As the following documents show, by 1961 the M.I.T. administration fully appreciated the development of its department of economics from a humble source of curricular enrichment for engineers and natural scientists to a powerhouse of modern economic analysis that was a respected player in the academic major league. Indeed the hope was for political science, psychology, and linguistics to follow suit.
_________________________
Other relevant M.I.T. artifacts
from this time
Minutes of the Economics Department Visiting committee, 1958
The Graduate Program in Economics, 1961 brochure
_________________________
REPORT OF THE VISITING COMMITTEE 1960-61
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
In a well-attended, one-day meeting on April 27, 1961, the Visiting Committee of the Department of Economics and Social Science met with a representative group of the senior faculty of the department to discuss the progress of its teaching and research programs. Since the department embraces a number of distinct fields, key faculty members in those fields reported separately on their activities, plans, and problems. A summary of those reports is attached [Perhaps to be found elsewhere in the archives.], with an appended list of persons attending the meeting.
The Committee was favorably impressed by the past progress and the future prospects of the Social Sciences at M.I.T. The following highlights may be singled out for the consideration of the Corporation and the administrative officers:
- The older Ph.D. program in Economics and the newer one in Political Science are both thriving. Fellowships are a continuing need at the graduate level, especially in fields such as these in which there are limited opportunities for teaching or research assistantships in the first two years. Economics has attracted many students with outside fellowships for their first year, and Political Science has a Carnegie Foundation grant which provides support for graduate students in the area of political development. This leaves an unfilled need for Economics fellowships in the second year and for Political Science fellowships in areas not covered by the Carnegie grant.
- Now that the area of political development is as strong as it is, the Political Science Section’s next target is a comparable strength in the areas of government, science, and defense policy. This is an especially appropriate field for the Institute to cultivate, and it deserves support.
- The undergraduate “double majors” in a combination of Economics or Political Science with a field of Science or Engineering are holding their own, but the department feels considerable difficulty in dramatizing the attractions of these courses to entering undergraduates — in contrast to its outstanding success in attracting graduate students.
- An excellent start has been made toward the introduction of a new Ph.D. program in Psychology. The Institute already has considerable strength not only in that field but also in certain adjacent and supporting fields such as Biology, Mathematics, Linguistics, Communications, and Industrial Management. The next few years will be critical ones for this new graduate program.
- When the Ph.D. program in Psychology is solidly established, consideration should be given toward adding the option of Psychology as an undergraduate major within the framework of Course XIV.
- The Industrial Relations Section has been an active and constructive part of the department’s overall effort. We note with approval that preliminary steps have been taken to protect the Industrial Relations Fund against excessive drain in support of other departmental activities.
- We learn with interest that the department has been experimenting with lectures in the introductory Economics course, as a means of exposing more beginning students to senior faculty. We recommend that other teaching aids also be considered, such as video-recorded lectures and demonstrations.
- Since library facilities are so very important in the Social Sciences, continuing and enhanced support is recommended in this area.
The foregoing recommendations should be interpreted as tentative rather than definitive; for, in the nature of the case, your Committee’s visit consisted of a friendly hearing of the department’s point of view rather than a searching audit of its performance. At the same time, we should like to express our appreciation for the cooperation shown us by Dean Burchard, Professor Bishop, and the other department members who met with us.
Respectfully submitted,
James M. Barker
David F. Cavers
Jasper E. Crane
Davis R. Dewey
George P. Edmonds
Robert L. Moore
Willard L. Thorp
Teddy F. Walkowicz
Theodore V. Houser, Chairman
Source: M.I.T. Libraries. MIT. Corporation Visiting Committee Records, AC426. Folder: “Visiting Committees Economics 1960-1969”. Item description
_________________________
From the Annual Report of the President of M.I.T. for 1960-61
The Social Sciences
In the light of the concerns of the Centennial for the larger influences of science upon society, I think it appropriate to review this year the state of the social sciences at the Institute. That we should have become occupied with these areas was inevitable, and the Institute has a clear obligation to cultivate especially those that relate most directly to modern developments in engineering, science, and mathematics. M.I.T. has recognized this responsibility and has responded with strong and growing support to work in the social sciences in the School of Humanities and Social Science and elsewhere. These activities are giving to the Institute an entirely new dimension that few not associated intimately with M.I.T. yet appreciate.
It is a simple truth that the interests of the great physical and social sciences were never more interwoven than today. The overriding practical problems of our time — defense; disarmament; the economics of change; the politics of peace; the relationships among industry, science, and government — require joint technical and social analysis. The very progress of science is influenced by the broader social context, and the advances of engineering affect all our human institutions.
In our decision to encourage the growth of certain key social sciences at M.I.T., we determined not only to build on strength, but also to exploit particularly those that have special relevance to our central concerns with science and engineering. We hope to create more points of contact between the social and physical sciences and to foster more fruitful collaboration between them. In this way, in spite of enormous pressures for growth, we can delimit the domain of our interests and the way in which we allocate our resources to them.
