Before this year’s class of MBAs departed Soldiers Field, they sat down one more time and prepared for a ritual now in its fourth year. For this “Cap-stone Class,” all graduating students read an annually updated case that compares data from their own class with that of the Class of 1949 (dubbed “The Class the Dollars Fell On” by Fortune magazine).

The case, authored by HBS professors Richard Tedlow and Nancy Koehn in 2001, was originally taught in The Coming of Managerial Capitalism, where Tedlow continues to use it. “I have found it a fabulous way to end that course,” he says. “It’s about history, but it’s also about today. And it gives me the opportunity to ask the students questions about an institution — HBS — that they’re quite familiar with by that point.”

The data on the Class of 1949 is drawn from a survey by researcher Daniel Yankelovich that was commissioned by the late John Shad (MBA ’49) in 1994, the year the class celebrated its 45th Reunion. In addition to featuring information such as the age of students at admission, the industry in which they worked after graduation, and the evolution of the first-year curriculum, the case includes survey excerpts in which members of the Class of 1949 describe their changing perspective on what defines success and offer advice to those just starting out in business.

“The class discussion is like a litmus test of what students care about and how that has changed over the years,” says Koehn, noting that the case is revised each year to include data from the current graduating class as well as current business and world events. “This case teaches them that history is alive, that they are part of a long, rich tradition of people with similar concerns who have come from this place.”

It also affords the opportunity to analyze the nature of change in a large institution such as HBS, adds Tedlow. “Change is important, but institutions tend to resist it. How do they resist it, and how does one get around that resistance? Why does an institution sometimes change on its own?

“I can’t think of another case in the curriculum in which everybody knows the ‘company,’ ” he continues. “You’re able to put the students in positions of responsibility and have them challenge one another. It’s the case method at its very best for that reason.”

Senior Associate Dean and MBA Program Chair Carl Kester says that the impetus for creating the Capstone Class came from students who were looking for a way to wrap up their business school experience. Each section invites a faculty member to lead the case discussion. The groups then reunite in their first-year classrooms.

“A modern reader can still see themselves in those young men of the Class of 1949 and empathize with the hopes, anxieties, and aspirations they had back then,” Kester remarks. He adds that the changing views of success included in the case also offer students the opportunity to think about how they will define that term in their own lives.

The world and the School are much different now, Kester observes, yet the Class of 1949 entered a period of uncertainty, characterized by the Cold War and nuclear proliferation, that is not unlike the current anxieties surrounding the war on terrorism. “There are tremendous challenges that we have not yet faced,” he observes. “The world once again is looking for leadership. There are great opportunities as well as great risks — in some ways, we’ve come full circle.”

— Julia Hanna