Category: Columbia

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Berkeley Columbia

Columbia Economics Ph.D. Alumnus (1931) and Berkeley professor, Leo Rogin

 

Today we get a glimpse of the life of Russian-born economist Leo Rogin who died at age 54 after having taught twenty years at UC Berkeley.

A additional brief biographical paper of Leo Rogin that highlights his influence on John Kenneth Galbraith:

Robert W. Dimand and Robert H. Koehn. Galbraith’s Heterodox Teacher: Leo Rogin’s Historical Approach to the Meaning and Validity of Economic Theory. Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 42, No. 2 (June, 2008) pp. 561-568.

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Leo Rogin, Economics: Berkeley
1893-1947

by Robert A. Brady, Ralph W. Chaney, and Malcolm M. Davisson

The greatest tribute to Leo Rogin’s intellectual qualities was the response of his students. They invariably reported his classes to be extraordinarily challenging and exhilarating. Few teachers paid so little lip service to the conventional canons of pedagogy, yet few were able to stir up such animated and continuous reëxamination of fundamental propositions which underlie social theory in general and economic theory in particular. Former students are scattered all over the country who, years after, remember his classes as the outstanding intellectual experience of their entire college career.

Part of this experience was derived by contact with his charming personal qualities: an infectious enthusiasm, a wonderful sense of humor, a never failing delight in new ideas, and a great tolerance in outlook and interpretation. Some of these qualities may trace back to a life of rich and varied personal experience. He was born in Mohilev, Russia, on April 18, 1893. His father, manager of a large Russian estate, moved with his family to the United States in 1902, where in due time they became American citizens. Leo Rogin’s early interest was quite naturally devoted to agricultural subjects. He received the B.S. degree in Agriculture from Rutgers College in 1916 and the Ph.D. degree in Economics from Columbia University in 1931. He began teaching as Instructor in Economics and Sociology at Grinnell College in 1921. The following year he became Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology at North Carolina College for Women. In 1926 he was Assistant Professor of Economics at Lawrence College, Wisconsin. He came to the University of California in 1927, where he was Lecturer (1927-1938), Associate Professor (1938-1946), and Professor (1946-1947).

Interspersed with his teaching were other professional assignments. In 1925-1926 he served as Economist on the staff of the Guarantee Trust Company. In 1934-1935 he was Chief of Staff of the Labor Advisory Board of the NRA. In 1937-1938 he was Director of an extensive Survey of Destitution in Wyoming.

An understanding of the contribution of Leo Rogin must begin with the realization that he held that neither theory nor practice in the social sciences could be adequately analyzed or creatively expanded or refined outside of a frame of reference which was coextensive with the dual role of citizen and scholar. From this it followed that the differentia specifica which separates the social sciences from the natural sciences inheres in the structure, character, and functioning of social relations as such; that there is no escape from the acceptance of the historicity of social science theory, however formal and abstract; and that no aspect of social sciences–economics, political science, sociology–can be looked upon as more than a specific angle of an approach to an examination of the social sciences as a whole.

It is no accident, accordingly, that Leo Rogin felt, as an economist, that this view required that he become unusually well versed in philosophy and history. That this implied a stronger, rather than a weaker, imperative for rigor in his thinking processes is indicated by his systematic and long drawn-out self-education in logic and mathematics. But this very same emphasis also led him to feel that since the significant reality of the social sciences was an ever-changing and perpetually fluid manifold of social relations, it was highly necessary to cultivate a sense for the vagaries of theory by active participation in the social life of his time. Thus his personal as well as his scholarly life represented a quite unusual wedding of theory and practice. He maintained an acute and vivid interest in people, events, and a whole range of current social problems while at the same time constantly pursuing a heavy schedule of detailed and exacting research. This research had just begun to yield its most important results at the time of his sudden death in the summer of 1947. A major work, tentatively titled The Meaning and Validity of Economic Theory, representing some ten years of intensive work, is to be published in 1948. This study, dealing with the major figures in the evolution of economic thought from the time of the Physiocrats and the founding of the Classical School to J. M. Keynes, was prefatory to two other projected works. One was to be a detailed study of Keynes, whom Rogin regarded as one of the great transitional figures of contemporary times. The other was to be a constructive examination of the theory of economic planning.

Thus his work was cut off at the very time when it bore promise of yielding a significant reëxamination of economic theory as a whole. His earlier critical writings reflected a very carefully outlined plan of work and were notable for their penetration and originality. Particularly noteworthy was a series of articles and reviews on the writings of Karl Marx and Werner Sombart. An earlier study, The Introduction of Farm Machinery in its Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States During the 19th Century, published by the University of California Press in 1931, reflects his intense interest in the practical side of economic investigation and forecasts his later concern over techniques and methodology. E. A. J. Johnson said of this study that, “It is at once a set of findings and a method… his methodological contributions are indispensable to economic historians.” His later work would have amplified this statement to cover the significant problems of contemporary theory and policy formation.

In 1923 Leo Rogin married Winifred Ellsworth. His widow, three daughters, and a son survive him.

Source: University of California. In Memoriam, 1947.

Image Source:  Blue and Gold, 1922.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Amherst Columbia Economists Germany Johns Hopkins Smith

Columbia. John Bates Clark, Faculty Memorial Minute, 1938

 

Memorial minutes give us a snapshot appreciation of a deceased economist by colleagues. One really doesn’t read these to get any new significant items for the biography, one hopes instead to cull some insight into the minds and hearts of those who knew both the person and the work. “Innate modesty and a genuine kindliness” are a pair of expressed recessive traits that perhaps help to distinguish John Bates Clark from brilliant economic theorists of more recent vintage.

This biographical note for Clark from 1894 provides an earlier testimony.

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Memorial minute for Professor J. B. Clark
FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
April 22, 1938

 

JOHN BATES CLARK
1847-1938

In recording the death of Professor Emeritus John Bates Clark on March 21, 1938, at the age of ninety-one, the Faculty of Political Science is moved not only by a feeling of loss but also by a feeling of gratitude for great services rendered to mankind.

Born in Providence in 1847 and graduated from Amherst in 1872, Professor Clark set an example followed in the next three decades by scores of young American economists in going to Germany for graduate work. The interests in historical and anthropological studies that he cultivated in Heidelberg and Zürich were lasting characteristics of his mind—a fact often overlooked by commentators upon his later work.