We have given special attention to those fields in which mathematics and statistical techniques are playing an increasingly important role. This is, of course, completely compatible with our M.I.T. style, with our desire to be quantitative, the analytical, the mathematical. But by no means are we seeking to build our social sciences in the image of the physical. We recognize full well the many differences in set and attitude that distinguish them. An exaggerated insistence on emphases that are too narrow or criteria that are too rigid will only defeat our long-range objective of making the social sciences an integral part of the modern scientific university. Each field must be free to develop in its own way, to follow with complete freedom its own professional instincts.
From this point of view, the flowering of the social sciences at M.I.T. represents a new experience for us. Accustomed as we are to the demonstrable factual data of the physical sciences, we must accept the larger subjective element of judgment that enters into the social sciences in their present state. Since developments in many of these areas are open to a variety of interpretations, we must foster, within the limits of our aims and resources, a range of views and interests. The ultimate safeguard, however, lies not in seeking an impossible balance among modes of thought, but in recruiting a faculty of the highest intellectual power and integrity. This we have done.
In my report of a year ago I touched on a faculty survey of the social sciences which gave highest priority for development to fields of economics and economic history, political science, and psychology. I want now to comment briefly on the current status of these fields at the Institute and to examine in passing our commitments and our hopes in these areas.
ECONOMICS
The oldest social science at M.I.T., economics is still by a sizable margin the largest. The teaching of economics goes back to 1881 and Francis Amasa Walker. General Walker, the Institute’s third president and one of its great builders, was an authority on political economy — as economics was then called — and his understanding of the processes in American industrial development notably influenced his views on the education of engineers. He gave an outstanding lecture course on political economy and was the author of a distinguished text in the field. He also brought other economists to the Institute.
Yet, until well into the modern era of M.I.T., economics remained largely a service department for the School of Engineering. Only since World War II has the department matured and assumed a truly professional character. Today it is universally conceded to be among the most distinguished. Indeed, by any of the usual measures — the stature of its teachers, the quality of its research, the achievements of its graduates — it ranks in the small handful of leaders. This year the president of the American Economic Association and the presidents-elect of the Econometric Society and of the Industrial Relations Research Association are members of this department. This year, too, M.I.T. was selected as first choice by more Woodrow Wilson Fellows in economics — eighteen out of eighty — than any other school in the country. The strengths which have won this kind of recognition within the profession are substantial indeed. They were achieved, essentially, by encouraging Economics at M.I.T. to chart its own professional course; by the development of a distinguished graduate curriculum and of a major research program; and by insistence on the same standards of excellence we demand of our scientific and engineering departments. As a consequence, we have accomplished in economics the same kind of comprehensive renovation of purpose that Karl Compton undertook at an earlier date for the School of Science.
Economics at M.I.T. is also an important resource for other areas of teaching and research, and for the School of Industrial Management in particular. Management education at M.I.T. grew out of our teaching in economics, and today the teaching and research of the Department and the School reinforce one another more strongly than ever. Much of the research of the Department bears directly on the interests of the School — research on the economics of particular technologies; on the problems of measurement of productivity and output; on the contribution of technical progress to economic growth; on the origin and growth of new enterprises. Through this close relationship between the Department and the School, we also enjoy a fruitful interchange of theoretical and practical points of view.
The history and current role of economics at M.I.T. is the model for our development of other social sciences. We have now established sections of political science and of psychology within the Department of Economics and Social Science. Both are fields in which student and faculty interest is keen and in which we have unusual opportunities to make important contributions.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Because of the interweaving of technology with all the affairs of the modern world, and especially with those of government, we have set high priority on the development of political science. It is an area in which we have been moving rapidly ahead. This June we awarded our first Ph.D. degrees in this field, and there are now about thirty doctoral candidates within the Section. In addition, some five hundred undergraduates take elective courses in political science each year.
The Section now offers courses in six fields of political science, all of which are related to other interests of the Institute: international relations and foreign policy, political communication, defense policy, government and science, political and economic development, and political theory and comparative politics. Besides providing opportunities for combining work in political science with a scientific or engineering field, the faculty of the Section maintain close ties with their colleagues in economics, psychology, industrial management, and city and regional planning.
In the past two years, we have developed superlative strength in the field of comparative politics of developing areas, and through the association of the Section with the Center for International Studies we probably have as strong a faculty as is to be found anywhere in the politics of development. In support of this work, the Institute received two notable gifts this year. One, the donation of $500,000 from Dr. Arthur W. Sloan and Dr. Ruth C. Sloan of Washington, D.C., establishes a professorship in political science with emphasis on African studies. Not only does this gift provide an important new endowed professorship, but it also recognizes in a most dramatic way the growing stature of political science at the Institute.
The second grant is one of $475,000 from the Carnegie Corporation for research in training on the politics of transitional societies. The grant will make possible expansion of our research on the problems of nation-building in transition countries such as the newly emerged African and Asian nations. It, too, gives substantial recognition to the quality of our program. The Carnegie grant, among other benefits, establishes graduate fellowships both for course work at M.I.T. and for field work towards the doctoral thesis. We are enthusiastic about the values to be derived from this aspect of the grant which will permit us to send our students overseas for on-the-spot research in developing areas.
