Roger Babson
American entrepreneur and business theorist (1875–1967)
Roger Ward Babson (July 6, 1875 – March 5, 1967) was an American entrepreneur, Georgist economist, and business theorist in the first half of the 20th century. He is best remembered for predicting the Wall Street crash of 1929 and founding Babson College. He also founded Webber College (Webber International University) in Babson Park, Florida, and the defunct Utopia College, in Eureka, Kansas.
Roger attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for investment firms before founding Babson's Statistical Organization (1904), which analyzed stocks and business reports; it continues as Babson-United, Inc.
Early life
Babson was born to Nathaniel Babson and his wife Ellen Stearns as part of the 10th generation of Babsons to live in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Roger attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated in 1898 with a degree in engineering. As a college student, he lobbied the dean to include a business course, which resulted in a course known as "Business Engineering." Eventually, the business engineering program was expanded, and it is now seen as the forerunner of the MBA degree.
Babson Statistical Organization
Upon graduation in 1898, Babson worked for investment firms selling bonds. In 1904, Roger and his wife Grace founded the Babson Statistical Organization (BSO) at their home in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with eight clients in its first year. At that time, the modern economic forecasting industry in the United States began to take form.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roger Babson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.