Refreshment on the Rock

Through the open French doors came the sound of fountains splashing and the snip of gardeners cutting back foliage. Inside, men clad in shorts, slacks and sports shirts sat beneath an oak-beamed ceiling. Idyllic? No, pedagogic. The men were policymakers from 35 U.S. business firms, spending six weeks in an atmosphere that is part classroom, part sales conference and part religious retreat at the 25th session of Columbia University's Executive Program in Business Administration.

The campus is at Arden House, high on a ridge of the Ramapos on the west side of the Hudson, 48 miles from Manhattan. Known as "The Rock" to the hundreds of presidents, vice presidents and general managers who have studied there since the program began eleven years ago, Arden House is the former barony of Railroad Tycoon E. H. Harriman. In 1950 Eldest Son W. Averell Harriman gave the $5.5 million neo-Norman castle and its 100 acres of parkland to Columbia. Alumnus Averell and his brother Roland picked up the tab for converting the old homestead into a conference center (item: a new roof at $165,000) for the university. For apres la classe, it has a swimming pool, golf course and tennis courts--plus a lake for fishing and a bar for socializing, both well-stocked. Businessese is fluently spoken by all hands.

Trouble at Wiz-Away. During academic hours, the Columbia program is strictly nose to grindstone. The first two weeks of the current session, which began on July 12, dealt with "Internal Administration of a Business Enterprise." Says Professor of Management Dr. Charles E. Summer Jr.: "We hit them with everything from a series of talks by executives from Westinghouse, IBM and Du Pont to the administrative problems of a mythical outfit called the Wiz-Away Skate Company. You might say that Wiz-Away was on thin ice, management-wise."

Under the direction of Hoke S. Simpson, former director of personnel at Vick Chemical Co., the curriculum goes on to economics and business cycles, population problems and consumer behavior, ends with two weeks of "Executives in Action," a study of company goals, managerial decision making and corporate strategy. All this calls for 3 1/2-hour morning sessions in front of the blackboard, three weekly afternoon lectures by guest speakers, and evening seminars for small groups to work over case histories of business problems. Homework, with a three-foot pile of books, often takes more evening hours.

The men who attend the courses are mostly in their mid-40s, earn an average income of $27,000. It costs a company $2,000, plus expenses and salary, to enroll an executive, and the gold "sign of Hermes" tie tack presented to graduates has come to rank with the private ice-water carafe as a status symbol back at the home office. Though some participants never really break away from their desks for the six-week period and try to run things back at headquarters with flurries of long-distance telephone calls, most men--flattered at being chosen--drop everything to take the course, and leave their business worries to subordinates. "It really shows whether you've done a good job of delegating," observes Ling-Temco-Vought's John H. Boucher, "and it puts your No. 2 man on the firing line for a while."

Plus 50 Other Schools. The retraining of executives was pioneered by Harvard Graduate School of Business shortly after World War II. Currently, M.I.T., Northwestern, Stanford, Cornell, the University of North Carolina, Carnegie Tech and Emory are among more than 50 schools offering programs at such widely varied places as Sea Island, Ga., Zion National Park, Utah, Banff, Alta., Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y., and College Station, Texas. A similar program, though not college-sponsored, is provided by Colorado's Aspen Institute, which runs five two-week courses through the year, with the added lure of skiing and sauna bathing. "The day is coming," says Columbia Graduate School of Business Dean Courtney C. Brown, "when companies will regard refreshment of their management teams as being as important as replacing obsolete machines. The idea that you can get all your education in the first two decades of life has been pretty well blasted out of the water."

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