Should Students Study?

William Trufant Foster (1879-1950), was an American educator and economist, whose theories were especially influential in the 1920s. He was an instructor of English at Bates College in Maine, from 1901-03 and served as a coach of Bates internationally known debate program. He was also professor of English and Argumentation at Bowdoin College in Maine in 1905. He authored Argumentation and Debating, published in 1908. He eventually received a Ph. D. in 1911 from Teachers College, Columbia University. His conception of the ideal college set out in the concluding chapter of his dissertation, led to his appointment as the first president of Reed College. He collaborated with his Harvard classmate Waddill Catchings in a series of economics books that were highly influential in the United States in the 1920s. His influential books, written with Catchings, were Money (1923), Profits (1925), Business Without a Buyer (1927), The Road to Plenty (1928), and Progress and Plenty (1930).