BUREAU OF BUSINESS RESEARCH INVALUABLE

The fact that many prominent business men from all over the country have been sufficiently interested to give access to their files to the Bureau of Business Research as a source of teaching material suggests the place that organization must hold in the minds of the leaders of industry.

Everybody in the University knows more or less about the Graduate School of Business Administration but few realize the scope of its work or the extent of its research. Dean W. B. Donham became head of the school after having been associated with the Old Colony Trust Company of Boston for 15 years. He installed the now famous "case system" of teaching business administration through the actual study and solving of the problems of working concerns. In its search for suitable problems a subsidiary organization of the Business School was established. This was the Harvard Bureau of Business Research of which Dr. M. T. Copeland '07 is the director. Centralization of such research has been found essential to insure uniformity in technique and standards of presentation.

This Bureau at present has a field staff of thirty Business School graduates employed in the work of gathering cases. These men are paid, the funds being obtained from money put up by some of the industries that have been studied and helped by the suggestion of the School, although it is not a commercial organization.

The aggregate sales of the firms reporting to the Harvard Bureau in the four trades that are now appropriating funds for its research--three retail and one wholesale--last year totaled more than one billion dollars. Already this year more than twenty-seven hundred problems have been collected, on labor, factory management, advertising, retail-store practice, banking, foreign trade, etc. Doctor Copeland says that the difference between busines and law is that law is six hundred years ahead of business in recording decisions. But the University workers are confident that as we go along further it will be found that investigators can get better evidence for business decisions than will ever be possible in law decisions. All reports from the firms are held in strict confidence.

The Bureau plan is designed to establish a common terminology in every industry. The trades that have joined hands with the Bureau are now using terms that always mean the same thing.

The Business School is paying its own way in giving classroom instruction. It has been Dean Donham's contention that the School could be and should be run on the same principles as any well organized busines in so far as the direct cost of instruction is concerned. This accounts for the large operating surplus that the School has shown for the last two years.

The placing of instructional costs on the student has brought about a higher tuition than in other departments of the University. It is because of this that a loan fund is maintained from which students of promise may obtain $200 in the first year and $400 in the second year, to help pay their expenses. These loans, however, are made on a strictly busines basis, bearing 6 per cent interest and maturing three years after a man leaves the School. The arrangement has been found preferable to the establishment of scholarships as is the custom in other departments of the University, for it enables the school to attract men of limited financial means and lead them to consider the business training given by the School more as an investment.