"Individuals who are serious about the future should look into the investment opportunity provided by the Northwood experience."

Dear Students, Parents and Friends:

Northwood is a special purpose university with a defined philosophy about management education that guides almost everything we do. We call it The Northwood Idea. There are many ways of expressing The Northwood Idea, but this is one way that might give you an idea of what it is we believe in.

We view a Northwood University education as an investment made for the future. Any person who devotes time to a Northwood education gives up the opportunity to devote that time to all the other pursuits he or she might engage in during that time. So the thing must have value. In order to give value to The Northwood Idea we establish definitions of what we believe in and do.

To start, The Northwood Idea keeps changing. Not the basic structure, but the specific content changes from time-to-time.

The unchanging portions of The Northwood Idea are those relating to our basic outlook about humans and society. The changing portions are those relating to the changing needs and resources in society.

We are a special purpose institution.

We focus on education for a life of contribution in the private sector. We believe that is where the productive future exists. We specialize, in that we develop and build all our curriculums around the principles of the market economy. We incorporate a series of beliefs into our curriculums. And they serve to anchor us in order that the changing parts of what we do cannot lead us astray.

What are some of these beliefs?

We believe that competitive, productive effort can overcome obstacles, solve problems and achieve goals. We believe human beings can make a difference in the world in which they live, and that we are not predestined to an ignominious fate.

We believe that political and economic freedom are of paramount importance in releasing creativity and productivity. Equal opportunity and personal responsibility are critical elements for a free society.

We believe that sacrifice--savings--is a necessary prerequisite to progress. Consumption of everything produced, with no investment for the future, is the most certain blueprint for the decline of society.

We do not believe we live in a fixed-pie society. We can affect the total productivity and quality of the lives we live. Efforts to squabble over a fixed pie not only politicize our lives, they predestine us to smaller shares of the future than we could otherwise enjoy.

We believe that equality of opportunity based on contribution and inequality of reward using the same criteria are not only appropriate, but the necessary conditions to provide important incentives which act as the driving forces of much of our societal action.

We believe in a system not forced into conformity with some master plan. We believe that it is the differences among us that make us interesting and useful to each other. We think this is as true in the philosophical and artistic as it is in the economic realm. Freedom from conformity releases the juices of creativity and our differences become strengths of our association, not hindrances to our existence. Thus, we insist on a system that recognizes our differences as individuals from each other, and turns those differences to positive use rather than attempting to eliminate them.

We believe in the freedom to fail. We must be free to bear the positive and negative consequences of our actions.

We believe that in a competitive system, all who participate get benefits from it, whether or not they are big winners. The only people who lose are those who fail to try, or those denied the opportunity to try. We dedicate ourselves to the elimination of artificial barriers to equal opportunity for all human beings. Racial, religious and sexual barriers are anathema to us.

We practice a healthy skepticism of large and powerful government because we think history has clearly demonstrated that such structures move rapidly from being of the people toward being over the people, and freedom is lost in the balance. Our intolerance of monolithic power is consistent across the business, labor and government spectrum. We suspect, furthermore, that as a society we cannot gain from the establishment of legal monopolies except in a very few and constrained circumstances.

Overall, we favor a society based on the unchanging values of individual choice, individual effort and individual responsibility. We endorse free enterprise and the competitive market for ideas and things as a way to insure that.

We also believe that an understanding and appreciation of the arts and humanities is a primary source of human enrichment in the lives of productive human beings. A wide and diverse assortment of events, classes, projects, experiences and opportunities is provided with an intent not to force-feed culture but to spark interest in the creative endeavor of which humans are capable.

Finally, we believe that education is never something that one person can do to another. It is, rather, something two people do together. This means that an educational institution is, primarily, a facilitator of knowledge. Northwood serves this function by bringing together a unique collection of people who can change students lives. When students use this capacity to its fullest, truly remarkable things happen. This process of change is what The Northwood Idea is all about. It is a challenging and rewarding experience. Individuals who are serious about the future should look into the investment opportunity provided by the Northwood experience.

Sincerely,

Keith A. Pretty, J.D.
President and Chief Executive Officer