Paul Beiter

A Business Administration student views his field

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo

September, 1968

Black & Red Number 1, September, 1968, page 55

Scanned from original.

The point of the program is to train us for the business offices of General Motors. We’re encouraged to get degrees so we’ll fit in a little notch of a large corporation.

Instructors compete to design the most boring course. The student’s greatest challenge is to come to class and stay awake. During lectures, one learns daydreaming, finger-popping and other finger techniques.

The curriculum includes: Marketing, or how to sell goods to people who don’t want them; Advertising, or how to sell an unsafe car as the safest; Business Communications, or how to write a four-page letter; Business Statistics, or how to tell the difference between a median and a mean; and finally Management, or how to “pacify” the workers.

Poverty is never mentioned, except in a Business Law course. What is mentioned is: How to get the greatest profit.

The military-corporate structure of American society is ignored, although we are told that Defense Contracts are profitable and great investments. The Business Instructors say they distrust the Federal Government and Government spending. Yet the Defense Budget amounts to seventy billion dollars. A military-corporate structure? That’s the business of a different department, which passes it on to a third department.

The student leaves the program rounded off to fit a square hole.