Harvard Business School

At a 1905 gathering of Harvard alumni, President Eliot explained why he favored letting College undergraduates pursue practical subjects.

“We seek at Harvard,” Eliot said, “to put all the various sciences and arts into practice so that public advantage may result. We seek to train doers, achievers—men whose successful personal careers are made subservient to the public good. We are not interested here in producing languid observers of the world, mere spectators in the game of life, or fastidious critics of other men’s labors. We want to produce by hundreds and thousands strenuous workers in the world of today—a more interesting world, I venture to say, than has yet offered a field for splended intellectual and moral achievement…

“The university has a great task on its hands in view of the tremendous advance of the world. That is why we have strengthened every department for immediate effective work in a world that has changed and developed with appalling rapidity.”