunions and recruiting them for the Alumni Association.

It would be a mistake, however, to see Dean Saxe only as a fatherly figure. As the Ticker reporter acknowledged, he was also "the man whose name is lore, legend and law [my emphasis] at the Baruch School."(4) Although the dean did not like the designation, the School of Business was sometimes referred to as "Saxe's 23rd Street." Clearly, there was a strong fist inside the velvet glove Saxe wore most of the time. As a result, it was widely believed that he could do almost anything, even single-handedly create a blackout! It came as no surprise to anyone at 23rd Street when on an evening in November 1966, at the moment that the dean pressed the "secret button" labeled CQD (Come Quick Dean) that alerted the elevator operators to come to his office on the sixteenth floor, all the lights in Manhattan went out.(5)

Even a cursory glance at what he was required to do in one day, however, makes it clear that a weak administrator could not have survived. June 1964, when he was interviewed, was actually a relatively quiet interval in the turbulent years of his deanship, a moment of calm between the crises involving the future of the School of Business. Although his burdens would shortly grow even heavier, even in 1964 Saxe had to face many old problems (maintenance, space, curriculum), as well as newer ones related to the School's position as part of both City College and the new City University structure that was established in 1961. All things considered, a dean who kept a tight rein on his school was probably essential for those difficult years. In retrospect, if not always at the time, most of the people at 23rd Street accepted this.

Changes: Student Life

Worry about the future of the Baruch School was a constant factor in the life of students, administrators and faculty during the years that preceded separation. The period was marked by a permanent undercurrent of anxiety and anger that flared into panic at certain crucial moments. Nevertheless, the traditional life of the School went on; indeed the very uncertainty inhibited innovation, and thus in many respects there was no change at all. Concern over student unpreparedness, attire and use of English were still high on the faculty agenda. For example, saying that he was speaking for the accounting department, who in turn claimed to have received complaints from parents, Saxe, before he became dean, asked the faculty to consider student dress.

A committee was formed to study the problem and reported that it was the physical inadequacies of 23rd Street that led to dirty, sloppy student dress: "An unclean building discourages the . . . desire to be well attired, neat and clean." Dirty chairs made it hard to stay clean, and the lack of lockers led to "theft and wrinkling." In spite of these conditions, the committee insisted that the Baruch School must establish certain limits "because of the need to prepare students to make a good impression in the business world where practitioners would not accept sloppy dress."(6)

Much remained the same, but conditions at 23rd Street were not entirely fossilized. For example, Parents' Day in the 1950's, although it continued an old tradition, was in reality much changed. The aim now was to make mothers and fathers allies of the institution, both in terms of educating their children but also as a support group when the Baruch School found itself under attack. For these reasons, the parents of each entering class received a specially prepared "Parent's Handbook" and were urged to come to faculty lectures on ways to help their youngsters study and make intelligent career choices. These outreach efforts were quite successful; year after year an astonishingly high proportion of parents came to the annual meeting. Furthermore, according to Lexicon, most students welcomed parental involvement, finding that when parents understood what college life was all about, they put less pressure on their children. All of this was unique to the fifties; imagine the college students of the next decade welcoming such parental attention.(7)

By far the most important change in student life at the Baruch School (with auxiliary benefits to faculty and administrators, who now had 10 percent more space at 17 Lexington Avenue), was the acquisition, renovation and opening of the Student Center in the former Children's Court building on 22nd Street. It had long been coveted by the School of Business, and the fact that it shared a heating plant with 17 Lexington Avenue made its acquisition logical. Norton had hoped to acquire it; Saxe accomplished it. In the summer of 1958, when he heard that the Children's Court was moving out, he immediately asked Gustave Rosenberg, the chairman of the Board of Higher Education, to request that the New York City Bureau of Real Estate (the building's "landlord") and the City Planning Commission (which might have other plans for it) assign it to the Baruch School, along with the $110,000 he estimated would be needed to renovate it.

The School's student organizations were very pleased; even before they knew for certain that the building would be theirs, they held a meeting to discuss space allocations. The evening-session newspaper, the Reporter, was altogether delighted, but the Ticker struck a note of caution, saying that while something was better than nothing, the acquisition of the new space emphasized the fact that the Baruch School needed an entire new building instead of having its activities spread all around Manhattan.(8)

Although the Board of Higher Education's request was granted and the former Children's Court was acquired by the Baruch School later in 1958, renovation went slowly. Occupancy was delayed until 1960, but even when the clubs, House Plan, student government and the student press had finally taken possession, there was much dissatisfaction with the small rooms and limited elevator service. In spite of the complaints, the student body as a whole made good use of the new center, and its existence unquestionably helped improve the quality of life at the School of Business.

This is also true of the very large sums of money that a generous Bernard M. Baruch gave to the institution that bore his name. He had long been a benefactor to all of City College, including the School of Business, but after 1953, his gifts to the school that was his namesake grew larger and more frequent. In most cases the money he gave was placed in the Baruch Development Fund. Actually, Bernard Baruch contributed much more than his name and his money to the School.

On many occasions he used his influence to bolster its self-image, writing to the class of 1957, for instance, that although the School of Business seemed unimpressive due to its lack of a campus and other amenities, its real worth was determined by the caliber of its faculty and students; on those grounds it was "among the best in the United States."(9)

Baruch was a frequent guest and sometime speaker at 23rd Street ceremonies. In general, the School lost no opportunity to honor him.

When the first volume of his autobiography, My Own Story, was published in 1957, for example, the School of Business, together with alumni leaders from the main campus, hosted a reception for him at the Harmonie Club. They were amply rewarded for their attention. At his death in June 1965, he left several different bequests to the School which eventually added up to an endowment fund of $9 million. (10)

All of this great sum was to be used for the benefit of students. Smaller amounts from the Development Fund were used for other purposes that might strengthen the School. As President Gallagher said when he announced the terms of Baruch's will to the faculty, "All of a sudden, the less affluent stepchild has become an affluent and important child of the City College."(11) Ironically, all this money, welcome as it was, could not produce what the School needed most, a new home. It was, however, most useful for other purposes. A year after some of the money started coming in (from remainders because the School was the second beneficiary and did not come into possession of Baruch's gifts until the first had died), the "Faculty-Staff Newsletter" announced an eightfold increase in the funds available for scholarships.(12)

Changes: Culture, Communications, Computers, Current Affairs

Although Baruch was by far the most generous donor, other men of wealth also gave large sums to the School. In his report for 1957-1958, for example, Dean Saxe reported that a $300,000 bequest had established the Morton Wollman Fund. The expected annual income of $9,000 to $10,000 was to be used for a lecture series. Other parts of the Wollman Fund paid for scholarships and prizes to able students. Outside money also paid for various other enrichments at the Baruch School. Through the good offices of Professor Abraham Brilloff, Harry Belafonte, his client, donated a large and valuable art collection to the School, which was first exhibited and then sold to raise money for other cultural events.

