One day three years ago a smart, dapper, young-looking man named Cortlandt Jackson Langley called on the dean of Columbia University's Teachers College, ambitious, 46-year-old William Fletcher Russell. He found Dean Russell brooding on the fact that his college, long the nation's No. 1 teacher-training institution, had in businessmen's eyes become "The Big Red University."
Mr. Langley introduced himself as a "retired businessman." He had long been interested in education and he had an idea:
Teachers College and Business should get together, do Education and the nation a service by helping businessmen and educators...