| The first American collegiate business school was the Wharton School of Finance and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania, established in 1881 with an endowment from Philadelphia businessman Joseph Wharton. The prevailing historical narrative implies that this school was the first example of higher education in business anywhere. However, careful historical research reveals almost immediately that the oldest existing school offering higher education in business is the Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris (Superior School of Commerce of Paris or ESCP), founded earlier in 1819. This dissertation demonstrates that the establishment of the Wharton School represents a moment in the larger history of business education, which began in Europe before the founding of the first American college. The pioneering Wharton School emerged from the confluence of several streams of intellectual progress, educational institutionalization, and economic development that evolved during the course of centuries. And yet it also represents a historical break, in the sense that it was distinguishable as a new institutional form, which noticeably elevated the academic legitimacy of commercial education. Thereafter the Wharton School served as an institutional model and intellectual influence for subsequent American business schools. Research methods for this dissertation included synthesis of a wide range of secondary sources, review of numerous publications from the nineteenth century, and intensive examination of primary sources within the Wharton School Archives and the Wharton Family Papers. The focus is Europe and the United States during the period 1636-1916. Central to this investigation is the general influence of the French grandes ecoles (grand schools) within a larger movement toward practical education that encompassed both engineering and commercial education. This dissertation concludes that business schools in both countries developed in parallel---albeit separated in time---from prior institutional and conceptual models that were defined by engineering schools, which developed in sequence with transmission of influence from France to America. |
