Economics in the Rear-view Mirror provides transcriptions of material concerning both course content (as revealed in syllabi, reading lists, exam questions, lecture notes, etc.) as well as concerning the procedures followed in different undergraduate and graduate programs of economics.
What helps to distinguish the following graduate program brochure for Harvard that was still hot off the press in September 1967 is that the authorship of its first draft can be unambiguously attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith. Sentences like “Economics, especially in the fields of research, teaching, and the public service, is a profession of good but not munificent reward” and “There are few differences between human beings more profound than the capacity to conserve or spend money” are certainly consistent with recorded Galbraithian style.
I’ll note here that John Kenneth Galbraith was simply incapable of writing the most mundane of his administrative correspondence without turning a brilliant phrase or two. I have wondered how long he might have eluded arrest had he ever tried his hand at writing a ransom note.
It is striking that even at this relatively late date, so little effort was made to render the brochure gender-neutral. Clearly it was still a (Mad-) Man’s World.
An interesting comparison is Robert Solow’s brochure for the M.I.T. economics program in 1961.
____________________
Harvard University
Department of Economics
M-8 Littauer Center Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Office of the Chairman
September 19, 1967
Professor J. Kenneth Galbraith
207 Littauer
Dear Ken:
Sometime ago you were kind enough to do a first draft of a brochure describing our graduate program to prospective students. After a long delay, I solicited additional suggestions for this and prepared a revised manuscript. A copy of the printed version is enclosed for your perusal.
Thank you again for your help.
Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Richard E. Caves
Chairman
REC:eb
____________________
Graduate Study in Economics at Harvard
PUBLISHED BY THE DEPARTMENT
Introduction
This booklet is meant to tell the student who is considering graduate work in economics some of the things he will wish to know about work in this field at Harvard University. And it also tells something of the University and larger urban community in which he will find himself.
Harvard University, which was founded in 1636, is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States. It comprises Harvard and Radcliffe colleges, which give undergraduate degrees and the graduate schools. Graduate work in economics is offered under the auspices of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Undergraduate enrollment at Harvard and Radcliffe is about 6 thousand; in all graduate schools and departments about 9 thousand. Although by no means large by present-day standards, Harvard is part of what is, without doubt, the largest and most concentrated educational center in the United States. It shares residence in Cambridge and along the Charles River with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a long-standing arrangement between the two institutions allows the graduate students of each to register for courses in the other. Boston University, Boston College, Tufts University, Northeastern University, Brandeis University and Wellesley College are all within a few miles. And there are many smaller or more specialized institutions nearby. This large academic community, together with the strong cultural, artistic and literary tradition of the Boston area, brings a steady flow of visiting scholars, artists and public figures to this community from all parts of the world. The student at Harvard is identified not only with a university but with a major intellectual and cultural center. His problem, he will soon discover, is not to seize all of his opportunities — lectures, seminars, discussion groups, debates, conferences, concerts, plays, museums, and exhibitions — but to discriminate among them.
Economics at Harvard
Graduate work in economics at Harvard is just under a hundred years old. The first successful Ph.D. candidate, Dr. Stuart Wood of Philadelphia, later a prominent civic leader and businessmen in that city, took his degree in 1875 with a thesis on the work of the pioneer and prolific American economist, Henry C. Carey. The second doctorate was awarded a few years later to Frank William Taussig, who became a dominant figure in the field and a famous Harvard teacher for the next half century. Until the beginning of the present century, faculty, students, and courses were comparatively few in number — only five men held the rank of professor before 1900, and one of these was in sociology which was then considered a branch of economics. But in the early nineteen hundreds there was a rapid expansion in faculty, students, and course offerings which, with few interruptions, has continued to this time. The Harvard Department of Economics now has 24 full professors, listed at the end of this pamphlet. The junior staff consists of about 30 instructors and assistant professors, young scholars doing teaching and research.
Throughout the years, several traits have persisted in the Department’s collective personality. It does not run to any particular ideology or methodological disposition; its members display a wide range of attitudes toward economic policy and the advancement of economic science. By long tradition, the Department sees itself not as an organization committed to a particular method, point of view or problem, but as a gathering of individuals scholars each committed to pursue the truth in accordance with his own lights. Members teach and do research as individuals and not as members of the school. The same latitude is allowed to students.
Harvard’s is a “full-line” department, concerned both with the development of economic theory and quantitative research methods, and with their use in all of the major fields of applied economics. The Department has been active in opening up teaching and research in new fields of applied economics: early in the 1950’s it began building a strong program in economic development; now work is fast expanding in such areas as urban economics and the economics of human resources.
