Brockhouse Cooper

Review by John Shingler: From Higher Aims to Hired Hands

Rakesh Khurana, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 531pp., 2007. 

Until the late 19th century, and even beyond, training for commerce was by way of apprenticeship, informal rather than formal, and it started often enough in the early teen years. During the 20th century this approach was abandoned and replaced, not just by formal, compulsory, general education, but by a specifically business education all the way to, and including, a doctoral degree. What happened?

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