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The story I heard happened in the 1950s-60s, at 50-60x at Bell Telephone in the USA

Top management of the corporation noticed a majority of their managers were formerly engineers and often they don't have enough initiative and lacked diversity.

They decided to fix this by creating the Bell Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives and running 10 month courses lectured by professors from Pennsylvania University. In these lectures they read books, visit concerts and museums, met with writers and musicians.

Those who finished this courses started read more, become more curious, confident and intellectually independent. On the other hand, they started spending less time at work, didn't take work at home and their efficiency & productiveness decreased by 8-10% annually. Instead, they preferred to spend this time with their families and enjoy life.

At sixties, this institute was closed and company growth normalized.

Is this story true or false?

Andrew Grimm
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Gleichmut
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    [Welcome to Skeptics!](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users) I am trying to understand your question. Here's a link to an article about the [Institute of Humanistic Studies](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/opinion/16davis.html). From that you could ask if the institute existed, or if it was closed in 1960, or whether Bell reached the conclusion that graduates were less interested in putting the company's bottom line ahead of their families and communities. – Oddthinking Mar 24 '17 at 01:11
  • However, claiming education in Humanities leads to less productive work isn't a reasonable claim from this story. If you want to ask about the 8-10% decrease in productivity, you will need to quote someone making that claim. – Oddthinking Mar 24 '17 at 01:12
  • Thank you for warm wishes and questions. Here I am curious does this kind of training really existed in the past and does it caused drop in productiveness? Also this story implies conclusion that good education in both fields - engineering and humanitarian - leads to less efficient job and this is also point of interest if there are any studies can proof it. – Gleichmut Mar 25 '17 at 09:18
  • @Oddthinking apologies for the bumping of the question - I didn't bother reading the comments. – Andrew Grimm May 30 '17 at 12:59

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