We have enjoyed magnificent opportunities for field studies in other areas of our political science activities through the generous support of the Maurice and Laura Falk Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. The Ford Foundation has also underwritten much of our work on government and science, and the Rockefeller Foundation this year supported a new seminar on arms control. This seminar brought together some thirty individuals in the Cambridge academic community with strong interests in both the technological and political aspects of this subject. We very much hope that this may prove to be the beginning of a substantial new research program on defense policy.
This brief sampling of our progress in political science is intended only to suggest the vitality of this field at the Institute. It has grown quickly, but without overstretching itself. It has set high standards in research, and it has developed both its undergraduate and graduate courses in a most creative and constructive spirit. This new venture for M.I.T., in sum, has met with outstanding success.
PSYCHOLOGY
The example of political science has encouraged us to press forward even more vigorously with our plans to establish a psychology section within the Department of Economics and Social Science. The Institute already has great strength in psychology, both within the Department and elsewhere; and we have made marked progress this year in planning for a graduate program. This effort is being led by Professor Hans-Lukas Teuber, whose appointment I reported last year and who has now moved his research projects in physiological psychology from New York to Cambridge. Professor Teuber has brought with him a number of research associates and four postdoctoral fellows. In addition, we hope to make two additional faculty appointments in psychology soon.
To provide space for the new Section, the Institute has acquired the Central Scientific Company building at the corner of Amherst and Ames Streets. All three floors of this structure, which is located adjacent to our main academic group, will be devoted to an expansion of our teaching and research in psychology. When the necessary renovations are completed during the coming year, the building will be equipped with undergraduate and graduate laboratories, seminar rooms, animal quarters, and testing, observation, and office facilities.
The work of the Psychology Section will encompass three general areas: social and developmental; experimental; and physiological and comparative psychology. Our teaching in all three areas will put special emphasis on the experimental and the mathematical. And in our research we hope to create new opportunities for interdisciplinary cooperation. This hope reflects the fact that psychology, especially in its quantitative aspects, is already intimately associated with many areas of Institute activity.
The relations of our experimental group with other M.I.T. activities, for example, have already had an important influence on the development of experimental psychology in this country. Our collaborative efforts include studies in such fields as communication and coding theory, automatic pattern recognition, signal detection theory, computer simulation of intelligent behavior, and others. There are many psychologists at the Institute concentrating on problems of this kind, and there are more at Lincoln Laboratory who are also concerned with problems of perception and observation and man-machine interactions.
The new Section’s work in physiological and comparative psychology will have similar opportunities for collaboration with research in progress in the Department of Biology and in the Center for the Communication Sciences, where investigations in communication biophysics are focused on the principles of organization of the central nervous system and on biophysical information handling. There are also a number of psychologists in the School of Industrial Management, and it is to be hoped that the work of the Section in social and developmental psychology will develop complementary ties with this management group. The latter is working on problems of morale and motivation, of executive leadership, and of creativity in the industrial setting; while the former is primarily concerned with the process of socialization.
Even a cursory review of the sites of interest in psychology at M.I.T. is impressive. The discipline has prospered on this campus, even though we have taken few systematic steps in the past to promote its growth. It has insisted upon recognition, really, and we are now committed to a sound program of development. No one here doubts the wisdom of this decision. The chief problem, indeed, will be to achieve a sense of professional unity among our psychologists without weakening those productive interdisciplinary ties that have given M.I.T. psychology a stamp and style that is all but unique.
LINGUISTICS
The decision was also made this year to offer a program leading to the Ph.D. in linguistics beginning in the fall of 1961, and we are in the process of establishing appropriate new sequences of work in linguistics for both undergraduate and graduate students. This work will be directed by the Department of Modern Languages, which has been carrying out important basic research in linguistics for a number of years. It is significant that among the first students we have accepted for this graduate program are majors in mathematics and physics as well as in linguistics.
Our concern with linguistics actually derives from the efforts of Professors Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon in their pioneering work on the mathematical theory of communication. The study of the logical relationships within languages employs mathematical techniques comparable to those used in the general area of information theory. Moreover, recent developments in computer design, switching theory, and other similar areas are of first importance in the field of applied linguistics and in linguistic analysis.
It is not surprising, therefore, that much of our research in linguistics has taken place in the Center for the Communication Sciences, where linguists work in close association with mathematicians, electrical engineers, and physicists as well as with biologists and psychologists. This cooperative research has been carried forward in both theoretical and applied linguistics. We have a central concern with the structure and logic of language. We have also undertaken a number of promising applied projects, including work on mechanical translation and on machine perception and synthesis of human speech. These examples are typical of the kind of research through which M.I.T. has gained an international reputation in linguistics. Now, with our new doctoral program, the prospects for the rapid further development of this field at the Institute are exceedingly bright.
Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Office of the President. President’s Report for the academic year ending July 1, 1961, pp.11-21.
Image Source: MIT Museum Website.