On returning to this country, he began the searching analysis of economic relations that developed gradually into his peculiar contribution to social sciences. A little later than W. Stanley Jevons in England, Karl Menger in Austria, and Leon Walras in France, but quite independently of them and with an emphasis all his own, Professor Clark discovered how the utility of goods influences their values and prices. A collection of his early papers, The Philosophy of Wealth, published in 1885, revealed him as the keenest economic theorist of his time and country.

After teaching at Carleton, Smith, Amherst, and Johns Hopkins, Professor Clark joined this Faculty in 1895. It was while teaching at Columbia that he developed the full implications of his insights. His way of seeking to understand the complicated processes of economic life was to seize upon a set of fundamental factors, and to examine what results they would produce in the absence of disturbing circumstances. Work of this character obviously required logical powers of a high order and constructive imagination. What is less commonly appreciated, to make the results significant the work must be guided by sound intuitive judgments regarding the factors to be admitted to the problems treated and the factors to be excluded. How admirably Professor Clark’s judgment served him and how cogently he reasoned upon the basis of his assumptions were demonstrated by The Distribution of Wealth, published in 1899. That book still stands as the most important contribution of our country to pure economic theory.

Professor Clark’s later books, The Control of the Trusts, 1901, The Problem of Monopoly, 1904, and The Essentials of Economic Theory, 1907, show how effectively he could use his abstract constructions in dealing with practical problems, and how he could bridge the gulf that seemed to yawn between the timeless statis state of his Distribution of Wealth and the ever shifting condition of the work in which real men make their livings.

Of the service that Professor Clark rendered as the first Director of the Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, his co-workers in that field can speak with fuller knowledge than we possess. But we may note that no one deficient in a sense of reality, and no one without fervent interest in the welfare of his kind could have planned and carried through as he did the detailed record of the horrible sufferings that the War of 1914-1918 brought upon the world.

With intellectual distinction and integrity there was joined in Professor Clark and innate modesty and a genuine kindliness that won the affection of all who came into personal contact with him. Of what we deem finest in human achievement and character he was an example to be cherished and emulated.

 

Source: Columbia University Archives. Minutes of the Faculty of Political Science, 1920-1939. pp. 825-6.

Image Source: Amherst Yearbook Olio ’96 (New York, 1894), pp. 7-9. Picture above from frontispiece. Another link.

Categories
Chicago Columbia Economists

Chicago Ph.D. alumnus and Columbia Professor of Banking, Henry Parker Willis

 

Columbia University’s professor of banking (1917-37), Henry Parker Willis was an early economics Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, a student of J. Laurence Laughlin. He played an important role in the founding and early years of the Federal Reserve System and later as a expert consultant on banking affairs for the U.S. Congress. Besides all this he served over a dozen years editing the N. Y. Journal of Commerce.
This posting begins with a biographical note I found at FRASER, goes on with the Journal of Commerce’s account of his work there, and concludes with the Columbia School of Political Science Memorial minute entered into its recorded minutes in 1938.

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Henry Parker Willis
Biographical Note

1874, Aug. 14 Born, Weymouth, Massachusetts
1894
1897		 A.B., University of Chicago
Ph.D., University of Chicago
1897-98 Assistant, Monetary Commission
1898-1905 Washington and Lee University, successively adjunct professor, full professor, Wilson professor of economics and political science
1903, Dec. 24 Married Rosa Johnston Brooke (4 children—1 with FRB of Boston, 1 with FRB of New York)
1901-12 Leader writer, New York Evening Post
1902-03 Washington correspondent, N. Y. Journal of Commerce
1905-13 Washington correspondent, Engineering and Mining Journal
1905-06
1907-12		 Professor of finance, George Washington Univ.; and
Dean, College of Political Sciences, 1910-12
1909-10 Editor, U. S. Immigration Commission
1911-13 Expert, Ways and Means Committee, House of Representatives
1912-13 Expert, Banking and Currency Committee, House of Representatives (drafting Federal Reserve Act)
1912-14
1919-31		 Associate editor, N. Y. Journal of Commerce
Editor in chief, N. Y. Journal of Commerce
1913-14
1917-		 Lecturer, Columbia University
Professor of banking, Columbia University
1914-18
1918-221922		 Secretary, Federal Reserve Board, Washington
Director of Research, Federal Reserve Board (moved office to New York for this period)
Consulting economist, Federal Reserve Board
1916-17 President, Philippine National Bank
1919 Special commissioner in Australasia for Chase National Bank and Central Union Trust Company
1926-27 Chairman, Banking Commission of Irish Free State
1930-32 Technical adviser to U. S. Senate Banking and Currency Committee (drafting Banking Act of 1933)
1932-35 American representative to Le Temps, Paris
1937, July 18 Died

 

Author of:

Report of the Monetary Commission. 1898. (Joint author)
History of the Latin Monetary Union. 1901.
Reciprocity (with Prof. J. L. Laughlin). 1903.
Our Philippine Problem. 1905.
Principles and Problems of Modern Banking. 1910.
Principles of Accounting. 1910.
Life of Stephen A. Douglas. 1911.
The Federal Reserve. 1915.
American Banking. 1916.
The Modern Trust Company (with Kirkbride and Sterrett). 1919.
Banking and Business (with Geo. W. Edwards). 1922.
[Supplementary chapter “Federal Reserve Banks” in the fourth edition of Charles F. Dunbar and Oliver M. W. Sprague The Theory and History of Banking. 1922.]
The Federal Reserve System. 1923.
Federal Reserve Banking Practice (with W. H. Steiner). 1925.
Foreign Banking Systems (with B. H. Beckhart). 1929.
Investment Banking (with J. I. Bogen). 1929.
Contemporary Banking (with J. M. Chapman and R. W. Robey). 1933.
The Banking Situation (with J. M. Chapman). 1933.
Economics of Inflation (with J. M. Chapman). 1934.

Contributor to:

Economic and other journals.

See: Who Was Who in America, 1897-1942, vol. I, Marguis

Source: FRASER. Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve System. Register of Papers: Willis, Henry Parker. Entry 176a, Box 1, Folder 2, Item 50.

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The double life of H. Parker Willis

H. Parker Willis stayed busy. During his 29 years at The Journal of Commerce [JOC], there was rarely a moment when he was not also involved in shaping U.S. economic and banking institutions. The results of his efforts are still seen today.

Willis’ extracurricular work while a JoC employee would lead to the creation of the Philippine Central Bank and later the Philippine American Chamber of Commerce. Most important, his research and his brilliant insights led to the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System.