The close association of many members of the Harvard Department of Economics with public policy has been sufficiently featured in recent history so that it requires no further comment. It is not, however, especially new. Professors Taussig and Edwin Gay held high positions in World War I in the Wilson Administration. Just before, during, and after World War II such members as Edward S. Mason, Alvin H. Hansen, John H. Williams, and Sumner Slichter likewise occupied various positions of high responsibility. In recent times, the close association between the Department of Economics and the John F. Kennedy School of Government has reinforced this interest in public service and, as a consequence, a number of Harvard Ph.D.’s continue to go into public life.
Finally, the Department prides itself on being a major research center. For many years it has published two leading professional journals, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Various members have maintained large-scale research projects, such as Professor Wassily Leontief’s Harvard Economic Research Project (input-output analysis), Professor John R. Meyer’s projects in transportation and urban economics, and Professor Hollis B. Chenery’s work on development planning.
Most Harvard professors engage actively in both undergraduate and graduate teaching. (Under ordinary circumstances each professor gives two courses, a course and a seminar or their equivalent each semester.) As in all universities worthy of the name, there is a primary concern among Harvard scholars for advancing the state of knowledge in their discipline. In recent years there has been a popular myth that research is somehow in conflict with good teaching. In actual fact, good teaching at the highest level is rarely done by men who are not also engaged in advancing knowledge. But the high ratio of faculty to students is designed to ensure that all students will receive the personal attention of accomplished scholars.
General Nature of the Graduate Program in Economics
Each year between 40 and 50 graduate students are admitted for advanced work (normally toward the Ph.D.) in economics. Usually about two-thirds of them are United States citizens; the balance come from countries scattered over much of the globe. About 180 graduate students are in residence each year, and between 30 and 35 complete their Ph.D.’s. What program do they undertake? Where do they go upon its completion?
Most students apply to begin graduate study immediately after completing their undergraduate degrees, in are judged for admission on the basis of the general promise shown by their undergraduate records. More store is set by a distinguished record in general than by the extent of undergraduate specialization in economics. Nonetheless, an undergraduate major or extensive coursework in economics is definitely helpful. So are undergraduate courses in mathematics, at least through calculus, since mathematics nowadays is a standard working tool for many economists. Undergraduate work in statistics is useful but less necessary.
Students are ordinarily admitted only for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. For those without previous graduate studies, this program requires two years of coursework (and residence at the University), followed by another year or two (usually two) of work on a doctoral dissertation.
The practice at Harvard is to think of graduate studies in economics as falling into three parts. First, there must be mastery of the general body of economic theory and history which are part of the common qualification of all economists. Second, there should be competence in standard statistical research tools which are useful or necessary in handling economic problems. Finally, there are the various specialized or applied fields of economics in which, aided by his economics theory and his tools of analysis, the student extends and deepens his knowledge in accordance with his particular interests. A typical graduate program at Harvard reflects this general delineation of the subject as a field of study.
Although there is no required course program, the student ordinarily spends his first year insuring his competence in economic theory, economic history, and quantitative methods. Should he carry four courses, which for most students is a normal load, he will also have the opportunity to begin work in an area which reflects his specialized interest. During his second year, in addition to further study in economic theory and quantitative methods, he goes more deeply into his field or fields of specialization. Then, and while writing his dissertation, he takes part in working seminars that bring him into close touch with the research of the faculty and other students. On all of these matters he has the guidance of a faculty member who serves as his adviser. There is no foreign language requirement for the Ph.D. degree, except as an alternative (not particularly recommended) to showing competence in mathematics. At the end of their second year students ordinarily take their “generals” which consists of a written examination in economic theory and an oral examination which includes economic history, statistics and quantitative methods, and two specialized fields. Thereafter, under the guidance of the faculty member, the student writes his thesis, which must demonstrate capacity for original research.
Upon completion of his degree, a wide choice of career opportunities awaits the student. Just as it is the prime function of the University to continue and enlarge man’s store of knowledge, so it will always be the function of its best students to teach their discipline and to enlarge and modernize it by research. In the past a large portion of Harvard Ph.D.’s in economics have gone on to be college and university teachers and to continue investigation in the field. So, unquestionably, will it be in the future. Without ever making it a formal goal, the Department has long considered the training of the next generation of scholars and teachers to be its primary function. At the present time, these serve an especially insistent demand.
Outside of college and university teaching, the range of career opportunities is now wider than ever before. Harvard’s traditional involvement in public policy leads to a ready demand for its graduates in the U.S. and other governments. There is an insistent and increasing demand for trained economists from the business community, including, but by no means confined to, those were skilled in statistical methods and in modern techniques of data processing in the application of economic and statistical analysis to managerial problems.
Programs with Other Schools and Departments
The Ph.D. in Business Economics, administered jointly with the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, enables a student to divide his fields equally between the Department and the Business School. The Ph.D. degree in Political Economy and Government permits a student to take a substantial share of his work in fields of government and law. Separate leaflets are available specifying the requirements for these degrees.