This particular show was only one among dozens announced in the "Faculty Staff Newsletter," the Ticker and the Reporter between 1957 and 1967, along with information about frequent music recitals and Theatron, which produced successful revivals of Broadway shows. While attendance figures are not available, it is clear that culture was alive and well at 23rd Street for those who wanted to partake of it.(13)

Those who preferred current affairs had an even wider choice, because a truly impressive list of speakers came to the Baruch School in the late fifties and sixties. The Annual Bernard M. Baruch Lecture, usually given on Charter Day in May, always featured a prominent figure. Home-grown talent was also available. Beginning in 1962, management professor Aaron Levenstein hosted a radio series entitled "The World of Business" on local radio station WEVD (named for Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs), which allowed various Baruch faculty to display their expertise.(14)

The School of Business was keeping up with developments in the outside world in other ways as well. Computers and courses on how to use them were proposed in 1960, although lack of space delayed their introduction for some time. When all else failed, a proposal was made to place the first machine in part of the "disgusting" 10th floor cafeteria on the grounds that a shiny new solid-state, fully transistorized IBM 160 computer with a 40,000 digit core-storage memory, which could be programmed in several machine languages, could only improve conditions there. Some of the faculty objected, saying that the admittedly unappealing cafeteria was one of the few places teachers and students could get together, but their arguments were not allowed to stop progress. In March 1963, the computer was installed.(15)

Changes: New Programs

A most important program change in the 1950's era was the creation and development of an Associate in Applied Science (AAS) degree program, the answer to the limited matriculant problem discussed by Dean Feldman more than a decade earlier and recommended in two reports on the municipal colleges, Donald Cottrell's first Master Plan report (1950) and the Strayer-Yavner Education Management Study (1951).

It was intended to be an evening-session terminal-degree program, highly vocational and supported in part by tuition and in part by state funds. In spite of fears that it would dilute the professional courses (AAS and BBA candidates would enroll in many of the same classes), and thus injure the standing of their baccalaureate degree, a desire to compete with the other municipal colleges, including the main center uptown, led to faculty approval of the new program in February 1954. In the following year, after outgoing Dean Norton had prepared the way, it was also adopted by the new police science program, although in this version, it was funded by police academy and state funds, not tuition. Members of the fire and correction departments were also enrolled in the program.

Two other degree programs, the BBA and MPA, were broadened to include police science. Clearly, the Baruch School hoped to make collegiate education for the police a permanent part of their public-administration program and for a while this seemed likely to happen. In early 1955, when plans for a new police academy building were being made, it was expected to include "instructional facilities for the Baruch School," and the Commander of the Academy was titled Assistant Dean for Police Studies and was a member of the Baruch faculty. But the School's plans were not to be realized. The Board of Estimate authorized an Academy exclusively for police training, and in 1965 all of the programs were removed from the Baruch School and placed in a new College of Police Science, the forerunner of the present-day John Jay College of Criminal Justice.(16)

The AAS programs painstakingly established between 1954 and 1956 started out strongly but declined in the 1960's as the number of community colleges grew. Reflecting their continuing ambivalence about hosting an associate degree program (other than police science, which everyone saw as fitting the School quite well), the faculty had kept the admission standards fairly high, asking for a high school diploma or its equivalent and an entrance examination for applicants whose high-school average was below 75. The familiar BBA route to matriculation, earning a C average or better as a nonmatriculant, was also open to aspiring AAS candidates, but this was equally true at the community colleges whose graduates could transfer to senior colleges. For various reasons, therefore, it was more advantageous for most students who wanted a two-year terminal degree to enroll at a community college instead of at the Baruch School. AAS programs of varying importance were established at all the senior colleges in what, after 1961, was known as the City University of New York.

In another area -- freshman orientation -- the procedures followed at 23rd Street were unique. Starting in 1957, in large part because the newly ensconced Dean Saxe had such excellent relations with the alumni, money was raised to take somewhat more than a third of the entering freshmen to a rough campsite in Falls Village, Connecticut, named Camp Isabelle Freedman for a weekend before classes began. In the presence of student leaders, some faculty and the staff of the Department of Student Life, the newcomers were introduced to each other and to the institution that was to be their academic home for the next few years.

Dean Ruth Wright, as dean of students, was at least nominally in charge of the program, but in 1963 she resigned to become director of the Bi-National Center in Vientiane, Laos. She was succeeded by an extremely energetic and effective man named David Newton, who had come to the Baruch School from the main campus a year earlier. At that point, some of the novelty of Freshman Camp had worn off, and faculty were somewhat harder to recruit. Only six people from other than the Department of Student Life, for example, were present to welcome the class that entered in 1962.

Newton decided to breathe new life into the program by changing its name and locale and some of its activities.

Now to be known as Freshman Colloquium, it was convened at various Catskill and Pocono Mountain hotels after Labor Day, the traditional end of the high season in resort areas, when lower rates prevailed. According to Lexicon, 1965, whose editors had attended the colloquium as student leaders in both 1963 and 1964 but had been introduced to the School by means of the original orientation program in 1961, the biggest difference between camp and colloquium was that the former emphasized school spirit and the latter placed more stress on the educational side of college life. This is exactly what Newton wanted it to do.(17)

His goals were worthy ones: to acquaint freshmen with the general aims of higher education and the specific ones of the Baruch School, to present the best possible image of the School in an effort to raise the level of expectations of both students and faculty and to create a "warm acceptance" of the student, while, at the same time, making the newcomers realize the need for personal responsibility. These lofty aims were reached by replicas of actual classes (preceded by assignments) taught by professors, indoctrination on the history and traditions of the School and by fun and games. The results were excellent. Many of the participants became school leaders; at the very least, all of them began college knowing some of their fellows. Unfortunately, the colloquium ended when Open Admissions, with its much larger classes, began in 1970.(18)

Although the master's program was hardly new (indeed, as we have seen, one of the first steps taken by the infant School of Business and Civic Administration in the twenties was to establish a fifth-year program), their growth and expansion in the fifties and sixties was remarkable enough to constitute a classic "tail wagging the dog situation." There was a 23 percent increase in graduate (matriculated and nonmatriculated) enrollments between 1956 and 1966, mostly in the MBA program, and the faculty was kept busy approving the steady stream of curriculum proposals emanating from Associate Dean Jerome Cohen's office. Graduation statistics more than matched enrollment increases. Although only 74 students received the MBA in 1956, 275 did so ten years later, an increase of almost 27 percent.(19)

Accounting continued to be the specialization of choice, but newer programs such as industrial psychology and health care administration also attracted students as did the older specialties of finance and investment. Only the MPA program remained very small. Able to turn their attention to content and instruction rather than recruitment and retention (previously important problems), Cohen and his associates made entry into the MBA course of study more difficult and raised the credit value of most graduate courses. In spite of fears that higher admission standards and a more demanding course of study would drive students away, Cohen was able to report that in the early sixties candidates were coming from more sources than ever before. This growth and the importance of graduate programs to the School as a whole led to the establishment of a Graduate Center on one floor of an office building at 257 Park Avenue South several years before the undergraduate program received any significant new space.(20)

Personnel

The replacement of thirty-year veteran Ruth Wright by a new dean of students was only one of several important administrative and instructional changes in the sixties. Long-term and much-respected Registrar Agnes Mulligan retired in 1966 and was succeeded by the former Assistant Registrar for the Evening Session, Bernard Ulitz. There were also many other faculty retirements, as the people appointed in the twenties and thirties came to the end of their careers. Job assignments also changed. Samuel Thomas of the political science department became Dean Saxe's right-hand man (officially assistant, later associate dean) in June 1957, at the same time that Jerome Cohen, sub-chairman of the economics department, took charge of graduate studies. As crisis followed crisis in the late sixties, and Saxe needed more help, Henry Eilbert left the marketing department to become a second assistant dean.(21)

The faculty and administration changed a good deal in the fifties and sixties, and so did their salaries, benefits, "perks" and working conditions, all of which improved. The fifteen-hour faculty workload had been a source of much unhappiness for a long time, but it was the criticism in the 1955 Middle States Association Report that led the Board of Higher Education to consider the possibility of moving to a twelve-hour load. Since the cost of doing this at all the units of City College would be enormous, there seemed little chance that it could be achieved unless departments and administrators could find a way to cut the numbers of hours of teaching without adding to the number of teachers or changing the total enrollment of the department.