When he joined the JoC in 1902 at the age of 28, he had already been a star professor of economics and political science at Washington and Lee University. He took an academic leave to travel to the Far East in 1903-05 as a correspondent for the JoC and the Engineering and Mining Journal.

In between his dispatches, Willis began a study that led to the creation of the Philippine National Bank. Willis would become the first head of the bank, which served as the nation’s central bank, while still on the staff of the JoC.

But he was just warming up. Returning to the U.S. in the fall of 1906, he became the first head of Washington and Lee’s School of Commerce, while still writing for the JoC. He also became the economic adviser to Rep. Carter Glass, D-Va. His work for the JoC and Glass took him to the nation’s capital so frequently that the university’s president complained, resulting in Willis’ resignation. The school’s student body sent the university’s board a vigorous declaration of support for the popular professor.

Willis continued to write for the JoC, and in 1912 he became executive director of the National Monetary Commission. The commission had been created at the behest of Glass, who had been elected to the Senate. Under Willis’ direction, the commission issued a study recommending creation of a U.S. central bank. After Woodrow Wilson was elected president, he asked Glass to begin working on legislation.

Together with Glass, Willis drafted the enabling legislation. The measure was opposed by big banks, which wanted no central authority over them. Willis came up with a solution – a Federal Reserve System consisting of regional Federal Reserve banks owned by member banks but run as “corporations operated for public service.”

The regional Fed directors would come from banking and industry, along with citizens appointed by the Federal Reserve Board in Washington. The president would appoint the Fed’s seven-member board of governors, with the Treasury secretary and comptroller of the currency as ex-officio members.

“Willis took the best of the existing proposals, together with a brilliant balance of public-private ownership and leadership, to fashion a unique central banking institution,” said Robert Bremner, who is writing a biography of William McChesney Martin Jr., the Fed’s chairman from 1951 to 1970.

Another of Willis’ innovations was to have the 12 regional banks serve as clearinghouses for checks written by the depositors of member banks. Willis reasoned that this would give the Fed a practical purpose, in addition to replacing the patchwork of inefficient regional systems with a unified national framework for check collection.

Without check-clearing duties, he later said, the Fed banks would have become “merely the holders of dead balances carried for the member banks without any service for them; and since the business public abhors any idle or unnecessary institution…it would not submit long to the needless burden created by such emergency institutions designed to put out financial fire.”

After the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913, Willis became the Federal Reserve Board’s first secretary from 1914-18. He became its director of research from 1918-22, which meant he was chief economist, although the position was not called that yet. “These two staff positions first held by Dr. Willis remain the most influential at the Fed today,” Bremner said.

All through this time, Willis was writing for the JoC as its Washington economic correspondent. As if that wasn’t enough, he also became a professor of economics at George Washington University and later dean of its college of political science. He also lectured at Columbia University and became a full professor of economics there in 1919.

Willis also became editor- in-chief of the JoC in 1919. He steered the paper’s coverage in a new direction. With his profound grounding in economics and political science, he believed the paper should place the coverage of business and commerce within the context of economics and government.

As he stated in the paper’s centennial issue in 1927: “Business (and) economic life as a whole is a unit essentially and hence demands a unified treatment, which is impossible where attention is solely concentrated on finance or upon some specialized branch of industry.”

It was this vision of business and economic coverage that would differentiate the JoC from other business papers with its broad coverage of the nation’s business activities within the context of what was going on in the economy.

Willis resigned as editor of the JoC in 1931, but he continued to teach at Columbia. He wrote a series of five books on his passion – banking and monetary policy. They were The Federal Reserve System (1923), Federal Reserve Banking Practice (1926), The Theory and Practice of Central Banking (1936), The Banking Situation, Post-War Problems and Developments (1934), and The Federal Funds Market (republished in 1970).

Willis’ contributions to economic and monetary theory and policy, the establishment of the Fed and the growth of the JoC are still remembered. In a speech at Washington and Lee last March, Roger W. Ferguson Jr., the Fed’s current vice chairman, paid tribute to Willis as “a leader in teaching economics and political science and a major contributor to the establishment of the Federal Reserve.”

Source: Journal of Commerce website, A Proud History since 1827: The Journal of Commerce, page 11.

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FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
Memorial minute for Prof. H. Parker Willis
April 22, 1938

H. Parker Willis

Professor H. Parker Willis died on July 18th, 1937, in the 63rd year of his life.

Willis first became associated with us in the years immediately preceding the war when the first tentative steps were being taken in the formulation of a group of courses which was to become the offering of the School of Business. Although in only his 39th year, he brought to Columbia an equipment of training and experience that contributed richly to the success of that school and to the development of the field of money and banking. His foundations in the economic discipline had been firmly laid in his years of graduate work at Chicago, during the regime of Laughlin, and in his studies at Leipzig and Vienna. His remarkable skill as a teacher and administrator had been matured during fourteen years in professorial positions at other institutions, culminating in the deanship of the College of Political Sciences of George Washington University. His fluent pen had already produced a half-dozen scholarly volumes as well as an impressive output of more ephemeral writing which had established him as a brilliant economic journalist and editor. Finally, his capacity to analyze technical problems of public policy had been demonstrated in his service with the Monetary Commission and with the Congressional committee that drafted the Federal Reserve Act.

At Columbia Willis found an environment well suited to his particular talents and an opportunity commensurate with his capacity. Here there existed a firmly established tradition that the University should enlighten public opinion and apply its special skills to the solution of problems of public policy. Possessed of a fund of energy that was constantly a source of envious amazement to all who knew him, he came to us at the height of his powers and devoted twenty-four years of his life to investigation, instruction, and public service. His activities as an editor and a correspondent for financial journals, as director of research and consultant of the Federal Reserve Board, and as adviser to governments at home and abroad served not only to advance the public good but also to enrich and vivify his teaching and research.

By his contributions to science and polity Willis built for himself an imposing monument, the specifications of which we need not here detail. It stands for the world to see and admire. At the same time, he constructed, without conscious plan, an even more impressive and inspiring memorial in the hearts of his friends. We who knew him through long association will best remember him for the quality of his personal character.

There are those who take pride in the possession of a conscience which forbids them to shirk a duty. For Willis there seemed to be no duties, to be performed or shirked, but only opportunities, to be embraced with enthusiasm. In the academic round there was no one more faithful and dependable, no one more generous and unselfish. He stimulated each student to achieve the best of which he was capable and his interest and patience in guiding and molding even the least promising of them was the occasion for frequent remark. His attitude toward all his academic associates was one of kindliness and tolerance and the standards he used in judging himself were always more strict than those he applied to others.

