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Founded in 1881 by Gustave Emmanuel Roy, president of the Paris Chamber of Commerce, with 57 students in its first class, the École des hautes études commerciales de Paris  aimed to be in the fields of management and commerce what the École Centrale de Paris was in the field of engineering.

In 1921, the school introduced the case-based method of the Harvard Business School, but most of the lectures remained theoretical. In 1938, the HEC program was lengthened to 3 years.

Due to French corporations' demand for North-American-style management education, at the end of the 1950s, the case-based method was generalized and a one-year classe préparatoire was created to prepare for the entrance examination, which had become more difficult. As a result, only 9% of HEC students had attended university in 1959, whereas 47% had done so in 1929.