The history department at the Baruch School decided to do this by teaching larger sections. Other departments, notably economics, chose to use huge lectures for its introductory courses. Fans of audio-visual equipment proposed that films and records take the place of live instructors for part of the week. This last idea was not carried out, but the other two were and both class size and the number of courses taught by lecture grew. The Ticker, speaking for most students, did not approve, but twelve hours became the norm for undergraduate teaching at the senior colleges.(22)

In 1966, the Middle States Association surveyed all the institutions in what had become, in 1961, the City University of New York and found that the faculty salary scale was "reasonable, although benefits could be better." This may have led to the establishment of a system-wide Faculty Welfare Fund later that year. Its initial effort was only a low-cost life insurance program, but it became more important after 1968, when the Professional Staff Congress (the faculty union) was recognized.

Other benefits--such as funds to attend scholarly meetings and research grants -- also appeared in the late sixties, and there were some important faculty changes in the lower ranks. By 1966, tutors had been completely phased out and lecturers (who were not eligible for tenure) occupied the budget lines tutors had previously held, as well as many of the slots that formerly belonged to instructors, of whom there were now only a few. A few years later there was a further change. Assistant professors became the lowest tenurable rank, and instructors, like tutors before them, could now serve for only three years unless they achieved the Ph.D. within that time and thus became eligible for professorial rank. Until 1969, lecturers were in the same situation, but in that year new Board of Higher Education rulings gave them a certain kind of tenure, known as a Certificate of Continuous Employment. A special change in nomenclature signified the growing importance of the library. During the academic year 1966-1967, librarians, who had formerly occupied a sort of limbo rank that lay between clerk and teacher, were elevated to the instructional level.(23)

In 1965, the growing importance of the Department of Economics at the School of Business led to a separation of the downtown group from the "mother" department on the main campus. This step was of great importance because it meant that life-and-death personnel decisions for the Department of Economics would now be made by colleagues who were knowledgable peers of the candidates, not by a group some distance away who had their own axes to grind. It would also liberate the Baruch economics department from curricular restrictions imposed from uptown. Another blow for freedom was struck at the same time. The unwieldy "umbrella" department, business administration, agreed to a division leading to the creation of the Departments of Management, Marketing and Statistics. Their members and curricular proposals, like those of the other professional departments, would now be judged solely by practitioners in their own fields.(24)

The liberal-arts personnel at 23rd Street would have welcomed similar independence for themselves, but unlike Economics, a department that always had one foot in business and one in the social sciences, such autonomy eluded them. Until they were legally separated from City College, the tenure, promotions and sabbaticals of the members of arts and science departments remained in the hands of divisional Personnel and Budget Committees on the main campus. One of the worst aspects of this situation was the fact that unless their subchairman, who presumbly knew them best, was a full professor and therefore entitled to sit on one of these all-important divisional committees, there was no one to speak for them. Their rank, salary, indeed their job itself might depend on the votes of uptown faculty members who did not know them.

This injustice was very high on the list of faculty complaints, but the arts and sciences departments also wished for some of the curricular freedom the economists had gained. Up to this point, if they were allowed to give a course of their own devising, it was listed as "unattached" and had to be reexamined by a department curriculum committee on the main campus after two years. Truly, if they had searched far and wide, the uptown departments could not have found a better way to express their lack of confidence in and desire to be disassociated from anything done by their colleagues downtown.

Emanuel Saxe was both understanding of and sympathetic to the practical concerns of the liberal-arts faculty at 23rd Street, but this did not exempt them from his criticisms of the faculty in general. Early in his administration he had established a "kitchen cabinet," at first composed of department chairmen, subchairmen and top administrators, but later made up of anyone whose expertise he deemed valuable. Among other uses, they provided the dean with a forum in which he could ventilate his anger at faculty misbehavior such as "failure to make full use of instructional time."(25)

Another faculty change also took place in the sixties. A small number of women instructors were added to the full-time faculty, raising the total of twelve in 1961 to twenty-five in 1968. This increase, however minuscule, was a sign that the times were changing, as was also true of the difference in the way married women instructors were listed in those years. In 1961, they appeared with their husband's name (unless a widow or divorced) as well as their own. Rosalind Grippi of the art department was identified as (Mrs. Salvatore), Ilma Sands of Marketing as (Mrs. Howard), etc. Even a Ph.D. degree, for the very few who held them, appeared after the delineation of their marital status. Economics professor Hedwig Reinhardt, for example, who held a pre-World War II doctorate from Germany's prestigious Heidelberg University, was identified first as "Miss" and then "Dr. " By 1968, however, women faculty were on their own, listed only by their rank and name.

Hedwig Reinhardt's position at the School of Business is an interesting illustration of the prevailing attitudes of the time. Although in 1961 she was the only woman in the School to hold professorial rank in a business department (Economics) and in spite of the quality of her academic preparation, Hedwig Reinhardt's name never appeared in listings of important faculty committees; instead she chaired the Committee on Ceremonial Occasions and the one on Social Activities, which sent the necessary condolences and congratulations to the faculty and staff and hosted an annual holiday party.(26)

Other incidents reinforce the impression that women, in general, were held in low esteem at 23rd Street. In March 1963, Psychology subchairman Benjamin Balinsky announced the results of tests he had done on corporate wives who joined their husbands on overseas assignments. He found: "They influence a man's decision to go and then nag him until he comes home no matter what the cost to his career."(27) Equally derogatory was the incident that took place when the accounting department moved into new offices in the mid-sixties. Since there were no funds available for window coverings, it was suggested that the two women members of the department run up some drapes in their spare time.

At least one woman at 23rd Street, however, exercised great power and was widely respected. Agnes Mulligan had come to the School of Business and Civic Administration as a part-time clerical assistant in the Registrar's office in January 1933 and had risen from the ranks to become Assistant Registrar, the top job. In this role she shaped vital admission and retention policies. For many years after she retired, faculty and staff who knew her mourned their loss because her legendary efficiency was not equalled until the advent of Tom McCarthy in spring 1982.

Another woman faculty member was also well respected at 23rd Street. Joan Gadol, who taught in the history department of the Baruch School from 1956 to 1966, was a brilliant historian (the first woman in New York State to win a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and the recipient of several Columbia University scholarships) and an extraordinary teacher who meticulously planned each class and infected her students with her own enthusiasm for the study of the past. In spite of her demands on them (her assignments were detailed and heavy), she was popular and trusted. In 1965, at a time of burgeoning unrest, she presented the Student Council request (which she endorsed) for greater student participation in the affairs of the School. Several years after she left Baruch for the main campus she was well remembered and both her students and her peers complimented the next woman historian to arrive at 23rd Street by saying the newcomer reminded them of Joan Gadol!(28)

For several reasons, it is not surprising that most women faculty members were not very important at the Baruch School in the early sixties. In addition to male chauvinism and their small numbers, there were relatively few women students in attendance between 1953 and 1963. Overwhelmingly, these women prepared to teach business subjects (primarily secretarial studies or accounting), not to become practitioners. Even the number of retailing majors declined as the baby boom--induced expansion of the elementary and secondary schools increased opportunities. The strong pull of teaching was entirely understandable; in no other job could a married woman (still very much the ideal) have a career, raise a family (her school hours and vacation periods would match those of her schoolage children) and look forward to the security of a pension. The decided slant toward teaching, however, had a dark side. It helped reinforce the myth that women were not serious students of business, and thus enabled other influences, generally hostile to women, to prevail at the Baruch School in those years.