One of his most appealing personal characteristics was his capacity for righteous indignation. He coupled an intense loyalty to those persons and principles in whose trustworthiness he had faith with an old-fashioned sense of individual obligation to defend the true and the good without counting costs or consequences. Incompetence, especially when linked with pretentiousness, and ignorance, especially when displayed by those who exercised arbitrary authority, were to Willis moral crimes which it was his personal duty to expose. His reaction in such cases was exactly that which he exhibited when, one evening, a misguided goot-pad [“good-bad” in a German-Jewish accent?] stopped him at the point of a pistol as he was hurrying toward the Staten Island Ferry. To comply with the demand that he surrender his valuables did not enter his mind as a possibility. Here was an enemy of society whose career should be expeditiously and firmly discouraged; and Willis proceeded to accomplish this end, instinctively and without hesitation, with the aid of a briefcase heavily loaded with financial documents. Truly he was a battler for the Lord, skillful but fair in the use of his weapons, and entirely without fear. Of him one could say, as Lord Bryce said of Dean Stanley, “You might think him right or wrong but you never doubted that he was striving after the truth.” And his joy in the strife was an inspiration to all who knew him.

Source:   Columbia University Archives. Minutes of the Faculty of Political Science, 1920-1939. Bound, typed manuscript. Pages 827-8.

Image Source: Passport application of August 4, 1916 of Henry Parker Willis

Categories
Bibliography Columbia Courses Economists Suggested Reading

Columbia. Friedman’s lecture notes to first Hotelling lecture in Mathematical Economics, 1933

 

 

On October 3, 2017, Antoine Missemer tweeted an image of an undated examination question by Harold Hotelling “Describe two mathematical contributions to economics published before 1910”. One should note that asking students to talk about work published at least a quarter century before the current academic year is not necessarily a deep dive into the history of economics, though of course Cournot, Bertrand and Edgeworth had achieved “historical” fame by 1933.

From Harold Hotelling’s course in Mathematical Economics taught in the first semester of 1933/34 at Columbia, Milton Friedman kept about forty-five 3 by 5 inch index cards worth of notes (both sides). From his first lecture, we can put together a convenient “short list” of Hotelling’s chosen greatest hits in mathematical economics. I have taken the liberty of expanding Friedman’s abbreviations, figuring the main purpose of transcribing archival material is to ease digital search down the road.

Earlier postings include a list of Hotelling’s courses and his class rolls at Columbia as well as an outline and exam for his course in mathematical economics offered at North Carolina (1946, 1950).

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Milton Friedman’s student notes to Harold Hotelling’s first lecture in Mathematical Economics (1933)

9/2/33 (1)

Hotelling, Harold on Mathematical Economics

Has been stated that methodological difference between economics + natural sciences is that in former cannot + in latter do experiments

Not entirely true: in econonomics may experiment, + in some physical sciences (e.g. astronomy, meteorology etc.) do not experiment.

Better dividing line to be found in number of relevant factors

 

Use of Mathematics in Economics:

A. Cournot 1838

J. Bertrand 1883 Journal des Savants (reviewed Cournot)

F. Y. Edgeworth 1881 Math. Psychics. Papers relating to Pol. Economy.

Pareto

Alfred Marshall Principles of Economics

(Edgeworth laid foundation of many theories more modern than Marshall

Using higher Mathematics in Economics

G. C. Evans

C. F. Roos

Zeuthen

Pareto in Encyclopedie des Science Math, Vol I, Tome IV part 4 (Tome I, Vol. IV)

[Yes, that is all that Friedman wrote down for that lecture]

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers, Box 120, Class note cards.

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Links to Works Referred to by Hotelling

Cournot, Augustin. Recherches sur les Principes Mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses. Paris: Hachett, 1838.

Nathaniel T. Bacon translation: Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth with a bibliography of Mathematical economics by Irving Fisher. New York: Macmillan, 1897.

Bertrand, J. (Review of) Théorie Mathématique de la Richesse Sociale par Léon Walras: Recherches sur les Principes Mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses par Augustin Cournot. Journal des Savants 67 (1883), 499-508.

Edgeworth, F. Y. Mathematical Psychics. An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences. C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1881.

Edgeworth, F. Y. Papers Relating to Political Economy.  Volume I;  Volume II; Volume III. London: Macmillan, 1925.

Pareto, Vilfredo. Économie mathématique, —in Encyclopédie des sciences mathématique, Tome I, vol. 4 (Fascicule 4, pp. 590-640), 1906 [?].

Marshall, Alfred. Principles of Economics (8th edition). London: Macmillan, 1920.

Griffith C. Evans. Mathematical Introduction to Economics. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1930.

Reviewed by Hotelling in Journal of Political Economy, 39, no. 1 (Feb 1931) pp. 107-09.

F. Zeuthen Problems of Monopoly and Economic Warfare. London: Routledge, 1930.

Reviewed by Corwin D. Edwards (New York University) in AER, 21, no. 4 (December, 1931), pp. 701-704.

Charles Frederick Roos. Dynamic Economics—Theoretical and Statistical Studies of Demand, Production and Prices. Monographs of the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, No. 1. Bloomington, Indiana: Principia Press, 1934.

 

Image source: From a photo of the Institute of Statistics leadership around 1946: Gertrude Cox, Director, William Cochran, Associate Director-Raleigh and Harold Hotelling, Associate Director-Chapel Hill. North Carolina State University.

Categories
Columbia Regulations

Columbia. Rules for Conduct of Graduate Oral and Final Exams, 1967

 

Every so often some well-meaning Dean tries to capture established procedures in writing. Since the Faculty of Political Science was explicitly referred to and the printed pamphlet transcribed below was found in the papers of the former head of the economics department (located within the Faculty of Political Science), Carl Shoup, it would seem reasonable that the spirit of the these rules, if not the letter, governed the administration of graduate oral and Ph.D. final examinations in economics. When one thinks of the salience of such examination memories, I find it surprising that it is difficult to find detailed written recollections of the oral exams experienced by generations of economic graduate students.

