What Colleges Don't Teach About Business

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You're right, Albert Shapero! (Speaking Out, January.)

It's not only the business schools that don't prepare students for small business -- engineering curricula have the same failing. It's assumed that their graduates will go to work in large refineries, chemical plants, or consulting firms. They don't tell a graduate how to handle the people he deals with in and out of his company.

Neither my degree in chemical engineering from Illinois nor my master's degree from MIT prepared me for the realities of small business. We're still very small -- a bit over $75,000 a year in sales -- and big business economics has no relationship at all to the problems I face or the solutions I attempt. How do you plan for the future, and handle sales, marketing, production, and administration, when basically there's just you?

CORRECTION-DATE: May, 1982

CORRECTION:

A typographical error appeared in the letter from William B. Katz, president of Illinois Chemical Corp., Highland Park, Ill., in the March issue. Mr. Katz's firm does "a bit over $750,000 a year in sales," not $75,000.

In "Sole Success" (February), the Abington Shoe Co. was mistakenly identified as being located in "a former piano warehouse in South Boston." The building was in Boston's South End -- a different part of town.