Changes: Ethnicity

Another change, which in retrospect was very much a sign of things to come, was in the realm of ethnicity. There was a 37 percent increase in the number of non-Jewish graduates between 1953 and 1968. The 1956 Lexicon was able to describe a freshman dance that their class had organized and publicized as "Grab a Nosh at the Freshman Mish Mosh," which revealed not only the budding talent of a prospective advertising copywriter but also the fact that in 1952 the greatest proportion of the class was acquainted with at least "kitchen Yiddish," something on which Lexicon a decade later could never have counted.

Jewish graduates were supplanted by students from other white ethnic groups, notably Italians and Irish whose families had achieved enough economic security and absorbed enough of the American value system to want higher education for their children. In addition, the number of Hispanic graduates (whether from New York City's growing Puerto Rican colony or elsewhere) grew modestly (56 more in 1968 than in 1953), although the number of black graduates showed much less growth (only 16 more in 1968 than in 1953).

Other evidence, however, indicates that blacks made up a sizable portion of the evening-session student body, maintaining both a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and an active Carver Society, staffing the Reporter and leading the student government organization. Either because they were nonmatriculants or candidates for the AAS degree (only baccalaureates appeared in Lexicon), their prominence was not reflected in the graduation statistics. Since the municipal colleges, like many other American institutions prior to the middle sixties, was "color blind," figures on black enrollment were not kept(29)

It is easy to explain the small number of black graduates from any of the municipal colleges. The reasons were many: poor preparation in the lower schools compounded by relatively high admission requirements, poverty too great for most black families to do without the minimal income their children might earn and most of all, the absence of motivation due to pervasive job discrimination. All of these factors made it unlikely that most blacks and Hispanics, even if they completed high school, would be able or willing to attend the Baruch School long enough to graduate. Indeed, given their circumstances, it is remarkable to note how many blacks were paying for credits as nonmatriculants, hoping to enter the baccalaureate program by the back door.

The decline in the number of Jewish students attending the Baruch School is in large measure an ironic tribute to free higher education in New York City. As we have seen, for the cost of carfare, perhaps lunch money (most were "brown baggers") and a few fees, thousands of working-class sons and daughters from Eastern European Jewish families had attended City College, uptown and downtown, in the thirties and forties. Some had held full-time jobs by day and studied for as long as ten years at night; those who could afford to attend day session, of course, finished sooner. Only a few became wealthy, but all improved their social and economic position over that of their parents. As a result, by the late fifties and sixties, many were able to do what only a small proportion of Jewish families had ever thought of doing earlier: send their sons and daughters to residential colleges out of New York City.

Those from families with relatively modest means attended the transformed state teachers' colleges, now known as the State University of New York (SUNY), which had very low tuition and boarding charges. Youngsters from more affluent families were likely to go farther afield. Although most graduates of the School of Business would tell anyone who asked that they had received a good education at 23rd Street, few wanted their children to replicate their experience. The reasons were sociological, not academic. Little status could be gained from sending a son or daughter to the Baruch School; ambition and snobbery dictated that they should go elsewhere.

Furthermore, it was easy for parents who could afford tuition to find a college that would admit their children, even those with weak high school records. For a number of reasons, including the impact of the G. I. Bill, higher education was a growth industry in the forties and fifties, and colleges of very little distinction bloomed all over the nation. In addition, discriminatory admission policies were virtually a thing of the past, providing opportunities for Jewish youngsters that had hardly existed in their parent's generation.

There are still other reasons to explain ethnic change at 23rd Street. Geography was one. Postwar federal policies--including the housing provisions of the G. I. Bill which enabled veterans to obtain low-interest mortgages, and Federal Housing Administration policies, which did the same for non-veterans--had encouraged a massive movement out of the cities, a process aided and abetted by extensive highway building. Even groups such as Jews, who had shunned home ownership during most of their years in the United States, preferring to move quickly if necessary and to use their capital for investment, succumbed to the lure of the suburbs. By the late fifties, when the Baruch School needed their children, the alumni were living in Nassau, Suffolk or Westchester counties or even further afield in Rockland County or New Jersey, out of touch with their increasingly troubled native city and their alma mater.(30)

Problems: Falling Enrollments, Causes and Remedies

Ethnic change, when it produced the same number of full-time equivalent credits and thus left their budgets intact, was entirely acceptable to the various units of the municipal college system. The problem at the School of Business was not that the students were different from those that had come before but rather that there were not enough of them. Although Dean Saxe had many small worries, registration figures had to be prominent among his larger concerns. Indeed, perhaps because they had endured so many years of rejection from uptown colleagues and were therefore extremely sensitive to further rejection, this time by prospective students, falling enrollments were a major preoccupation of everyone at 23rd Street from the mid-fifties on. Every spring and fall, the first issue of the "Faculty/Staff Newsletter" gave the registration figures for that semester; the Ticker published the same information, carefully noting a decline (most years) and celebrating a rise (alas, not too often). Registrar Mulligan also gave the same information at the first faculty meeting of each semester, and the statistics were duly noted in the "Minutes."

Overall, this concern would seem to be justified because total enrollment at the Baruch School dropped by 40 percent between 1952 and 1962. When the figures for different kinds of students are examined, however, the picture grows clearer and less injurious to the image of the School. The number of entering BBA candidates, for example, varied from a low of 462 to a high of 590 but stayed well over 550 during four of the ten years examined; although day-session registration in the fifties had dropped a good deal from its veteran induced high in 1947, it increased by 500 between 1960 and 1967. Graduate enrollment, as we have seen, grew by 23 percent.

The real cause of the decline was the loss of evening-session students. Those aiming at the BBA dropped by 42 percent between 1957 and 1967, candidates for the AAS declined by 72 percent and non-matriculants by 71 percent.(31) Why did evening-session students, in earlier years the bread and butter of the School, now desert it? One reason is that after peaking in 1958, the number of veterans studying under the Korean G.I. Bill, almost all of whom attended in the evening, dropped to almost nothing as their benefits were exhausted or they completed their requirements for the degree. Other causes of the decline were the result of increased competition from the community colleges and a new senior college, John Jay, as well as the growth of accounting programs at a dozen or more other colleges public and private, in and around New York City. All things considered, when we consider the predilection of former graduates to bite the hand that had fed them and the apparent unpopularity of capitalism and corporations during the radicalized sixties, add these factors to the poor physical condition of the Baruch School and the increasing competition it faced, an overall decline in enrollment was only to be expected.