Graduate work in economics at Harvard is enriched by the opportunities for association with scholars and students in a variety of centers and programs including the area of programs in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, the Harvard Development Advisory Service, the Center for International Affairs, the International Tax Program, the Joint Center for Urban Studies, the Program in Technology and Society, the Population Center, the Programs in Decision and Control, and others.
Physical Facilities
Universities, scholars have often warned, do not consist of bricks and mortar, although, is less frequently observed, they do not usually exist without them. Pending completion in the early 1970s’s of the John F. Kennedy complex, which will house several departments, institutes, and research centers, the Department of Economics is housed principally in the Littauer Center of Public Administration, which also contains the Department of Government, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a library serving these departments. This library contains all the books and journals assigned in graduate courses, as well as general reading, reference and research materials in the fields of economics, government, and public affairs. Littauer Center also provides the seminar rooms where many of the graduate courses meet and a coffee bar for student use.
Nearby are excellent computer facilities, and the Department makes arrangements to provide training in computer use to its graduate students and computer time for research on dissertations and major term papers. Computation facilities will be expanded considerably in the next few years as remote console stations come into use.
Littauer Center is located just outside of Harvard Yard, which contains many other facilities of interest to graduate students. The Yard is dominated by Widener Library, the main unit of the Harvard University Library, the total holdings of which run to eight million volumes. The Baker Library at the Harvard Business School, across the Charles River from the Yard, contains extensive materials of interest to economics students, including special collections in transportation and the history of economic thought. Other important libraries are the Lamont Library, in the Yard, which is used extensively for undergraduates for course reading; and the Langdell Library of the Harvard Law School, close to Littauer Center.
Harvard undergraduate upperclassmen live in residential units called Houses, each House having a staff, dining hall, a small library, and recreational facilities. A number of more advanced graduate students who have acquired teaching responsibilities are appointed to the house staffs as tutors. Unmarried tutors frequently live in the house of which they are a member.
Graduate student finances
Economics, especially in the fields of research, teaching, and the public service, is a profession of good but not munificent reward. And many graduate students have passed the stage in life when they can continue to call heavily on their families for financial assistance. Finally, the Cambridge community is not inexpensive and Harvard, a private foundation, still draws a large share of its revenues from tuition. For all of these reasons it is recognized that many students will require financial help. The Department of Economics believes that, in recent years, no student of energy and ability has had to withdraw for purely financial reasons.
A large number of students come to the University with National Science Foundation, Danforth, and other fellowships from outside sources. The Department naturally expects all students offered such awards to except and use them.
Harvard fellowships, including “Graduate Prize Fellowships,” are the main reliance for support of graduate studies. They are designed to allow the highly qualified students to work uninterruptedly up to his degree with knowledge that his basic financial needs are assured. Up to seventeen of the “Graduate Prize Fellowships” are awarded each year, and assuming satisfactory progress, are held by the student for four years. During the first year these Fellowships pay $4,000 of which $2,000 is for tuition and $2,000 for stipend. In the second year the stipend rises to the $2,200. In the third and fourth years, while working on the dissertation, the student holds a teaching Fellowship: he gives two fifths of his time to teaching and receives a stipend of $2,400 together with tuition. Graduate students in the latter years of their training play an important and valued role in Harvard’s undergraduate instruction, and nearly 60 of them hold Teaching Fellowships each year. This enables them, in turn, to show substantial experience in seeking teaching positions after completion of their degrees.
In the award of Teaching Fellowships, as in all other aspects of its work, the Department of Economics accords equal opportunity, depending only on qualification, to women students. It does not encourage the student to assume a teaching burden that interferes with steady and substantial progress toward the completion of his coursework and dissertation; Teaching Fellowships are therefore not available to first-year students, and not usually in the second year.
There are few differences between human beings more profound than the capacity to conserve or spend money. These differences are enlarged by wives, children, travel, and other requirements. Hence, it is nearly impossible to answer the question: how much does a student in Cambridge need? In general, it is the experience of unmarried graduate students that the funds provided by a Graduate Prize Fellowship adequately cover minimum needs. Loan funds are, of course, available in case of emergency. For married students some auxiliary income, such as a wife’s earnings, is unquestionably important. (Like most universities Harvard is willing to finance students but reluctant to support a student household.) Accordingly the problem of employment opportunity, with which that of housing is closely associated, is important. To these we now turn.
Housing and Employment
For the unmarried student, housing presents few problems. There are dormitories for both men and women — old ones with large rooms and thick walls and new ones with less space and better design. Current rates for dormitory rooms and for meals — these are not excessive — are given in a special supplement to the General Catalogue which may be obtained, along with an application blank, from the Registrar, Harvard University.
