THE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE IN BUSINESS

Evening Star, Issue 20375, 6 January 1930, Page 6

THE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE IN BUSINESS

[By “ Q.P.S.”]

A wise mau once remarked that education was never a heavy load to carry. So recently as the beginning of this century the young man who fared forth from a university with his degree faced two worlds that were diametrically opposed in their view of him. There was tho very small academic world of uni-versity-trained men and women _ who welcomed him as one of their kindami there was the vastly greater woi'ld who boasted loudly of their many degrees from the univei'sity of hard knocks and experience, and who welcomed him derisively as a universitybred “softy.” Generals, captains, and such. like ruled this greater world. Though the great majority conceded that a university training was essential for professional men, for the clergy, and for the teaching forces that manned the schools and secondary institutions, they were emphatically opposed to ruining the prospective business career of the multitude by any such cultural nonsense. They, themselves, had graduated from tho ranks—from the rough, as it. were—and that, they believed, was the; only way to come up and get down to' business. The humorists of tho day found inexhaustible material in the university fellow who sought a position in any enterprise save the professions. He was contrasted, always at a ridiculous disadvantage, with the miraculously keen and resourceful office boy who had come fresh from, the primary school to scale the heights of big business. All the university “softy” could do was to make absurd mistakes and smoke cigarettes, He wore strange attire, parted his hair in the middle, and spoke with laboured precision, punctuating and lauding every sentence with some phrase from a dead language. _ His bearing (it was contended) was either offensively supercilious or outrageously superior. He had no slang worth recording, and was disgracefully deficient in profane repartee and doubtful stories. He had squandered mavny priceless hours learning to play the game of football, which, a generation ago, was a funny game at which university fellows tore one another to pieces. All of which was very trying to the young man fresh from his ’varsity, from which he emerged with his mind stuffed with innumerable theories and a foolish consciousness that he was educated .

Was it any wonder that he was self* opinionated? His object in life was “ self-advancement,” which practically meant “becoming conspicuous in life” —obtaining position which should be acknowledged by others to be respectable and honourable. This advancement, in general, did not mean, if the truth bo known, the mere making of money, but the being known to have made it: not the accomplishment of any groat aim, hut the being seen to have accomplished it. In a word, the gratification of the thirst for applause. That thirst, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak ones; and, on the whole, the strongest impulsive influence of average humanity. The greatest efforts of the race have, after all. always been traceable to the love of praise. That impulse lies at tho root of all modern effort, ft is the gratification of vanity which is, with ns, the stimulus of toil, and the balm of repose. A seaman does not commonly desire to be made captain only because he knows he can manage the ship better than any other sailor on board. He wants to be made captain that he may be called captain. And so on in any walk of life.

Tin's, then, being the main idea of “ advancement in life,” the force of it applies, for all of us, according to our station, particularly to that secondary result of-such advancement which we call “ getting into good society.” People want to get ino' good society, not that they may have it, but that they may be seen in it; and their notion of its goodness depends primarily on its conspicnonsness. And so the university product went forth in a daze of his own glory. Was it any wonder that he put on ’varsity airs and looked down on all others as the common herd beneath him? > Furthermore, mud) of the superciliousness he was guilty of was .magnified by the almost universal derision of his elders, who, underneath all their contempt and gibing, were somewhat jealous of him and intangible something that his educational attainments had given him. They never cried “ Halt” in their drive to force him into ridiculous situations, and, as ho was still a hopelessly raw product, he obliged. Put some ten years or so before the Great War, statistics carefully kept by university authorities concerning the ultimate welfare of those who had worshipped at the shrine of their respective Alma Mater,, began to make such a roar about results that the die-hard business communities of civilised countries became startled _ into a new attitude towards the university man. It was granted that ho had been “ soft ” enough, heaven Knows, during the few years after graduation, but a decade later ho was shooting up the ladder of success with amazing agility. He was forging ahead in lives; of endeavour where mere book learning had never counted and had no business to count. In short, ho was revealing character development at a much earlier age than it was wont to appear in young men who were not ’varsity trained. And charaptex development is a possession of paramount importance, and is both understood and prized by any successful merchant or manufacturer or banker.

J'ho consciousness of all this came gradually in the years immediately prior to the war. There was still a sufficient volume of resistance to beat it back The die-hards die hard, but the Great War beat them down and left them inarticulate. They simply could riot argue against the roar of statistics. A Varsity training had a cash value and a character value that revealed itself in every item of war organisation bookkeeping, for instance. , During all this time, outside of educational circles, the ’varsity girl graduate and her increasing numbers were attracting very little serious attention. She was still, in the popular concept, a cultural freak that her family had to pub up with after she had brought home her B.Sc. or M.A. degree and her lofty idiosyncrasies, or else she was assigned to a teacher’s position with the dreariness of spinsterhood that went with it. The fight for suffrage gave her her first real opportunity to break down prejudices, and on top of this came the wa’ with its unanswerable proof. She burst into the limelight and became almost instantaneously an important competitive factor in ’English industrial life. The ’varsity training had, indeed, supplied something that _ the young man without such training lacked. It had wiped out the impediment of sox differential and gave her something over and above to spare. Vos, and in many surprising instances she seamed to bring more to the job than the ’varsity-trained man brought to it. The news of this became worldwide news that sank in. It made a profound impression upon millions of

families where there were children, just as great an impression as the army records that disclosed how great a percentage of officers’ jobs went to university-trained men. And what does one find to-day? He sees an almost complete reversal in the attitude of the business man towards the ’varsity-trained man and woman. In England especially, we find that the great corporations and departmental stores, great banks and groat manufacturing enterprises are now selecting the best ’varsity men and women for responsible positions; that they are making their selections on the basis of character, just as much as, if not more than, on the basis of scholarship. These are splendid symptoms, if they be analysed calmly and viewed as beginnings and not conclusions. The ’varsity man and woman have come into their rights with an overwhelming emphasis. It is but an express admission on the pait of tbs employers that an education is an indisputable asset, which always stands one in good stead. Is it any wonder that one’s university is always regarded as a seat of wisdom, a light of tho world, an Alma Mater of the rising generation? It is the place whither come students for every kind of knowledge and where in-

quiry is pushed forward, discoveries verified and perfected, rashness rendered innocuous, error exposed by the collision of mind with mind and knowledge with knowledge. Yes! it is this and a great deal more, but a better head and hand than mine are demanded to -describe it well.