Expected or not, it had to be addressed. One way to do so was to adjust admission requirements to the new reality. All of the municipal colleges, including the Baruch School, had followed exclusionary policies since their inception. Although the cut-off point at each institution moved higher or lower, depending on the space available and the number of applicants, it was always too high for more than 20 percent of New York City high-school graduates to gain admission. This had been pointed out in a 1950 report by Donald Cottrell and another by George Strayer and Louis Yavner a year later, by the Heald Report, "Meeting the Increasing Demand for Higher Education in New York State" in 1960 and the "Long Range Plan" commissioned by the Board of Higher Education in 1961. All these reports criticized the admission policies of the senior colleges and agreed that the needs of the the city and state for a trained labor force dictated that a larger proportion of high-school graduates attend college.(32)

One way to do this was to lower entry requirements, but only the Baruch School and, to a lesser extent, Hunter College did so. At 23rd Street, the need to lower the composite score on which admission was based was much regretted but recognized as necessary to maintain enrollments and avoid budget cuts. The composite score had been adopted in 1941 and was used as the basis for admission by all the municipal colleges. It was based on a formula that included the student's high-school average, the results earned on the Iowa Tests for Educational Development and a Scholastic Achievement Psychological Test. In 1960 the Baruch School had the lowest cutoff point in the system, 160. The others were as follows: Brooklyn College (men), 169, (women) 171; Queens, 166; Hunter, 162; College of Liberal Arts of City College, 167.(33)

As a counterweight to lowering the entry score, new remedies were adopted. In 1959, when the state legislature passed the Mitchell Bill, which permitted out-of-city residents to attend the municipal colleges on a tuition-paying basis, the faculty, many of whom lived in the suburbs, were encouraged to proselytize for the Baruch School and to enroll their own children, who would not have to pay tuition. Presumably bright and well-prepared, suburban students would make up for taking in greater numbers of less qualified students. New and intensive recruiting efforts within New York City were also undertaken. The Assistant Deans for Curricular Guidance, first Charles Eberhardt and later Frank Saidel, enlisted faculty teams that took turns visiting high schools, often the one from which they had graduated. After the community colleges began to turn out graduates, Saidel journeyed far and wide: to Kingsborough and Staten Island Community Colleges in New York City, to Nassau Community College on Long Island and even to Westchester and New Jersey, always in search of transfer students. In addition, high-school guidance counsellors were regularly entertained at luncheons and dinners.(34)

Problems: Student Ability

As these various remedies took hold and enrollments temporarily stabilized (although they did not grow), the dean and faculty became more and more concerned with the ability of the students admitted under the lower composite score. In a continuation, now somewhat exacerbated, of long-term worries, all agreed on the need for counselling and testing students and remediating their deficiencies. Curricular guidance conferences were required for students on probation and those who might shortly be placed in that unfortunate position. When Saxe insisted on a "How to Study" course, he tied the need directly to the admission of lower caliber students. On another occasion, after expressing his regret for the need to lower the composite score, he promised to do all that he could to restore the level of work at the Baruch School to its former excellence.

An objective observer might wonder what all the excitement was about. Even with the lowest entry score in the City University, the Baruch School was admitting students from the top quarter of their high school graduating class, as opposed to accepting them from the top third, which was the case in most American colleges.(35) Keeping in mind that the faculty had seen a need for remediation even when the Baruch School was admitting presumably better prepared high-school graduates, what lay behind their concern in the sixties? It seems likely that it was embarrassment and defensiveness that prompted the expressions of alarm at 23rd Street, not a realistic change in the caliber of the students. Given the variation in human talents and the subjective nature of the grading process, a student with a high-school average of 80 percent (the lowest accepted at the School) could not be that much different from one with an 83 percent, the standard accepted a few years earlier.

Furthermore, even when the entry average at the School had been higher, their students had been labeled inferior. The most important effect of the three-point drop in the composite score was to strengthen this long-standing belief. This was an unfortunate mistake, because the real issue was intellectualism over vocationalism, not the capacity to learn. Philosophy majors were assumed to have better minds than those who chose more practical specializations; sociology students with their minds on higher things were assumed to be superior to money-hungry accountants. These attitudes were reiterated in report after report and became well integrated into the conventional academic wisdom. Until the rise of the eminently practical and demonstrably intelligent "Yuppies" of the seventies and eighties, business students everywhere remained under a cloud.

Concerns with student intellect and the School's image led to problems regarding transfer students from the community colleges. In June 1962, for example, Saxe called the faculty's attention to the fact that the phraseology used by the community colleges to describe their business courses resembled the descriptions of the courses listed in the Baruch School's Bulletin. Properly alarmed, his colleagues authorized him to make the junior colleges stop this "confusing" practice.

Course descriptions were perhaps only a matter of pride, but what the students learned in those courses was of even greater concern to the Baruch faculty. Because they were intensely suspicious of the quality and content of the business courses taken by AAS students, they opposed the automatic transfer of credits to 23rd Street. In spring 1963, a Task Force on Transfer Students was established to meet with the three community colleges that offered business courses. In October they reported new and more stringent requirements designed to improve the caliber and preparation of transfer students admitted to the School.(36)

There is a puzzling irony about all this. At the same time that the Baruch School faculty was looking down its collective nose at the AAS transfer track students, they were teaching, albeit only in the evening session, 2,500 AAS students of their own and wishing for more. The session may have been the rub; evening-session students were usually assumed to be of lesser ability, and most evening-session classes contained several different kinds of students. The day-session classes that most of the AAS graduates would enter, however, were limited to BBA candidates who had entered with higher composite scores. If the School did not adopt a selective transfer admission policy, these classes would have to be shared with transfer students, who, at least to begin with, had been admitted to post-secondary education with poorer qualifications. The faculty feared that upper-level professional courses could not be taught at an accustomed high level.

Student ability, although often a discussion point, was only part of faculty's concern. What seemed to matter more was the content of the courses taken at the junior colleges and the standards by which the graduates had been awarded their degrees. Rightly or wrongly, the faculty at the Baruch School believed that community college courses and faculty were of lesser quality and that their graduates were insufficiently prepared. This was the concern they expressed, but lying just below the surface was an even greater anxiety. The School's image, already damaged by lower entry standards for the BBA, would be further injured by a flood of presumably less well prepared transfer students. As Saxe said, "Good students are attracted to schools with higher standards," and others cited a version of Gresham's Law to justify their fear that "bad" students would drive out the "good."(37)

Problems: Part-Time Students, Part-Time Teachers

Although valuable in terms of credits, even when limited to the evening session, AAS students who began their studies at 23rd Street were also a problem to the School. Just a year after the program began, in 1955, Jacob Orleans, a former professor of education at City College, made a survey of the Evening and Extension Division of the School. Among other findings, Orleans was extremely critical of the faculty's apparent inability to decide if their AAS program should be terminal or prepare students to transfer to the BBA track. Actually, it seems as though the School was trying to have the best of both worlds. On the one hand, its AAS program was said to be subprofessional, in the hope that the state would see it as a sort of community college and fund it accordingly. On the other hand, 95 percent of the courses taken by AAS students were meant for BBA candidates, and the Bulletin made it plain that advancing to the baccalaureate was possible. It was clearly more than a terminal program.

Orleans recommended that the School end its fence-straddling and make the AAS program a two-year program, if they kept it at all. The faculty, however, did not wish to make a definite choice. Instead, the AAS curriculum was revised to eliminate upper-level professional courses. The space in the students' program was to be filled by additional liberal-arts and basic business courses, so that the associate degree holder who decided to go on to the baccalaureate would have finished a large part of his or her non-professional degree requirements.

