The University of Michigan School of Business Administration exemplifies much of the best in the sound development of management education. Throughout its history it has stood for rigorous analysis in basic disciplines along with practical applications of theoretical understanding. The School was established in 1924, and Edmund Ezra Day, chairman of the Economics department, became the first Dean of the new school. It was largely patterned after the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, but without the distinctive term "Graduate" in its name. Permission to use the name "Graduate School of Business Administration" on diplomas, official announcements, publications, transcripts, letterheads, news releases, and for other official purposes was not granted by the University until the 1960s.
In the meantime, the School went through three distinct phases. The first was from 1924 to 1944, a period of twenty years when the School only awarded graduate business degrees: the Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) and the Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (actually presented by the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies). Enrollment was small, first reaching 200 in 1939, only to decline sharply during World War II. Following Dean Day's departure in 1926 to join the Rockefeller Foundation, Clare E. Griffin served as Dean for the remainder of the twenty-year period. In this formative time the School established a graduate degree and curriculum based on a "combined program," conducted primarily with the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the College of Engineering.
The Bureau of Business Research and the Bureau of Industrial Relations were also established before 1940. Dean Griffin presided when the Bachelor of Business Administration degree program was set up in 1942, and at a time when the School's program and faculty were adjusting to the special needs of a country at war. Initial plans were also being made at this time for a building that would eventually house the new School of Business Administration.
During the second phase in the School's history,