Recommendation from President Aaker

 The urbanization of the Great Plains created a demand for new skills and a new workforce. During the turn of the 20th century, the curriculum for Concordia College became focused on practicality due to the Depression of 1893. Commercial courses were offered to be completed in one to two years with high employment outcomes. The courses consisted of bookkeeping, arithmetic, English grammar, commercial law, penmanship, business practice, and letter writing.^[1] Shorthand and typing were added in 1894. As a result of the promised employment, 85.7% of the students graduated from Concordia’s commercial and shorthand-typing courses.^[2]

 The reason for this promised employment was a result of the mass urbanization of the time. The migration from rural farms to urban cities caused an economic shift within late 19th century society. The majority of this urbanization came from the influx of foreign immigrants to the United States. In America’s Northern Industrial Zone, immigrants accounted for up to 50% of the urban population.^[3] This movement was the result of the recent industrialization of the workforce. Employers now needed workers to have fine motor skills so they could help run the new populating offices. With the new positions of managers came the need for executive assistants.

 This urbanization was also felt in the Fargo-Moorhead area with the new emphasis on higher education. Colleges and universities from around the area were advertising their classes as a way for students to learn work skills. As technology and industrialism took off during the Gilded Age there became an urgency for a new type of education. Students could no longer learn their traits by working on the farm, they had to go to a school. Principal Hans Aaker of Concordia College saw this need and focused his entire career on creating students who met these new requirements.For the next ten years, Aaker spent most of his resources on creating a program that centered around working in an actual business setting.^[4] He saw the importance of preparing his students for the future tendencies of the work force. In doing so, he allowed the Fargo-Moorhead area to expand into an urban setting along with the rest of the country.