But what of those who decided not to go further? The faculty's actions had protected the purity of the BBA, but at the same time, they greatly weakened the value of the terminal associate degree. Two years of post-high school study at the Baruch School would presumably raise the educational status and broaden the outlook of the AAS recipient but would not substantially improve vocational prospects. Nonetheless, it was all that an insecure faculty could give. (38)

By accident or design, 1955 was a year in which the evening session was much studied and changed. The Orleans report was followed by an evaluation from the Middle States Association, which utilized much of Orleans' data and also added some ideas of their own. Actually, some of the recommended changes were already being made during 1955 to 1956. The Intensive Business Training Program, for example, was being phased out and ended completely in June 1956, with $40,000 left in the till. It was hoped that this money would go toward financing nonmatriculant programs at 23rd Street, but it was also being eyed by the School of General Studies (formerly the evening session) at the main campus. Tangled relations with that City College division was another well-known problem that had been rectified by the end of 1956. The Baruch School evening session was to be financially independent of uptown control, and downtown departments were to have much more autonomy in regard to hiring instructors and deciding on their rate of pay.(39)

Robert Love was on sabbatical leave during 1955-1956, and during his absence several steps were taken toward the integration of the day and evening sessions. His separate publicity bureau was merged with the office maintained for the School as a whole, the evening-session registrar's staff was to follow the same procedures as its day-session colleagues, and its supervisor was to report to his day-session "boss," not to Director Love. Additional supervision of what was still Love's dukedom (Norton's attempts to reduce it to a mere estate not withstanding), led to greater equality in the compensation paid to evening session supervisors. This was a lucrative perk often given to chairmen or subchairmen who were members of the "old-boy network" although actual supervision was often done by clerical personnel or very junior faculty.

Other matters identified by Orleans and the Middle States team were harder to remedy. Both were concerned with the enormous number of nonmatriculants, often even less prepared than the AAS transfers, who registered for baccalaureate sections. Saxe deplored the situation, but for many years he could only promise to try to create separate sections. The problem was that the nonmatriculant sections would fill, but the degree sections might not. As a stopgap measure to prevent the dilution of content in the mixed classes, the dean asked that the basis for grading in all evening-session courses be the same as for day-session classes. The examiners, although not satisfied, were somewhat appeased.(40)

Quality controls occupied the faculty but were not the major concern of evening-session students who, when questioned by Orleans and the Middle States team, repeated their long-standing complaints: registration was a nightmare (especially for nonmatriculants, who registered last) and physical conditions, such as the absence of soap and paper towels in the "filthy" lavatories, were reminiscent of the Feldman era. Much as the entire School felt vis-a-vis the main campus, evening-session students told Orleans that they were the stepchildren of the Baruch School.

Both Orleans and the chairman of the Middle States team, Dean Albert E. Meder, Jr., of Rutgers University, were dismayed by the proportion of part-time faculty (89 percent in 1954, according to the Middle States report) teaching in the evening session and the fact that many of them were still doing it as an "overload" to their daysession duties. This, like nonmatriculants in matriculated sections and poor physical conditions at 23rd Street, was an old story which, not having been remedied, became the ingredients of a crisis a decade later.(41)

Until the mid-fifties, the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) investigations were superficial (the highly esteemed Pierson report on the health of American collegiate business schools called them "sloppy"), but by the sixties, they had become much more intensive. This probably accounts for the fact that, although the School of Business was not doing anything that it had not been doing for twenty years previously, it was placed on probation in 1961 and threatened with the withdrawal of accreditation three years later unless it came up to AACSB standards. The most important change was that at least 25 percent of all sections, day and evening, were to be taught by full-time faculty, half of whom were to have the Ph.D. or equivalent.

For a number of reasons, it was very difficult for the School to comply with this demand. Department chairmen could not compel senior instructors (their constituents) to take evening-session classes except as an overload at extra compensation, a practice that was also condemned by the accrediting agency. In addition, even when new full-time lines were allotted to the School, they remained unfilled because it was extremely difficult to find qualified personnel who would travel to 23rd Street four nights a week. After much turmoil and many meetings, Saxe and Love managed to avert the worst and retain accreditation. They did this by a combination of ingenuity and arm-twisting and by taking a step Orleans and the Middle States team had urged in 1955-1956 and that the AACSB had requested for many years. Albeit with grave foreboding, in 1964 the faculty agreed that no more than five nonmatriculants were to be enrolled in any professional course. Nonmatriculants in general were to be barred from baccalaureate sections and to study in sections of their own. (42)

Problem: Student Unrest

Students at the School of Business presented modest problems in these years. Although peaceful compared to other campuses such as the University of California at Berkeley or, closer to home, Columbia, 23rd Street was not totally spared the student unrest that was such a prominent characteristic of the sixties. The Ticker criticized the administration for barring a Communist speaker, claiming that it was a violation of their right to hear all sides. Earlier, during the McCarthy era, the Student Council supported the right of faculty under investigation for radical activities to take the Fifth Amendment and excoriated the Board of Higher Education for dismissing them. Other students supported a "Ban the Bomb" rally. More widespread protest, however, had to await the rise of two issues, one homegrown and the other national, that were not present until the late sixties: the possibility that tuition might be imposed at the municipal colleges and the growing unpopularity of the war in Vietnam.(43)

Although the absence of tuition at the municipal colleges had been questioned at various times since 1847, the policy (at least for baccalaureate candidates) remained virtually sacrosanct for well over 100 years. In February 1961, however, at the same time as the state legislature was preparing to act (favorably, as it turned out) on the Board of Higher Education's request to create a university out of the existing and projected municipal colleges, Governor Rockefeller recommended that the power to impose tuition be included in the new law. His motive may well have been to ward off upstate and suburban criticism because the colleges in the State University system (SUNY), although heavily subsidized, did charge tuition.

In order to demonstrate an even-handed approach, Rockefeller also suggested that the legislature adopt a scholar incentive plan to help meet the expenses of needy students at all New York State institutions of higher education, public or private. The Ticker indicated immediate opposition (as did students and municipal college alumni all over the city, who picketed Rockefeller's New York office) but the option to charge tuition was included in the law that established the City University. Although dormant, it remained an irritant, and until 1965, when protests against the war in Vietnam took the spotlight, even the mention that tuition was being considered brought out the troops.(44)

In May 1965, the Ticker called all its readers to the first Baruch teach-in on the war, promising to present all viewpoints. This attempt at moderation, however, did not last. By October, the newspaper was printing articles such as one entitled "Let's Get Out!" More such pieces followed, as did forums and seminars on the subject, culminating in a "Strike to Protest the War" on April 26, 1968. It was only a moderate success. According to the Ticker, over 2,000 students and more than half the faculty boycotted classes, but the picket lines that began to form at 23rd Street at 7:00 A.M. and continued for most of the day were thin as was attendance at a "teach-in" held at 2:00 P.M.(45)

Considering the violence that marked opposition to the war on other campuses, the protests at the Baruch School were small potatoes indeed. This is also true of student attempts to emulate their more aggressive peers at other colleges and gain a voice in the decision-making process of the School. The students were restless, as Dean David Newton reported to the faculty in 1965. In company with college youth all over the United States, they were demanding the right to "express themselves, to participate in changing curricular content, influencing the quality of teaching and the formulation of educational policy. "(46)

In spite of the faculty's inclination to stall, in the belief that students would soon lose interest, Newton, with the dean's support, held a series of "talk outs" with twenty-one activist students and an ad hoc faculty committee. At least as reported by this committee, the students emphasized old complaints (bad physical conditions, uncaring teachers, substitution of graduate assistants for full-time faculty) and asked for very little: voting membership on the undergraduate curriculum committee and a chance to evaluate the faculty. They were denied both but took the latter issue into their own hands. On Thursday, January 27, 1966, the Ticker published the results of the first teacher evaluation ever conducted at the Baruch School. Out of fifty-one instructors examined, eight were highly recommended, eleven were not recommended and the others were recommended with reservations or found to be barely satisfactory.(47)

It would appear that faculty expectations were correct; this modest initiative represented a high point in student attempts to gain influence at 23rd Street. The reason, however, was not lack of interest. As the sixties wore on, everyone at the Baruch School had to be tremendously concerned with its future. For that reason, the Baruch experience did not conform to developments on other campuses. Crises elsewhere involved civil rights, war, and student rights; at the School of Business, the main issue was survival.

