Universities and the World of Business

Assassins——and Other People

Universities and the World of Business written by Charles Ryle Fay

The Coming Winter

Of the many lessons we learned in the war, two stand out in strong relief:

1. The importance of organisation in depth.

2. The importance of liaison.

Just as in battle we attacked in depth, wave after wave of men following a series of barrage fire, just as we learned at last to defend in depth, taking the weight of the enemy's attack as it were on a yielding buffer, so also we taught and trained our army in depth. In the rear were the specialised senior schools, further forward the corps schools for junior officers and junior N.C.O.'s, then the divisional training for all arms in conjunction, and finally the daily informal instruction of trench life.

An army so attacking, so defending and so trained had constantly to throw out feelers on either side of it in order to give simultaneity to its efforts; and this work of feeling is what the army called "Liaison".

In the Department of Training this service was performed for short periods in the line by the interchange of officers and by special courses of instruction, for example, by courses on machine gunnery, which were attended by staff officers, artillery battery commanders and infantry battalion commanders.

Without liaison, specialisation in warfare is a danger; with liaison specialisation elicits the full capacity of each and every arm.

I had the privilege of following some of the operations of the Canadian Corps in France 1917-1918; also of digesting for our General Staff the tactical lessons noted in certain divisional reports; and over every operation and in every report of this great corps were written the words, "Training" and "Liaison"; training from the seniors downwards, liaison right through from the N.C.O. and subaltern up to the council table of the Army Commanders, (or as we termed them irreverently at General Headquarters, the Five Rebellious Barons).

The supreme task of peace is to switch into the service of society those principles which were found to work so well in war. It is my purpose to show that training and liaison go hand in hand in peace as well as in war. We at the schools and universities do the training; the world of busines uses the product. Between the two there must be a double contact; first of all an informal contact, by which I mean exchange of opinion, visits of academic men to factories, the reading of papers by business men to students; and secondly, organised contact for the purpose of helping the student from his studies into the world of business. This task is more important than that undertaken by any labour bureau, for it is the conveyance of that most precious social product, the brains of an educated man.

In the relationship between universities and business there are certain gross errors to be avoided.

No intelligent commander would assign to a Vickers machine gun the tasks which properly belong to a Lewis gun, such as the protection of a narrow trench or a sentry post. These things the Lewis gun does better, and to employ a Vickers gun is sheer waste of fire power. Similarly, it is wrong to take a trained university man and keep him continuously at routine work. This too is a waste of power which can be avoided by a more intelligent use of the human weapon. It is right that the young university man should do some routine work, some dirty work, but he should do it for a short time only and with the purpose of giving him an all round knowledge in pursuance of a scheme of training. Such, at any rate, is the policy of a very large firm of Electrical Engineers in Britain, the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, Limited, which is taking each year an increasing number of Varsity men from Cambridge and also from Manchester, where the works are situated, and taking men with a general training as well as mathematicians and scientists. I have listened to no finer lecture than that given by the head of their Training Department to my own students in Cambridge. He said of the staffing of industry in the future:

"A new factor is entering in — that of the more highly educated man or woman. This higher education enables those who have profited by it to step off the ladder higher up the scale and get a running start." The college men he called "Officers of his Industrial Cadet Corps"; and went on, "College men must remember that they are simply raw material. They have to learn just as the less educated beginner, but not in the same way, not so slowly and not in such elementary fashion. When he enters the firm the cadet must remember that his industrial [p.361]] education is only beginning. For the first two years

he is a member of our O.T.C."

So much for the first error and the way to avoid it.

The second error is this; do not suppose that there is a fixed demand for brain power in business. Some British employers, I blush to say, have held this view in the past. I have heard a great steel magnate argue that we were in danger, with our higher education, of producing more men of brains than industry could absorb. This doctrine is the exact counterpa]rt of the Fixed-work-fund of short-sighted labour unions, when they argue that there is only a limited amount of work, therefore let us spread it and ca' canny; but under such treatment the demand for labour, as we all know, shrinks up. So also in business, there is no fixed demand for brains. One good brain in conjunction with machinery and appropriate organization begets new machinery and new organization, which call for yet other good brains — and so on in unending progression.

The third point of caution is the relation of the world of business to the spirit of higher education. Are we in danger of turning our universities into technical schools and Berlitz academies by this contact with the world of business? If we are, it is our fault, and moreover, quite unnecessary. I quote again from my Electrical Engineer:

"The higher education we look for from a university is not a preliminary training in business or industrial technique. We expect the university to lay a broad and sound foundation — to provide good raw material out of which an efficient staff may be shaped by us — to develop logical thinking and the ability to grasp facts and to face a new situation without requiring book rules and formulae. Such men will be able to hold their own in any circumstances. They will have a high saturation value."

I am glad to add that one young cadet, whose saturation value has turned out to be high, was a pupil of mine whom I heard, the week before he entered this firm, recite on the floor of the Senate House at Cambridge the prize poem with which he won the Chancellor's medal for Greek verse.

