Fagg to Northwestern

U. S. universities have been raided heavily since 1933 by Washington. Last week the tables were turned when Northwestern University robbed Washington of one of its most brilliant young men, 41-year-old Fred Dow Fagg Jr., who in seven months, as Director of the Bureau of Air Commerce, had transformed that division from an Administration headache to a smile.

It was a counterraid, for Washington had taken Dr. Fagg from Northwestern. A teacher of economics and law for 15 years--at Harvard, University of Southern California and the Institut fur Luftrecht in Konigsberg, Germany, as well as Northwestern--Dr. Fagg, a Wartime liver, founded and headed the Institute of Air Law in Chicago in 1929, became so authoritative an expert in his subject that the Federal Government drafted him as part-time legal adviser in 1934, later asked him to help revise the civil air regulations.

Last March, with the Bureau of Air Commerce under fire from a Senate investigating committee as result of a series of plane crashes, Dr. Fagg was brought to Washington to replace Eugene L. Vidal as director. He went quietly to wort, reorganizing the bureau, established a safety and planning division that began to study more and better safety devices for pilots. By last week, when President Walter Dill Scott made a tempting offer to him to return to Northwestern, bureau officials and the industry at large were sorry to see him go.

The plum with which Dr. Fagg was tempted was the deanship of Northwestern's School of Commerce. At Northwestern, as at several other institutions, the business school has become the biggest branch of the university.

When Joseph Wharton, Philadelphia business man, founded the first one at University of Pennsylvania in 1881, the first students were for the most part rich young men who came to learn how to manage their private property. But as the complexity and salaries of U. S. business management increased, so did the demand of young men and women for training to set them on the road to wealth. Today some 80 universities have schools of business administration with over 100,000 students preparing to be junior executives, accountants, government administrators, lawyers, teachers.

Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, best and most famed, gives training in such fields as accounting, banking, brokerage, foreign commerce, industrial relations, manufacturing, public affairs, transportation & public utilities. Business schools begin with background courses in economics, corporation finance, statistics, business law, advance to specialized, practical problems. The biggest, at New York University (some 10,000 students), has a branch near Wall Street. Northwestern's main centre is a few minutes from Chicago's Loop.

Like schools of law and medicine, they have leading practitioners of business lecture to their students. Industrialists come in with undergraduates to fill gaps in their knowledge. Students may take the full four-year course--two years of liberal arts and two of business--or less, may attend classes by day or night.

With his B. S. in economics or commerce, a graduate is almost certain of a job. Even in the Depression some business schools placed every member of their graduating classes. Between 1931 and 1934 in the nation as a whole unemployment among these graduates was only 15%, far less than in any other educational group. The less lucky start at the bottom as office boys at $15 a week, but the average beginning salary is $1,500 a year and a few move right into executive positions at more than $3,000.

From a study of graduates' pay, Dean Everett W. Lord of Boston University's College of Business Administration, valued a four-year collegiate education for business as the equivalent of a $50,000 investment. Like the profession of law, however, business administration is becoming overcrowded.

Most business students enter and leave their colleges, business educators say, with a single goal: "A million before I'm 30." In the effort to turn out professional men and women rather than mere moneygrubbers, the educators are stressing original research to improve business management, service to society instead of solely the profit motive. A handful of universities, notably Harvard, Dartmouth, N. Y. U., Michigan, Stanford, have graduate schools of business requiring college graduation for entrance.

Northwestern's School of Commerce, which last year placed all but six of its graduates in jobs, limits its enrollment, this fall rejected 40% of applicants. Dean Fagg, who will finish out the year in Washington and go to his new job in June, will take over one of the oldest (1908) and the second largest (7,650 students) business schools in the nation. He will particularly try to train aviation executives.

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