Problem: Keeping Up With CUNY

The same detachment from larger issues can be discerned in the Baruch School's reaction to what one would assume was an enormously important event closer to home, the creation of the City University of New York in 1961. The governor's signature followed the decade of intermittent planning and discussion since the Strayer-Yavner Report had suggested a more unified arrangement for all the municipal colleges, junior and senior, and a chancellor to act as executive officer. The latter part of the recommendation had become reality prior to action in Albany; John R. Everett was recruited from the New School for Social Research to be the first (albeit very short-term) chancellor. A multitude of reasons lay behind the structural change: expansion by obtaining state money (Governor Rockefeller was a "big spender"), a downstate balance to the emerging SUNY system and a powerful, although not unanimous, desire to offer the Ph.D., something only a university could do.

Although a large component of faculty and students in all units believed that the mission of the municipal colleges should continue to be undergraduate education, a larger number, perhaps smarting after years of seeing their "best and brightest" graduates go on to earn their doctorates at Columbia, NYU and Fordham, wanted to acquire the luster that only a university-level graduate program could confer. The expansionist mood of the early sixties also played a role. Higher education was in a boom period all over the United States, and doctoral programs in all disciplines were running at full throttle, turning out new Ph.D.'s to supply the apparently boundless appetite of undergraduate institutions.

Interest in offering a Ph.D. in business surfaced early at 23rd Street, encouraged by the growth in existing master's level programs and the spread of doctoral business programs (many of very questionable quality) all over the United States. There were also practical considerations involved. Research funds, both from CUNY and outside, were more likely to go to proposals from professors who taught at the doctoral level, leading, among other "goodies," to the employment of graduate assistants, who in many cases could do some of the less interesting tasks connected with the academic profession. It would also mean many fewer classroom hours for faculty teaching in the Ph.D. program, who would presumably be occupied supervising dissertations when they were not adding to the store of knowledge in their disciplines. Finally, there was the need to "keep up with the Joneses" within CUNY. As more and more of the liberal arts disciplines presented plans for Ph.D. programs, Deans Cohen and Saxe and many of the professional faculty hastened to get on the bandwagon and develop one of their own.(48)

Although much of the motivation for a doctoral program in business was less than altruistic, a case could be made for it on grounds of local and national need. As a letter from the assistant commissioner for higher education of the state of New York, Allan A. Kuusisto, to the second chancellor of CUNY, Albert Bowker, said, "Far more college students major in business than any other subject and yet the supply of college teachers in this field with adequate intellectual and research training is extremely small."(49) The commissioner's statement was echoed by others, but new business Ph.D.'s were swallowed up by the growth of corporate bureaucracies and the increasing value placed on research skills that so marked the business life of the nation, especially in New York City. Though students needed better-trained teachers, few business-school classrooms would see very many newly minted Ph.D.'s.

Whether the men and women with doctorates in business taught, did research or managed corporations, there appeared to be more than enough justification for Dean Cohen and the professional faculty at the Baruch School to draw up a plan to train them. At a special faculty meeting called for this purpose on May 1, 1961, their recommendation was adopted, although until funding was provided, it was academic in more than one sense. One reason for the relative haste (at this point, the City University had been officially established for only three months) was the expectation (and fear) that a highly centralized Ph.D. program was being developed at the chancellor's office.

Based on the fact that they had maintained a monopoly on masters' level programs in business for many years, the professional faculty expected to be in total control of the new doctoral program as well, but rumors to the contrary abounded and it seemed wisest to present the new dean for doctoral programs, Minna Rees, with a fait accompli. As it happens, the initial plans coming out of CUNY headquarters did not mention a business doctorate at all. One imagines the mixed emotions aroused at 23rd Street when the faculty heard this: relief at escaping undue control but also chagrin at not being seen as important enough for inclusion. In any case, their independence was to be short-lived. In the following year, a highly centralized structure was proposed, this time including the proposed program at the Baruch School.

At 23rd Street, the plan was strongly opposed on the grounds that it would deprive the faculty of its rightful function. After much discussion the quarrel was settled during the next year. At another special meeting, held in February 1964, the Baruch faculty was presented with a new plan for the Ph.D. in business drawn up by the University Committee on Business and based on the Committee on Economic Development's recommendation for the education of future managers. This time the faculty approved because the University Committee, although reporting to Dean Rees, was composed of Baruch people, the courses would be offered at 23rd Street, not uptown, and the executive officer would be from the Baruch School and have his office there. In short, it would continue the School's monopoly of graduate business education with the added luster of a doctoral program at its apex.(50)

The program got underway in September 1965 with a handful of students. Dean Cohen said there had been many applications but only a small number had been accepted because the new program would have to be scrutinized by the AACSB, Middle States Association and the State Education Department and until approved, must maintain the highest standards for admission. At that point, relatively few applicants met the requirement of an undergraduate B average and a score of 500 on the Graduate Record Examination.

The associate dean and his superior were quite worried about accreditation for the graduate program, both master's and Ph.D., on other grounds. The limited number of instructors with the doctorate teaching in that program was an old problem, now exacerbated by the AACSB's insistence on an even larger number of instructors holding the Ph.D. Until additional money was available from increased tuition (to be raised from $20 to $25 a credit shortly), from city or state funds or by cutting back on the number of instructors assigned to the day session, it would not be possible to hire enough qualified staff to meet the association's demands. When the faculty discussed this, the liberal-arts faculty, not for the first time, questioned whether the undergraduate division's already limited resources should be cut further for the sake of the graduate program. In response, Saxe explained the importance of a full-fledged graduate program for fund raising and to protect and enhance the position of the Baruch School within the City University.

The president of City College, Buell Gallagher tried to help settle the question of undergraduate versus graduate education when there wasn't enough money for both. He told the faculty that the School could continue its "extended services to the city" (presumably the graduate programs were seen in that light) and forego accreditation, or cut back on those services, use the money saved for a few new teachers of both graduate and undergraduate classes and thus preserve accreditation. The School chose to do the latter. By admitting very few doctoral candidates and also limiting the number of those who wanted to earn an MBA, they were able to hire enough Ph.D.'s (and J.D.'s, who were also acceptable to the AACSB) to receive provisional accreditation from the various supervisory agencies. This kept them going until better times arrived in the seventies.(51)

NOTES

(1) College of the City of New York, Baruch School of Business and Public Administration, "Faculty Minutes," June 13, 1955, p. 456; Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Commission on Higher Education, "Report of the Evaluation of the City College, New York," May 1956. Typescript in binder marked "Middle States, 1955" in R. 524, Baruch College Library.

(2) Interviews with Emanuel Saxe, spring, 1986; Emanuel Saxe, vita (in author's possession); Lexicon 1955, 1959; "Faculty Minutes," October 1, 1956, p. 489.

(3) Ticker, September 14, 1964.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Author's interview with Saxe, spring 1986; City University of New York, "A Description of the City University of New York, A Report to the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools,"June 1, 1966, p. 121. Typescript in binder marked "Middle States, 1955," R. 524, Baruch College Library. The City College portion of the report was prepared at the main center, and the statement regarding "Saxe's 23rd Street" did not please the dean who wrote "out!" in the margin.