My own line of work is Economics and this is, or at any rate we intend it to be, less remote from business than the Classics, but I have waged war with more than one business man over our economic syllabus. Two years ago I went through it with the head of the largest catering establishment in Britain. "Where", he asked, "are accountancy and commercial law, to say nothing of bookkeeping and shorthand?" "Nowhere", I replied, "for we have not the time. In three years we have two things to do:

(a) "To stretch the student's mind on the hardest stuff we can give him — abstract economics, the theory of money and distribution, exact statistical analysis, etc.

(b) "To broaden and enlighten his mind with a background of history and politics.

"We set out to produce elastic raw material. It is for you to finish his education with accountancy, law, or whatever specialized task suits your business."

My business friend was reasonable, as at bottom most able business men are, and the particular pupil whom he took from me is now Assistant Accountant to the firm, earning good pay, and about to earn extremely good pay.

Our objective now being clear, it remains only to set out the kind of organisation by which the student and his future employer may come into touch with one another. We at the older universities no doubt have our shortcomings (one of which in my private opinion is the excessive number of new sciences invented each year in our laboratories), but I think that my own University of Cambridge in its Appointments Board may claim to have found the right solution here. This Board is supported by voluntary grants from the different colleges in the University. It is run by university men for university men and no commission is taken for jobs found. The secrets of its efficiency are two:

(1) It has won the confidence of the tutors and professors. We tell the Board the truth about our men. Therefore the employer knows what he is getting and as a result the misfits are literally nil.

(2) It has also won the confidence of able business men.

Apropos of this the Secretary writes:

"I note in looking over our records that we have retained and consolidated our position with the great Eastern firms, such as the Shell Group, the Anglo-Persian Group, and Persons, and many others, and that we have supplied them not only with business men but with technical men also. Until this slump we were doing well with the engineers. We have made important connections in Birmingham, more especially the Metropolitan Carriage, Waggon and Finance Co., and the B.S.A., and we have been in touch with and supplied men to most of the great electrical concerns in the country — the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co., the British Thomson Houston Co., the English Electric Co., and the Western Electric Co. and others. We have made new connections with the Leeds Forge and all their group of waggon builders. We have continued our connections with the glass firms like Pilkingtons.

"We have introduced a small number of men into the Textile industries. We held meetings last year in Newcastle, Leicester and Nottingham, while one of us also visited Liverpool and Manchester. We were expecting to carry this on but are holding our hands for the moment because of the state of industry. In the autumn it is hoped to go ahead.

"We have made connections with the financial houses a good deal stronger and have suggested quite [p.362] a number of people to these houses and we find that there is much greater willingness and eagerness to take Cambridge people than formerly. Another development has been the marketing side of various firms, where we found people not only willing, but glad, to take our men and the men themselves do well. Of course not all forms of marketing.

"I notice among other technical appointments we have sent men to the British Aluminium Co., Mond Nickel Co., Cooksons, National Benzol Co., and a number of others."

These facts prove that the confidence of the big business men has been won; and the more farsighted among them are anxious that its future development shall be true to type. If an employer gets a first class man through the Board he is tempted to miss out the Board the next time and to write direct to the professor or tutor of the man who has been such a success, and ask him for another of the same sort. This method is wrong. It narrows the field and in time it will turn the professor or tutor into a writer of testimonials, and "testimonial" is just a long word for "lie". Naturally a teacher will be less disposed to be candid with a business house, which after all can look after itself; whereas in dealing with the Appointments Board he knows the official who is in charge and he is unwilling to let his own university organisation down.

A member of our Board, the head of the oil interests in Britain (this gentleman, I might add, persuaded his colleagues to present £210,000 for the endowment of chemical research at Cambridge), wrote only this year to the Appointments Board in the following strain:

"My Company, which has in the last ten years taken into its employ on your recommendation about one hundred Cambridge graduates, has always attached very great value to the survey which you give us of the views of the Cambridge authorities in regard to each applicant for an appointment, and similarly I have often heard from the men who have joined us and other firms that your knowledge of the nature of the employment and the employers has been of the greatest service to the men in the choice of their careers. In my own opinion those complementary surveys which the Appointments Board renders to the employers of the applicants for appointments are essential factors in the success of the work of the Appointments Board, and they have contributed more than anything else towards that complete transformation in the relations between the University and the world of commerce and industry which has enabled the University to exert its proper influence in that large department of the Nation's activities. . . .

"What I fear may be beginning to happen at Cambridge now is a process analogous to what has sometimes happened in other universities, owing to the fact that some of the scientific departments of the University are not supporting the Appointments Board with the same loyalty as the colleges do and always have done.

"I suggest to you that it is in the interest of the University that there should be only one authority responsible for advising the outside world in regard to Cambridge candidates for appointments and that authority should be the experienced Central Appointments Board of the University. It is in the interests of the men that they should be advised in their applications for appointments by an expert office which is familiar with the circumstances surrounding the business offering openings, and it is of the utmost importance to the reputation of the University in the world of commerce that the Cambridge men who are sent out to appointments should be selected on the advice of the same experienced office which weighs the views of the Cambridge authorities with a due sense of perspective, and presents to the employer a responsible and considered report on each applicant."

With this view I heartily agree.

C. R. Fay.