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William James Ashley: A Pioneer in the Higher Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

A. P. Usher*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Professor Ashley was a pioneer in the most explicit meaning of that term. His work at Oxford identified him with a small group that was deeply concerned with the exploration of new fields of history. He was called to the University of Toronto in 1888 to establish a new Department of Political Science. In 1892, the subject with which he was most intimately concerned was formally recognized by his appointment to a chair in Economic History at Harvard. Distinguished work in this field, however, merely served to reveal new opportunities. Professor Ashley became increasingly aware of the possibilities of developing a programme of instruction for business executives. His work at Harvard was being developed to meet these new needs, when an opportunity was presented to develop such a programme on a larger scale at the University of Birmingham. His appointment as professor of Commerce in 1901 was thus a natural development of his thought and activity, and he gave the rest of his career to a programme which embodied important anticipations of the further development of economic history.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1938

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References

1 A lecture delivered at the University of Toronto in January, 1938, in a series of lectures celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Department of Political Economy in that University. A second lecture in this series, on “Sir William Ashley and the Rise of Schools of Commerce”, by Ashley, C. A. of the University of Toronto, was published in The Commerce Journal (published by the University of Toronto Commerce Club), 03, 1938.Google Scholar

2 Ashley, W. J., Surveys, Historic and Economic (London, 1900), pp. 1821.Google Scholar

3 Ashley, Anne, William James Ashley: A Life (London, 1932), pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., pp. 48-9. See also pp. 49-52 for substantial extracts from the Address.

5 Ashley, W. J., The Faculty of Commerce in the University of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1902), pp. 12–3.Google Scholar