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The Graduate Faculties
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
1967

The Conduct of Oral and Final Examinations

Note

During the academic year 1958-1959 the Chairmen of the Committees on Instruction of the Graduate Faculties wrote to the Dean of the Graduate Faculties to ask that he set down in permanent form the rules governing oral examinations. Before and after that request, numerous faculty members had also asked the Dean’s office question on particular points…

The few pages that follow attempt to answer these various inquiries by summarizing the contents of committee minutes and faculty statements. The forms and procedures here listed were developed over the years by the Faculties themselves and given coherence and fixity by the decisions of the Joint Committee on Graduate Instruction. They apply also to the professional schools in which the Ph.D. degree is offered. The customs indicated, such as rising, notifying the candidate in subjects in one’s office, but bringing back the dissertation candidate, are of course no compulsory but they will be found pleasant and convenient to observe…

I
The Conduct of Oral Examinations

THE CERTIFYING EXAMINATION OR ORALS IN SUBJECTS

In departments where oral examinations are required, a student applies for his orals in subjects to his department. When the request has been approved, the department appoints a committee of not fewer than five members, one of whom is designated as chairman, to examine the candidate on specified subjects or fields. (In the Faculty of Political Science, at least one member of the committee must belong to a department other than the candidate’s; in other faculties, members of outside departments are called on when it is appropriate to do so.) The examination is held preferably in an examination or seminar room, not in an office or classroom, and its duration may be two or two and a half hours, depending on department practice.

The examination chairman is responsible for the conduct of the examination. He calls upon the committee members to ask questions and regulates the length of time that each examiner may occupy. All persons present are deemed members of the committee, whether members of the department or not, and must be given an opportunity to ask questions. The chairman has the right to disallow any question that seems to him irrelevant or improper.

At some convenient point during the examination — e.g., between the major and the minor when that division applies — the candidate is given an opportunity to leave the room for two or three minutes. He is not required to do so and may prefer to forge ahead to the end. At the close of the examination, the candidate is asked to wait in or near his sponsor’s office, the examiners rising as he leaves the room. The chairman then asks for opinions on the examination. Every person present may vote on the issue of Pass or Fail, a majority vote being sufficient.

If passing, the committee must next assign a grade or comment which is entered on the student’s record. Excellent. Very Good, Good, Fair are the commonest terms in use. Poor is not considered passing. In some departments, failure on the examination as a whole is final, unless the committee, of its own motion, recommends to the department a reexamination at some specified time in the future; in others a second examination is normally permitted. There is precedent for giving this second examination in written form if the committee decides that the oral method would permanently prevent the candidate from displaying his knowledge. The committee may also require reexamination, either written or oral, in some part or parts, suspending judgment on the examination as a whole until the deficiency is removed.

Only in the most unusual circumstances should an examination be terminated as a failure before it has run its normal course. This and several of the other cautions enumerated here arise from the experience of many years, during which a number of embarrassments — threatened lawsuits and the like — have been created by contentious students who took advantage of laxness or informality in the conduct of their examinations. Needless to say, it is the student who fails who has recourse to this attempted vindication, but it can be troublesome to the department and expensive for the University.

 

THE FINAL EXAMINATION OR DEFENSE OF THE DISSERTATION

At the final examination, the dissertation is defended by the student with respect to its sources, interpretations, and conclusions. The candidate is expected to show familiarity with the bibliography of his subject and the knowledge relating to the thesis he puts forward.

The committee to examine on the dissertation is not a departmental but a faculty committee. For the Ph.D. degree the Dean of the Graduate Faculties appoints a committee after nominations have been sent him by the department. The committee should consist of at least five members and should not exceed nine or ten. At least two members should come from University departments other than the candidate’s. The reason for the limit on size is that a larger number than ten can scarcely examine to any purpose within a span of two hours, and it is unfair to ask a faculty member to read and annotate a book, listen to his colleagues criticize it, and deny him the right to do the same.

For this reason also, the chairman of the committee must be strict about allotting time. If the candidate is asked to begin by summarizing his preparation and his results, this must be kept within reasonable limits.

Points made by examiners will naturally divide into substantial and editorial. Unless it is necessary to show that a very badly written dissertation must be entirely rewritten, the editorial comments ought not be taken up one by one. The sheet of notes on these matters is handed by the reader to the candidate, leaving examining tie for matters of substance.

When all examiners have finished their questioning, the candidate is asked to step outside and wait for a signal to return. During the discussion period, the question at issue is, first, Pass or Fail; then, if passing is approved, is it with minor or major revisions (known as Column 1 and Column 2 respectively)? A majority vote is required for all decisions on the final examination. But if any two examiners vote not to pass the dissertation (Column 3), it may only be accepted with major revisions, i.e., in Column 2. The committee may also, by unanimous vote, designate an exceptionally meritorious dissertation as “distinguished,” an honor which is place on the candidate’s permanent record.

When passed with minor revisions, the dissertation is corrected by the candidate in the light of the comments made upon it, and his revision is supervised by his sponsor. For major revisions, the chairman of the examination committee appoints a revision committee of three, whose names must be entered upon the reporting sheet. When the student has finished the major revisions, they must be submitted to each of the three members of the revision committee and each must state in writing that the new text is satisfactory. The three letters are sent to the Dean of the Graduate Faculties to be attached to the reporting sheet and thus settle the suspending passing. In the Faculty of Philosophy, such a dissertation may not be deposited until three months after the defense, and not during the summer months.

No candidate may have a second final examination unless the Dean considers, upon evidence put before him, that the first one was maladministered. Under special circumstances, however, the examining committee may by unanimous vote recommend that the Dean, after consultation with the chairman of the department, permit the candidate to submit and defend a totally new dissertation.

Since some students misconstrue encouragement and civilities, and blind themselves to the meaning of the phrase “certified for examination,” it is important for sponsors to make clear at all stages two fundamental features of the final examination procedure:

  1. Certification of the dissertation for examination in no way guarantees that it will be passed, nor does this certification commit the vote of any member of the examining committee.
  2. Certification does not deprive examiners of the right to press questions and criticisms during the examination.

Special dispensation for irregular modes of examination is not unknown but the precedents cannot be construed as a right. Upon formal recommendation of the department, the Dean may approve, on evidence put before him, such irregular procedures as have occurred in the past: defense in absentia (the candidate was in Asia and kept from attending by more than one circumstance); posthumous defense (the candidate’s sponsor recorded and embodied the committee’s suggestions); defense per alium (the candidate, in military service abroad, was represented by a scientific collaborator.

 

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Columbia University, Department of Economics Collection. Carl Shoup Materials, Box 10, Folder “Columbia University—General”. Printed Pamphlet: The Graduate Faculties, Columbia University, 1967. The Conduct of Oral and Final Examinations [etc.], pp. 1-5.

