Business colleges played an important but often-overlooked role in American education. For the better part of a half-century, Brown's Business College in downtown Bloomington offered "solid and practical" training for young men and women entering the white-collar workforce. | From Our Past page

The Industrial Age demanded bookkeepers, stenographers, cashiers and correspondent clerks, the training of which traditional four-year colleges and universities generally ignored. Railway, telegraph, manufacturing and express companies needed office workers to keep their increasingly bureaucratic, paperwork-heavy operations running smoothly and efficiently. In addition, the invention of the typewriter - and later other office machines - led to the further specialization of office jobs.

Business colleges throughout the nation filled this education vacuum.

"In this age of sharp competition there is little chance for the young person who faces the world without the knowledge and skill that comes from special training," read a Brown's Business College student handbook from 1900.

Brown's, a chain of schools established by G.W. Brown of Jacksonville, offered classes in small- and mid-size Illinois cities such as Champaign, Decatur, Galesburg, Jacksonville, Moline, Ottawa, Peoria, Rock Island and Rockford.

The college operated one of its "campuses" in Bloomington from the 1890s until the early 1940s, attracting students from the Twin Cities and places like Heyworth, Atlanta, Paxton, and El Paso. For a while, classes were held on the third floor of the Henry Keiser Building, 505-507 N. East St. (which today is part of the Clark & Barlow Hardware building). Around 1909, the school moved to the 500 block of North Main Street.

Back in 1900, Brown's offered a comprehensive commercial course, in addition to one concentrating specifically on bookkeeping and another on shorthand and typewriting. The regular school year ran 10 months - early September to early July - with one week off for Christmas. Tuition was $20 for each 10-week term (or more than $500 today, adjusted for inflation).

To accommodate those already in the workforce, Brown's offered not only night and summer classes, but also a correspondence program.

The curriculum was surprisingly rigorous. The full course included bookkeeping (theory and practice), commercial arithmetic, writing, commercial law (including contracts and personal property), business correspondence, spelling, shorthand, typewriting, indexing and filing. There were also detours into business history, political economy, government and other subjects.

Completion of a full course of study could take 10 months or longer, though shorter courses could be wrapped up in less time. Brown's graduates, with a diploma from an accredited and well-respected business college, usually had little trouble finding employment.

Women often outnumbered men in the graduating classes, and although women were generally restricted to secretarial-like positions, they proved adept at competing and succeeding in the wider commercial world.

During the Great Depression, university-educated men and women turned to Brown's and other business colleges to improve their office skills and hence job opportunities.

But the end of World War II and the GI Bill led to an enrollment boom in four-year colleges and universities, while the 1960s brought explosive growth in two-year community colleges. These and other factors led to the decline of business colleges like Brown's.

On June 4, 1929, local attorney W.K. Bracken delivered the annual Brown's commencement address. "I have become convinced that you not only have learned how to operate certain mechanical devices," Bracken said to that year's 37 graduates, "but that you also have learned how to use and operate your head and heart in such a way as will make you real women and men."