FCEPOTISKUM: HISTORY OF BUSINESS EDUCATION?

temisky

8 years ago

Business education involves teaching students the fundamentals, theories, and processes of business. Education in this field occurs at several levels, including secondary education and higher education or university education. Approximately 38% of students enroll in one or more business courses during their high school tenure.
The first business education degrees were created in the United States in the 1880s. Business school founders wanted to formalize the education of future business leaders, just like medical schools created standards for doctors. The Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley were founded within a few years of each other

YaKhaleed3698

6 years ago

SCHOOL
For many years, business education has been defined as the courses at the secondary level that prepare students for the business world. While that definition continued to have validity at the beginning of the twenty-first century, by then the range of the courses had expanded to include preparation for additional study at postsecondary institutions. As business education courses changed over the years, so did the level at which the classes are taught. For example, computer applications courses are often taken at the middle school level and keyboarding may be introduced in the third grade. Secondary level courses include accounting and management, but also branch into technology-based courses such as desktop publishing, multimedia, computerized accounting, and web page design.

The advent of business education in America occurred when the Plymouth Colony hired a school teacher to teach reading, writing, and casting accounts. Casting accounts, the predecessor to accounting, was a subject taught in business arithmetic. Signs of early school-to-work initiatives were evident as students who wanted a commerce or business career left school to work as an apprentice. It should not be surprising, then, that bookkeeping was the earliest business course taught in public schools, being offered in Boston in 1709, in New York City in 1731, and in Philadelphia in 1733.

The founding of Benjamin Franklin's Academy in 1749 was a significant event for business education. The Academy had three departments: the Latin School, the English School, and the Mathematical School. Business subjects offered included "accounts, French, German, and Spanish for merchants; history of commerce; rise of manufacturers; progress and changing seats of trade" (Hosler, p. 3). By 1827 Massachusetts passed legislation requiring municipalities with 500 or more families to establish a high school; Bookkeeping was one of the specific courses that had to be offered. During this time private business colleges opened to meet the increasing demand for well-educated business workers.

Several occurrences in the 1860s hastened the development of business education as an area of study. In 1862 the Morrill Act, more commonly referred to as the land-grant act, gave every state 30,000 acres of land for every congressional representative to establish a college for agricultural, mechanical arts, and business instruction. Also in 1862 shorthand was first offered in public high schools; the first comprehensive high school, which offered both college preparatory and vocational programs of study, was established. Educators generally accept this as the most important contribution to education. Finally, in 1868 Christopher Sholes invented the first practical typewriter. Historically, typewriting and subsequently keyboarding courses frequently encouraged students to enroll in additional business education courses. In the late 1800s John Robert Gregg brought his shorthand system to the United States from Great Britain and "by 1935 it was offered in 96 percent of public high schools teaching shorthand in this country" (Hosler, p. 10).

A turning point regarding business education curriculum occurred in 1946 with the invention of the first electronic computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). As might be expected, the 1960s brought significant change in business education. IBM introduced the first Selectric typewriter in 1961 and the Magnetic Tape Selectric typewriter in 1964. In 1962 the United Business Education Association (UBEA) changed its name to the National Business Education Association (NBEA). In 1963 the Joint Council on Economic Education brought together "over 60 collegiate and secondary school business educators … to discuss how economics could be implemented in business courses" (Hosler, p. 23). That same year the National Business Education Association published the first NBEA Yearbook. The year 1965 saw the first minicomputer invented and word processing was then offered as a part of the business education curriculum. This marked the beginning of dramatic curricular change in business education.

The 1980s saw an era of standards development and the need for increased accountability. In 1983 the U.S. Department of Education accepted the Standards for Excellence in Business Education, developed by Calfrey C. Calhoun. This was followed in 1985 by The Unfinished Agenda, The Role of Vocational Education in the High School, and in 1987 bythe Database of Competencies for Business Curriculum Development, K–14 and the Business Teacher Education Curriculum Guide. The National Association of Business Teacher Educators (NABTE) published Standards for Business Teacher Education in 1988. All these efforts affected business education curriculum and standards from kindergarten through graduate school.

The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) report, Learning a Living: A Blueprint for High Performance, was published in 1992. It provided clear guidelines regarding foundational skills needed for workplace success. This was followed in 1994 by the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. The Goals 2000 Act, as it is often called, codified into law the six original education goals:

School readiness
School completion
Student academic achievement
Leadership in math and science
Adult literacy
Safe and drug-free school
Two new goals were also added to encourage teacher professional development and parental participation. This act also established the National Skills Standards Board to develop voluntary national skill standards.

Federal Legislation
As the nation grew and developed, and the economy changed from agrarian to industrial to technological, a number of factors consistently have influenced funding for educational endeavors. A few of these influences include the economy, society, demo-graphics, and technological advances. Beginning in 1862 with the passage of the Morrill Act, the U.S. government supported vocational education. However, it took nearly one hundred years after the Morrill Act for business education to be brought under the vocational education umbrella. And yet, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, some continue to hold the opinion that business education is not vocational education. However, the following definition of vocational education provided by the 1990 Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act, challenges that perspective: "organized educational programs offering a sequence of courses which are directly related to the preparation of individuals in paid or unpaid employment in current or emerging occupations requiring other than a baccalaureate or advanced degree" (Scott and Sarkees-Wircenski, p. 3). Clearly, business education at both the middle and high school levels falls under this definition. The value and merit of secondary business education programs is their ability to enable a student to pursue a program of study, graduate, and successfully move into the workforce or postsecondary education.

The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, also known as the Vocational Act of 1917, promoted the vocational education programs of agriculture, trade and industry, and home economics. Key elements of this legislation defined vocational education as "less than college grade, for persons over 14 years of age who desire day time training, and for persons over 16 years of age who seek evening class training" (Scott and Sarkees-Wircenski, p. 122). This legislation also provided funding for teachers' salaries for the three program areas.

With the Vocational Act of 1963, the definition of vocational education was broadened to include "any program designed to fit individuals for gainful employment in business and office occupations" (Scott and Sarkees-Wircenski, p. 130). This was the first piece of federal legislation to specifically include business education. Vocational education funding was amended several times in the 1970s; however, the passage of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1984 brought with it a stronger emphasis on local control. "The act had two interrelated goals, one economic and one social. The economic goal was to improve the skills of the labor force and prepare adults for job opportunities–a long-standing goal traceable to the Smith-Hughes Act. The social goal was to provide equal opportunities for adults in vocational education" (Scott and Sarkees-Wircenski, p. 145). The 1984 Perkins Act was amended in 1990 and renamed the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act. This act was significant for two reasons: first, a major goal was increased vocational opportunities for the disadvantaged; and second, funds were authorized for technical preparation (tech-prep) programs. Tech-prep programs are often referred to as 2+2+2, which refers to the articulated agreements between two years of concentrated vocational coursework at the high school level plus two years of advanced technical education at the postsecondary level and the potential for an additional two years of education leading to the baccalaureate degree. An important part of the Perkins legislation was the requirement of implementing state councils on vocational education and the development of long-term state plans for vocational education.