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Columbia Economic History Economists Harvard Illinois Johns Hopkins Minnesota Yale

Columbia. Seligman Recommends Three Harvard Colleagues for English Visiting Professorship, 1925

 

The Sir George Watson Chair of American History, Literature, and Institutions was administered by the Anglo-American Society for a distinguished visiting professor to lecture in several English universities. The inaugural lecture was given in 1921 by Viscount Bryce. That lecture, “The Study of American History” was published along with an account of the establishment of the Sir George Watson Chair. The first full course of lectures, “Economic Problems of Democracy” was given the following year by the economist and President-Emeritus of Yale University, Arthur T. Hadley. 

From the following exchange of letters between the president of Columbia University and economist, E.R.A. Seligman, we harvest Seligman’s ranking of four economics professors (three from Harvard and one from Johns Hopkins) regarded by Seligman to dominate the leading specialists in American economic history for this prestigious visiting position in “American History, Literature, and Institutions”. I have been unable at this time to determine who was actually appointed in 1925 or 1926

______________________________

Columbia President Butler Requests E.R.A. Seligman to Propose Names of Distinguished Economists for a British Chair in American History

Columbia University
in the City of New York
President’s Room

January 6, 1925

Professor E. R. A. Seligman
Department of Economics

My dear Professor Seligman

The electors to the Watson Chair of American History in British Universities contemplate acting upon a suggestion of mine and naming in the not distant future a competent American scholar to present the subject of our economic history and development. The topics that I have in mind include the migration West and the settlement of the large land areas there, the development of government aid in internal improvements, the building up of the railway and other transportation systems, the struggles over the tariff, the development, both industrially and geographically, of our manufacturing system, and the growth and character of foreign trade. There would, of course, also have to be treatment, although in general fashion, of the high points of our financial history.

Can you out of your wide acquaintance with American economists suggest a few names that I might send to the electors for consideration when they come to make their choice? The man ought to have enough standing at home to make his appointment abroad significant. He ought to be a good lecturer before a general academic audience and he ought to have a sufficiently philosophic cast of mind to avoid plunging into a morass of facts and statistics when what is needed is philosophic exposition of principles, happenings and trends of events.

With cordial regards an all the compliments of the season, I am

Faithfully yours
[signed]
Nicholas Murray Butler

______________________________

Copy of Seligman’s Response to Butler’s Request

January 7, 1925.

President Nicholas Murray Butler,
Columbia University.

My dear President Butler:

In reply to your letter of January 6th I would say that the professed economic historians are not of the very first rank. The best of them are Clive Day, of Yale, who is, I am afraid, a bit ineffective as a speaker; E. L. Bogart, of Illinois, who is a much more impressive personality and who is a fine fellow, although not a scholar of the first rank; and, finally, Professor Gras, of Minnesota, who is a younger man. It would be far better, it seems to me, to choose some prominent economist, many of whom either give courses in economic history as an incidental matter or who may be assumed to have a competent knowledge of American history. In this rank I should put first Professor E. L.(sic) Gay, of Harvard, with whom no doubt you are acquainted, and who was formerly editor of the Evening Post; then either Ripley or A. A. Young, of Harvard, would do very well, as they are both men of distinction and personality. Other men, like Hollander of Johns Hopkins, occasionally gives courses similar to the one that I give every few years, on economic and fiscal history. Taking it all in all, the order of my choice would be Gay, Young, Ripley, Hollander.

If you desire more detailed information about any of these and their characteristics or standing, I should be glad to talk it over with you.

Faithfully yours,
[E.R.A. Seligman]

 

Source: Columbia University Archives. Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman Collection, Box 37, Folder “Box 100, Seligman, Columbia 1924-1930”.

Image Source: E.R.A. Seligman portrait in  American Economic Review, 1943.

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Columbia Economists

Columbia. Arrow on the Subordination of Price Theory, 1940-42

 

Reading this account by Kenneth Arrow, I wondered why the lecturer in his history of economic thought course was not identified by name and who the lecturer was. In the Arrow papers at Duke’s Economists’ Papers Archive one finds his notes to John Maurice Clark’s course “On Current Types of Economic Theory” so for now I’ll presume that the son of the great John Bates Clark was the unknown lecturer of Arrow’s anecdote. 

_________________________

Kenneth Arrow Recalls the Subordination of Price Theory at Columbia

The intellectual environment at Columbia University when I was a graduate student in 1940-1942 was far different from that in which the modern graduate student in economics finds himself. Neoclassical price theory now holds pride of place, as all students will acknowledge, some joyfully, some ruefully. But at Columbia at that period there was no required course in price theory. Indeed there was no course at all offered which gave a systematic exposition of microeconomics, except for Harold Hotelling’s one term offering of mathematical economics, the content of which would today be more or less standard for a general course but which was then regarded as highly esoteric indeed. The one required course which was most nearly equivalent to price theory was a course on the history of economic thought, where the lecturer gave potted summaries of everyone from the mercantilists on. Walras was barely mentioned and certainly was much less prominent than H. J. Davenport. Keynes was not mentioned (for that matter the General Theory was not mentioned even in the course on business cycles, though there were some glancing references to the Treatise on Money).

But the work of Thorstein Veblen was indeed prominently displayed in the course on economic thought, and it was no accident. The corrosive skepticism of Veblen towards “received” theory had, belatedly and even posthumously, under mined the never-very-secure hold of neoclassical thought on teaching of American economics. Of course he was not alone in effecting the change; the more benign, but equally negative, judgments of John R. Commons, in whose name we are gathered, shaped a generation of economists trained under him at the University of Wisconsin. At Columbia, the channel of influence was Wesley C. Mitchell, creator of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His version of the attack upon neoclassical economics was an insistence on the large-scale accumulation of data. It was in large part his direct influence plus the general background created by Veblen and Commons that led to the subordination of price theory at Columbia.

Source: From Kenneth J. Arrow, “John R. Commons Award Paper: Thorstein Veblen as an Economic Theorist.” The American Economist 19, no. 1 (1975): 5-9.

Image Source:  Kenneth J. Arrow as Guggenheim Fellow (1972)  John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

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Columbia Economists Harvard Illinois Missouri Research Tip UCLA

Columbia Ph.D. Alumnus. Benjamin M. Anderson, 1886-1949

 

 

While the bulk of my internet trawling time for Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is devoted to tracking down curricular material and texts, serendipity occasionally takes me to biographically interesting places. Benjamin Anderson is of interest to ERVM both as having earned an economics Ph.D. from the Columbia School of Political Science and later as an economics professor at Harvard and UCLA. 

