PIPER CLAIMS COLLEGE IS PAYING INVESTMENT

That American Universities are not failing their graduates is the opinion of Professor C. B. Piper G. '23 of the Graduate School of Business Administration. In a special article published in the Christian Science Monitor, Professor Piper attempts to refute the charges which have been recently directed against universities on the one hand as being too idealistic and on the other as being too specialized and practical.

Cites Concrete Criticism

Professor Piper, speaking from the standpoint of a man whose place in the business world was exchanged, after long experience, to the university sphere, set forth these views in a conversation with a representative of The Christian Science Monitor during which he commented upon the recent expression, made in Nebraska, of a University graduate who asserted that his university had failed him by providing a background of idealism when he needed a concept of realism; by turning him out, in company with 1000 other young men and women, without practical advice, with minds trained in methods of study, crammed full of history, philosophy, and theory, but absolutely untrained to meet the problems of life. This with the result that they were completed to charge six months "in the red" because they had been taught theory instead of practice and were therefore approximately four years behind, in development and preparation, those who did not go to college.

Professor Piper though that much of such criticism proceeded from an apparently prevalent misconception of the function of the university as differentiated from that of the vocational school.

"Any first job when a man leaves college." Professor Piper pointed out, "is a probationary job. There are things no university can do for its graduates, and to adjust him noiselessly to his life work is one of them. We have here, for instance, in the files of the School of Business Administration applications for candidates to fill business positions more than we can supply. Executives who have applied to us for such candidates mean to start the men they hire at small salaries. Not to test their knowledge, because all question concerning that has been satisfied upon a basis of grades, but to test their qualities of ingenuity and industry, of stamina and adaptability. A university graduate may feel that he has a right to expect of his university that it equip him to step at once into a profitable position, but this view over-looks the contraption, necessary to any successful career, which the individual alone can make."