(6) "Faculty Minutes," November 15, 1955, p. 464; February 16, 1956, p. 467.

(7) "Faculty-Staff Newsletter," March 1958, p. 4; Saxe, "Annual Report," 1957-1958, p. 11; Lexicon, 1959.

(8) Saxe, "Annual Report," 1956-1957, p. 45; Ticker, September 18, 1958; Reporter, September 25, 1958.

(9) Lexicon, 1957.

(10) "Newsletter," November, 1957, p. 3; Author's interview with Saxe, Spring 1986.

(11) "Faculty Minutes," September 23, 1965, p. 747.

(12) "Newsletter," December 1966, p. 4.

(13) Saxe, "Annual Report," 1957-1958, p. 47; "Newsletter," passim, 1957-1967, especially 1965-1966; Ticker, passim, 1955-1967; Reporter, passim, 1955-1967.

(14) "Newsletter," May 1958, "Faculty Minutes," October 15, 1963, p. 682.

(15) "Faculty Minutes," February 20, 1962, p. 641.

(16) "Faculty Minutes," February 18, 1954, p. 425; March 21, 1956, p. 472; February 25, 1955, p. 443; October 4, 1955, p. 461.

(17) "Newsletter," October 1961; November 1963; May 1962; November 1965; Lexicon, 1965.

(18) David Newton and Angelo Dispenzieri, "Freshman Colloquium," June 1966; New York Times (September 21, 1968) 35:5.

(19) Graduate student enrollments are from the "Faculty Minutes" as reported by Ms. Agnes Mulligan, the associate registrar, at the start of every fall and spring semester; MBA and MPA degrees awarded are from Baruch School Registrar, "Master's Degrees Awarded," 1952-1987.

(20) "Faculty Minutes," April 9, 1962, p. 647; December 9, 1963, p. 685; October 6, 1964, p. 707; February 26, 1965, p. 725; June 14, 1965; p. 743; "Newsletter," March 1967.

(21) "Newsletter," December 1966; "Faculty Minutes," June 10, 1957, p. 517.

(22) "Faculty Minutes," October 1, 1958, p. 542; February 16, 1960, p. 585; December 3, 1956; Ticker, February 10, 1965; December 15, 1966, p. 502.

(23) "Newsletter," November 1957; Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Commission on Higher Education, "Report of the Evaluation of City College," May 1956, p. 19. Typescript in folder marked "Middle States, 1966" in R. 524, Baruch College Library. Information regarding lecturers and the CCE was supplied by Ms. Esther Liebert, Director of Personnel, Baruch College, in January 1987; Baruch School of Business and Public Administration, Bulletin, 1966-1967, p. 5.

(24) "Faculty Minutes," September 23, 1965, p. 748; April 12, 1965, p. 735.

(25) Dean's Discussion Group, "Minutes," February 4, 1960; February 23, 1960; February 3, 1961; "Faculty Minutes," February 26, 1964, p. 689.

(26) Bulletin, 1961-1968; "Faculty Minutes," December 11, 1961, p. 629, and passim, 1961-1968.

(27) "Newsletter," March 1963.

(28) "Faculty Minutes," December 15, 1966, pp. 862, 866; "Newsletter," December 1963; Former Associate Dean Bertha S. Newhouse, who was one of the very few women members of the accounting department, is the source for the curtain incident.

(29) Lexicon, 1956. Figures on ethnicity are derived from a survey of the annual yearbook from 1953 to 1968, which displays the pictures and names of virtually all the graduates of those years.

(30) This demographic and sociological explanation of falling enrollments in the City University of the late fifties and sixties is drawn from the author's research for "The Open City: Jews, Jobs and Schools," in Educating an Urban People, Diane Ravitch and Ronald Goodenow, eds. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1980).

(31) Board of Higher Education of the City of New York, the Committee to Look to the Future of the Board of Higher Education, "A Long Range Plan for the City University of New York, 1961-1975," 1962, Thomas C. Holy, Director. The report gave detailed enrollment figures for all the municipal colleges from 1949 to 1961, pp. 138, 173, 310, 311 Donald P. Cottrell and J. L. Heskett, "Education for Business in the City University of New York," report prepared for The Board of Higher Education of New York City (New York, no publisher indicated, March 1962), p. 26.

(32) "Long Range Plan," 38; "Newsletter," May 1958.

(33) "Long Range Plan," 71, 103; Florence Neumann, "Access to Free Public Higher Education," unpublished Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1984, p. 143, describes the origin of the composite score.

(34) Cottrell, "Education," p. 11; "Newsletter,"May 1966; December 1966; March 1967; November 1965.

(35) Saxe, "Annual Report," 1957-1958, p. 24; "Faculty Minutes,"October 5, 1959, pp. 575, 578; September 28, 1960, p. 610; Frank Pierson, et al., The Education of American Businessmen (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), 53.

(36) "Faculty Minutes," June 11, 1962, p. 657; February 18, 1963, p. 668; October 5, 1963, p. 681.

(37) Dean's Discussion Group, "Minutes," February 23, 1960.

(38) Jacob S. Orleans, "Report of a Survey of the Educational Organization and Administration of the Evening and Extension Division of the Bernard M. Baruch School of Business and Public Administration of the City College of New York," 1955, chapter 2, pp. 2, 6-8; Lewis Mayers, "Annual Report," 1955-1956, unpaged.

(39) "Report of the Evaluation of City College," 1956, pp. 53, 73, 75-76; Orleans, "Report," ch. 2, p. 2; ch. 4, pp. 4, 7-8; "Faculty Minutes," December 3, 1956, pp. 502-503.

(40) Dean's Discussion Group, "Minutes," February 3, 1961.

(41) Orleans, "Report," pp. 7-8, 10, 11: "Report of the Evaluation of City College," 1956, p. 53.

(42) Dean's Discussion Group, "Minutes," December 11, 1961; March 23, 1964; April 13, 1964.

(43) Ticker, October 7, 1958; February 6, 1956; February 7, 1961; February 10, 1965; October 5, 1965.

(44) Lexicon, 1963.

(45) Ticker, May 4, 1965; April 10, 1968; April 23, 1968; April 30, 1968; May 2, 1968.

(46) "Faculty Minutes," April 12, 1965, p. 735: October 4, 1966, pp. 812813.

(47) "Faculty Minutes," December 7, 1965, p. 754; Ticker, January 27, 1966.

(48) "Long Range Plan," pp. 37, 38; Steven Schlossman, Michael Sedlak, and Harold Wechsler, "The New Look: The Ford Foundation and the Revolution in Business Education," Selections 4, no. 3 (Winter, 1987) p. 23.

(49) Letter from Allan A. Kuusisto to Albert Bowker, February 10, 1965. Located in folder marked State Ed. Visit, Fall 1964, in R 525 in Baruch Library.

(50) "Faculty Minutes," May 1, 1961, p. 622; February 18-19, 1963, pp. 666, 668, 671; October 5, 1963, p. 680; June 14, 1965, p. 743; November 23, 1964, p. 714; City University of New York, "Procedures for the Evaluation, Establishment and Administration of Ph.D. Programs," September 28, 1961; City University of New York, "Interim Administrative Procedures for the Graduate Program," December 10, 1962. Typed memorandum attached to "Faculty Minutes," February 18-19 1963.

(51) "Faculty Minutes," October 6, 1964, pp. 707, 710; February 26, 1965, pp. 724, 727-729.