Research Tip: The University of California’s series of In Memoriam volumes.

____________________

Benjamin McA. Anderson, Economics: Los Angeles
(1886-1949)

Earl J. Miller, Marvel Stockwell, John Clendenin, Vern O. Knudsen

BENJAMIN MCALESTER ANDERSON (May 1, 1886-January 19, 1949), son of Benjamin McLean and Mary Frances (Bowling) Anderson, was born in Columbia, Missouri. He married Margaret Louis Crenshaw May 27, 1909. He is survived by his wife and three children, John Crenshaw, William Bent, and Mary Louise (Brown). A fourth child, Benjamin M. Anderson III, died in 1919.

Professor Anderson received the A.B. at the University of Missouri in 1906, the A.M. at the University of Illinois in 1910, and the Ph.D. in Economics at Columbia in 1911. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an active member of the American Economic Association, in which he served as vice-president and a member of the Executive Committee. He served as Professor of History in the State Normal School at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in 1905; Professor of English Literature and Economics at Missouri Valley College, Marshall, Missouri, in 1906; Professor of History and Economics at the State Teachers College, Springfield, Missouri, from 1906 to 1911; Instructor in Economics at Columbia from 1911 to 1913; Assistant Professor of Economics at Columbia, 1913; Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard, 1913-1918; economic advisor in the National Bank of Commerce in New York, 1918-1920; economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, 1920-1939; Professor of Economics in the University of California at Los Angeles, 1939-1949 (Connell Professor of Banking, 1946-1949).

Professor Anderson enjoyed a rich experience as a youth in his home at Columbia, Missouri. His father was for many years a prominent member of the Missouri State Legislature. Their home was the scene of innumerable political conferences to which Dr. Anderson was invited and from which he developed a keen interest in the then current political and economic problems.

Dr. Anderson’s publications were extensive, including four books and many articles and reviews. Outstanding among them were his books, Social Value, 1911; The Value of Money, 1917; Effects of the War on Money, Credit and Banking in France and the United States, 1919; Financing American Prosperity (coauthor with J. M. Clark, Columbia; A. H. Hansen, Harvard; S. H. Slichter, Harvard; H. S. Ellis, California at Berkeley; and J. H. Williams, Harvard), 1945. Much of his time during the last few years of his life was devoted to the writing of another book entitled Economics and the Public Welfare, a financial and economic history of the United States, 1914-1946. This extensive work was ready for proofreading at the time of his death. The book has now been published. It is a further major contribution to the field of economic literature comparable in quality to the high standard set in his previous works.

He contributed articles to many magazines and journals. Among them were the American Economic Review; Annals of the American Academy; Political Science Quarterly; Quarterly Journal of Economics; The New York Times; The Commercial and Financial Chronicle; The Bankers Magazine (London); The London Times; and the Wall Street Journal. During the past ten years he has published eight issues of the Economic Bulletin under the sponsorship of the Capital Research Company of Los Angeles. He associated himself for many years with a group of well-known economists in the organization known as the Economists’ National Committee on Monetary Policy, and served as President of that organization. Several of his articles were reprinted and circulated on a wide basis by that organization.

While economist for the Chase National Bank of New York, Professor Anderson published over two hundred issues of the Chase Economic Bulletin, which was distributed and read extensively in government, banking and educational circles in many countries. Representing the Chase National Bank he traveled extensively in foreign countries to conduct negotiations with leading government and banking officials. He was called on numerous occasions to testify before committees of the U.S. Congress and the New York State Legislature on questions of state, national and international policy relating to the fields of money and banking. These activities together with the wide circulation of his books, and of his articles in professional and financial journals and magazines, made him one of the best-known and most distinguished economists of his generation in both the national and international fields.

The firsthand contact with practical banking, with American and foreign banking officials, and with government agencies concerned with our economic and monetary affairs, which Dr. Anderson had enjoyed through many years, greatly enriched the content of his teaching and enabled him to provide for his students a sound and thoroughly practical experience. He originally possessed a scholarly command of history, literature, and languages which added impressively to his work, and he brought to his teaching and advisory tasks a broad perspective and keen judgment which made his pronouncements on economic affairs surprisingly accurate and wise.

Professor Anderson was a modest and distinguished scholar and a man esteemed by his colleagues for his personal qualities of kindly manner, stimulating humor, sympathetic appreciation and helpful cooperation. As a scholar and as a man he made a memorable contribution to the community in which he lived.

Source: Calisphere website: University of California, In Memoriam 1949, pp. 1-4.

Image Source: Benjamin M. Anderson in Harvard Class Album, 1915.

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Berkeley Chicago Columbia Cornell Harvard Michigan Minnesota Princeton Regulations Stanford Wisconsin Yale

Harvard. Memo on Master’s degree requirements in ten other departments, 1935

 

The following memo was found in the papers of the Harvard department of economics outlining the formal requirements for the award of a master’s degree in economics for ten other departments ca. 1935.  Harvard requirements for 1934-35 have been previously posted here at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

____________________

REQUIREMENTS FOR A.M. IN ECONOMICS

University of Chicago
—Catalogue Vol. XXV, March 15, 1935—
No. 7, p. 293.

“The specific requirements for the Master’s degree are:

  1. A minimum of 8 courses, or their equivalent (of which at least 6 must be in Grades II and III above*). Either in his undergraduate or graduate work the candidate should cover the substantial equivalent of the requirements for the Bachelor’s degree in economics…(May be shown by examination.)
  2. A thesis involving research of at least semi-independent character.
  3. A final examination (either oral or written at discretion of the department). The examination is on the thesis and its field and on one other field chosen by the candidate.
  4. All candidates…are expected to show ability to think clearly…on abstract economic questions, and familiarity with terms and common concepts of economic science.

No language requirement for A.M. apparently.

No set time limit, but (p. 282) they seem to regard three of work in economics (either as graduate or as undergraduate) as “normal preparation” although “exceptionally capable” students may do it in less time.

* Grade II and III being respectively survey and problem courses (II), and Research, reading and seminar courses (III). Grade I includes intermediate courses.

 

Stanford University

  1. One academic year of graduate work (A “normal time” but also minimum).
  2. Thesis
  3. Examinations (general or final and at discretion of department).

 

Cornell University

  1. At least one full year of residence at Cornell.
  2. “No student may be admitted to candidacy for any of the degrees of A.M., M.S.,…, or Ph.D. whose training has not included work in a foreign language equivalent to three units of entrance in one language or two in each of two languages.
  3. A thesis or (at departmental discretion) an essay.
  4. Written or oral (at departmental discretion) final examination.