In earlier times graduate students at Harvard, as at other universities, lifter rather bleak boarding house existence and saw a little of each other as a community. Harkness Commons and the Radcliffe Graduate Center, both built since World War II, provide a congenial social atmosphere for all students who are so disposed. Both have good cafeterias. The student who wants solitude for his own work can still find it at Harvard, but it is a matter of choice and not of necessity or conformity.
The problems of the married student, especially the student with a young family, are more complex. Cambridge is a comparatively old city surrounded by the numerous other cities and towns which comprise the Greater Boston area. Housing in the area as a whole can best be described as ample, expensive, and generally unsatisfactory. One exception is provided by Harvard itself, which has over nine hundred apartments available for married students in buildings which it owns. These are closely convenient to the university and residence thus have ready access to the functions and activities of the University community. They obviate the need for a car. But, like privately owned dwellings in Cambridge, this convenience has a cost — but not an out-of-line one. Dwellings at a greater distance from the University generally provide more space at a lower price period
The University Housing Office, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides listings and guidance to housing. It also receives applications for university-owned housing. Married student should get in touch with this office as soon as they are admitted and use its services on arrival in Cambridge. The Housing Office strongly urges married students who have not previously obtained Harvard or other housing to come early — if possible in August — to look for accommodations. “Usually the only way of obtaining an apartment,” it advises in its bulletin, “is by persistent personal search.”
The University community, in its varied activities, is a substantial employer, and the Boston area offers the manifold job opportunities of the large metropolitan area. The wife who has teaching, secretarial, stenographic, nursing, statistical, library, or other skills can be fairly certain of finding employment. And even the wife who is limited in her opportunities by pregnancy or young children can usually arrange some additional income by caring for the children of working parents. The chances of finding and the convenience of holding a job increase with proximity to the University and may help offset some of the higher costs of such close-in living. As in all imperfect markets time must be allowed to find employment, so, as with those must find housing, an early arrival in Cambridge is urged. A special office at Harvard, that of The Adviser for Harvard Wives, counsels on job opportunities as well as on doctors, dentists, shopping information and other practical questions facing the newly-arrived at family.
Students who are in need of assistance on any matter, academic, financial or personal, should not hesitate to appeal to the Dean of the Graduate School, the Chairman of the Department or to a senior professor for help and counsel.
Graduate Student Life
Although the Harvard community is large and urban, it seeks not to be distant and impersonal. It is certainly not dull.
Economics graduate students come into contact with each other through their courses, informal meetings in library and coffee room, in social affairs organized by the Department and the Graduate Economics Club (which undertakes to represent student interests before the Department, invites outside speakers, and otherwise looks after graduate-student well-being).
Although the rigors of graduate course work leave most people with only limited time for recreation, the cultural advantages of Harvard in the Cambridge and Boston areas generally are unmatched. The Old New England character of Harvard Square and its immediate environs is increasingly spiced by a lively “Village” atmosphere. Cambridge and Boston cater to cultural taste running from low-brow to high-brow. At the latter end of the spectrum come much local theater (both pre-Broadway and off-Broadway), the strikingly original Boston Opera Group, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (especially its bargain series of open rehearsals, populated mostly by students), and many individual concerts, art exhibitions, and the like. The years spent earning a Ph.D. at Harvard will be filled with new experiences, contacts, and horizons, as well as solid and satisfying work.
Sources of Additional Information
Courses are listed in Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe common commonly called the Course Catalogue; it is issued in September for each academic year. Formal requirements for the Ph.D. in economics are outlined in the leaflet “Higher Degrees under the Department of Economics,” Supplement to the General Announcement. A similar leaflet describes “The Ph.D. in Business Economics.” One issued by the Committee on Higher Degrees in Political Economy and Government outlines “Requirements for the Degrees in Political Economy and Government.” A few graduate students find it useful to attend the Harvard Summer School, in which a very limited range of graduate economics courses is offered each year; a Preliminary Announcement listing all courses is available shortly after the beginning of the calendar year.
Professors and Associate Professors
Department of Economics, 1967
Abram Bergson
Richard E. Caves
Hollis B. Chenery
Robert Dorfman
James S. Duesenberry
John T. Dunlop
Otto Eckstein
J. Kenneth Galbraith
Alexander Gerschenkron
Gottfried Haberler
Albert O. Hirschman
Hendrik S. Houthakker
Simon Kuznets
Harvey Leibenstein
Wassily Leontief
John Lintner
Edward S. Mason
John R. Meyer
Richard A. Musgrave
Dwight H. Perkins
Howard Raiffa
Henry Rosovsky
Thomas C. Schelling
Arthur Smithies
Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526, Folder “Harvard Department of Economics: Graduate Student Brochure (JKG wrote 1st draft), September 1967”.
Image Source: Littauer Center (July 1970). Harvard University Archives.
History