The School of Political Science at Columbia University was divided into three groups of subjects: History and Political Philosophy, Public Law and Comparative Jurisprudence, and Economics and Social Science.
Economics and Social Science comprised the two subject groups: Political Economy and Finance; Sociology and Statistics.
Seligman figured that of the approximately 135 graduate students specializing in economics in 1899-1900 in the seven eastern departments (Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale), about 75 were at Columbia.
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SCHOOL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
Department of Economics.—Since the recent reorganization of the work in economics, there has been a marked increase in the number, as well as in the quality of the students. Numbers, indeed, constitute no adequate test of the real work done by the various departments within a university; for the subject which attracts the fewest students may possess the highest scientific value and may be presided over by the ablest professors. But, when an institution is compared with others of about the same grade and size, the relative number of students in any one department affords a fair indication of the importance to be assigned to it. Hence, the following table is of much interest:
*By graduate student is meant a student holding a first degree.
1 Attending for three terms.
2 Including Economics and Public Law.
3 Including Economics, Politics and History.
The number of graduate students in economics and social science at Columbia is much greater than the number in any other American institution. If we compare Columbia with six Eastern universities,—Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Pennsylvania and Princeton,—we find that Columbia has almost as many such students as all six, that is, 75 as against 89. And if it were possible to separate the students working primarily in economics at Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Cornell (where the figures include other students in political science as well), it is practically certain that Columbia would be found to possess more graduate students working primarily in economics and social science than the other six institutions together. Assuming that half of the students returned in Johns Hopkins, Yale and Cornell are working primarily in economics,—a very liberal assumption, —we should have a total of 60 in the six Eastern universities, as against 75 in Columbia. This is a remarkable showing.
In order that it may not be supposed that the basis of classification varies, it may be added that each of the students at Columbia is enrolled primarily under the Faculty of Political Science and is a candidate for the master’s or doctor’s degree, with the major subject in economics and social science. Every such student is required to attend a seminar. In addition to the seminar, 35 of the 75 students are taking 3 or more courses in economics or social science and 20 are taking 2 such courses. The remainder, who are taking one course in addition to the seminar, are chiefly students who have taken most of their lecture work in previous years.
The following figures, as to enrollment in economics and social science, will prove instructive:
| Graduate students, primarily enrolled in political science, taking graduate courses (whether as a major or minor) | 95 |
| Graduate students (male) in the whole university taking graduate courses | 123 |
| Non-graduates (male), primarily registered in political science, doing chief work in economics | 22 |
| Students, graduates and non-graduates (male, but exclusive of seniors and other college students) in the whole university, taking graduate courses | 149 |
| Enrollment of students, as above (not deducting duplicates), in graduate courses in economics and social science | 559 |
| Enrollment of under-graduates in Columbia College | 179 |
| Enrollment of students of all kinds (male) pursuing these studies | 738 |
| Enrollment of Barnard students | 140 |
| Total enrollment in the University | 878 |
The relative importance of the university work may also be seen by this comparison with Harvard:
| Harvard | Columbia | |
| Total students primarily registered in non-professional (graduate) schools | 341 | 331 |
| Total graduates in non-professional (graduate) schools | 323 | 292 |
| Total graduates in political science | 52 or 16% | 114 or 39% |
| Total graduates primarily in economics and social science | 8 or 2½% | 17 or 26% |
This showing is doubtless due in part to the system on which the work in economics and social science at Columbia is organized. The department has four full professors, one instructor and two lecturers. The work has been so apportioned that each professor devotes himself primarily to his own specialty—Professor Mayo-Smith to statistics and practical economics, Professor Clark to economic theory, Professor Giddings to social science, and Professor Seligman to economic history and finance. Another explanation of the large numbers is the facility afforded to students to combine with their studies in economics the courses in history, public law and general political science.
Among the recent graduates in economics of the School of Political Science, no less than 25 are now giving instruction in economics at other institutions, including Yale, Cornell, Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Syracuse, the Universities of Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A number of graduates have become editors of important daily or weekly papers, in New York, Buffalo, Omaha and other cities, and a large number occupy administrative positions in the service of the national and state governments. Among the latter may be mentioned one of the chief statistician in the census office, a number of expert agents and chief clerks in the departments of the treasury and of agriculture in Washington; and the deputy commissioner of labor statistics and the sociology librarian in the State Library at Albany.
E. R. A. S. [Edwin R. A. Seligman]
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Source: Columbia University Quarterly, Vol. 2, June, 1900, pp. 284-287.