He must show a knowledge of:

Three special fields, such as: in Economic Theory and History:

(1) Good general knowledge of history of economic thought, including classical school and contemporary.
(2) Familiarity with economic analysis and controversial area of economic thought.
(3) A background knowledge of social and intellectual history.

or in Monetary Theory:

One requirement:
(1) A detailed understanding of the theory and history of money; monetary system of the United States, theory and history of banking; banking system of United States, foreign exchange, monetary aspects of cyclical fluctuations.

No specific course requirements as far as I can see.

 

University of Minnesota

  1. At least one full academic year’s work (in residence).
  2. Thesis required.
  3. Nine credit hours each quarter of graduate courses for three quarters.
  4. He must have done in three years (undergraduate) work in his major subject if it is open to freshmen, or two years otherwise.
  5. A reading knowledge of a foreign language to be determined by the department is necessary.
  6. An examination.

 

University of Michigan

  1. Residence requirement: One semester and one summer session, or three summer sessions; nine hours work a semester and six hours a summer session are minimum to establish residence at the respective sessions.
  2. A minimum of 24 hours of graduate work is required (i.e. necessary but not alone sufficient).
  3. Thesis may be required at discretion of department (apparently economics does not require it).

 

University of Wisconsin

  1. At least two semesters’ work, at least one of which to be at Wisconsin.
  2. An oral examination.
  3. A thesis may be required of students seeking to specialize in a definite line of study.

 

Princeton University

“After Commencement Day, 1935, the degree of M.A. will be awarded only to a student who has passed the general examination for the Doctor’s degree.” This implies a knowledge of French and German; and implies not less than two years graduate study. The examination may be written, oral, or both. One year of residence is required.

 

Yale University

  1. Two full years of resident graduate study required (but may be in less time in exceptional cases where unusual scholarship is demonstrated).
  2. Reading knowledge of either French or German.
  3. An essay is required of all candidates.
  4. (Apparently) A comprehensive written examination in field of concentration in Department of Economics (it is not specified for which degree so that it seems to apply to both M.A. and Ph.D.).

 

Columbia University

  1. “The candidate shall have registered for and attended courses aggregating not less than thirty tuition points, distributed over a period of not less than one academic year or its equivalent.”
  2. “The candidate shall have satisfied the department of his choice that he has satisfied requirements specified by the department for the degree.” (May include courses, examination, an essay, seminars, or “other work”.)

 

University of California

“There are required 20 semester units and in addition a thesis.”

“At least eight of the 20 units must be strictly graduate work.”

“The student must spend one year of residence.”

Rate of taking units:

“Graduate students in the regular session taking only upper division courses are limited to a program of 16 units” (a semester or a year? probably a semester).

“Graduate students…taking only graduate courses are limited to 12 units.” Mixtures are regulated in proportion thereto.

 

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers 1930-1961. (UAV 349.11) Box 13, Folder “Graduate Instruction, Degree Requirements.”

 

 

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Columbia Regulations

Columbia. Allowing math to substitute for second foreign language, 1950

 

 

In a previous posting Economics in the Rear-view Mirror provided a except from the Faculty Minutes of Columbia University’s Faculty of Political Science agreeing to the modification of the second foreign language requirement in its Ph.D. program to allow mathematics to count for that second foreign language. Below we have the full proposal submitted by the department of economics which notes that Harvard and Chicago had already modified their own language requirements this way.

_________________________

FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

April 10, 1950

PROPOSAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS TO MODIFY THE LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT FOR THE Ph.D. DEGREE IN ORDER TO PERMIT AN OPTION IN MATHEMATICS.

The regulations of the Faculty and of the Department of Economics now require that any candidate for the Ph.D. degree in Economics shall satisfy the Department that he can read two modern languages, in addition to English. This requirement dates back to a period when very substantial parts of the important current literature in Economics were written in a foreign language, usually French or German. In recent years, however, the necessity for using more than one foreign language has become less urgent for the average economist. Much the larger part of the central core of modern economic thought is now available either in English, or in languages such as Swedish or Dutch which are not ordinarily offered toward the language requirement. On the other hand, mathematical tools are playing an increasingly large part in the study and development of Economics, and there is an important and growing body of economic literature which can be read only with some understanding of Mathematics.

The Department of Economics therefore requests approval of a modification of the present language requirement to give the candidate for the Ph.D. in Economics, in cases where it is of particular value to the candidate’s scholarly interests, the option of offering Mathematics in place of one of the two foreign languages now required toward the Ph.D. Harvard and Chicago already have such an option. The required level of proficiency in Mathematics would have to be specified rather explicitly by the Department, but this specification is not a problem of any great difficulty. The Department of Mathematical Statistics has very kindly offered its assistance in the matter.

If this proposal is approved in general principle, certain changes in the present text of the 1949-50 Faculty announcement will be required. The suggested phrasing of the changes is as follows:

With respect to the Faculty requirements:

Revise p. 24, paragraph entitled “Languages”, by adding the following sentence at the end of the paragraph:

…Prospective candidates in the Department of Economics may under certain circumstances, and with the permission of the Executive Officer of that Department, offer Mathematics and one foreign language instead of two foreign languages (see the specific requirements of the Department of Economics, below).

            With respect to the Department of Economics requirements:

Substitute the following for the first five lines of the paragraph headed “Languages”, on p. 41 (option 1 is the present requirement):

Languages; Option in Mathematics. The prospective candidate must meet one of the two following requirements.
(1) The prospective candidate may satisfy the Department of Economics that he can read two modern languages in addition to Engish. The combination of French and German is preferred. Russian, Italian, Spanish or another language may be selected, with the written permission of the Executive Officer of the Department, in cases where such other language is of particular value to the prospective candidate’s scholarly interests, but ordinarily a combination of two Romance languages may not be selected.
(2) Where it is of particular value to his scholarly interests and with the written permission of the Executive Officer, the prospective candidate may offer Mathematics in the place of one of the two foreign languages. A student selecting this option will be required to demonstrate his knowledge of algebra, analytical geometry and the differential and integral calculus.

Minor changes in the text of the rest of the paragraph will also be necessary, if the second option is approved.

 

Source: Columbia University Libraries. Columbiana, Department of Economics Collection. General departmental notices, memoranda, etc. Curriculum material. Box 1, Folder “Committee on Instruction.”

Image Source: Alma Mater on the steps of Columbia University.