Kenneth C. Zirkel

By Walter A. Friedman

The Wall Street Journal’ s college rankings have elevated Babson College into the highest tier of American higher education, placing it second in their 2026 list( following only Stanford). This rise reflects the newspaper’ s ranking methodology, which emphasizes student outcomes( including graduation rates, salary and employment opportunities), while also valuing experiential learning. The school performs well on all these measures, reporting among the highest salaries in the nation($ 77K starting salary for the class of 2025), strong graduate earnings and high post-graduation placement. The high ranking would have seemed unlikely when Roger Babson founded the institution in 1919, in a location not far from Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology( where he graduated) and, right next door, the prestigious women’ s school, Wellesley College. Yet the factors that have contributed to the college’ s contemporary success, including its emphasis on practical education and measurable

Roger Babson statue at Kerry Murphy Healey Park, Babson College, July 2025. economic outcomes, reflect many of the objectives that were prized by its founder.

Roger W. Babson( 1875 – 1967) himself occupies an important, though overlooked, place in the history of modern American business. Through the creation of the Babson Statistical Organization, he helped establish economic forecasting as a specialized commercial service and contributed to the growing use of quantitative information in business decisionmaking during the first half of the 20th century. He became nationally famous for warning, shortly before the stock market crash of October 1929, that a severe market decline was imminent. Contemporary observers often dismissed his methods as speculative, mystical or pseudo-scientific. Yet investors, executives and journalists continued to follow his forecasts, which combined a range of various statistics, a compelling forecasting chart and a clear opinion on when to invest and when to sell. Babson’ s career illuminates the historical development of forecasting as a commercial enterprise and demonstrates how economic predictions became marketable commodities in modern capitalism. Babson was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1875. His father, Nathaniel,

was a general merchant who gave him an appreciation for financial discipline and the power of compound interest(“ the world’ s greatest invention,” Roger remembered his father saying). He accompanied his father on sales and collection trips, which exposed him to the realities of business life. Hardship also left an impression. Following his father’ s nervous breakdown and the death of his younger sister, Edith, by drowning, in 1893, Babson assumed economic responsibilities at an early age. These experiences reinforced a lifelong concern with security, prudence and financial foresight.

Babson attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology( MIT), where he showed little interest in much of the curriculum but was inspired by the civil engineer George F. Swain. Swain encouraged Babson’ s interest in statistics and quantitative analysis and introduced him to lab work and group problem-solving. Swain also brought the work of Sir Isaac Newton to Babson’ s attention. Newtonian ideas of equal-and-opposite reactions shaped Babson’ s own thoughts about the upsand-downs of economic activity.

After graduating from MIT, Babson worked at several financial firms,

20 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Spring / Summer 2026 | www. MoAF. org