The memo of this posting was written by the head of the Chicago department of economics, Leon Carroll Marshall. I have chosen this to begin a category “Fields”. The groups named below were tasked with preparing bibliographies, not for use in the survey courses, but to make explicit the level of preparation expected of students in those courses. Cox and Mints by the following summer apparently established “Money and banking” as a field distinct from business finance (a memo in the same folder dated August 9, 1927). It is also interesting to note that Marshall seems to have thought it important to pair economics and business in as many fields as he could.
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November 30, 1926
Memorandum from L. C. Marshall to All Persons Mentioned Herein:
The problem attacked in this memorandum is that of carrying through effectively our arrangements with respect to our advanced general survey courses—courses that in the past we have sometimes referred to as “Introduction to the Graduate Study of X,” although we are not now following this terminology.
The following background facts will need to be kept in mind:
- We are to have introductory point of view courses designed to give an organic view of the Economic Order. These courses are numbered 102, 103, 104.
- Our next range of courses is designed primarily to deal with method. This range includes: 1. Economic History; 2. Statistics; 3. Accounting; 4. Intermediate Theory.
- The foregoing seven courses are the only courses for which we assume responsibility as far as the ordinary [Arts and Literature] undergraduate is concerned. It may well be that from time to time some member of the staff will be interested in giving for undergraduates a course on some live problem of the day, but this is an exceptional matter and not a matter of our standard arrangement.
- Our best undergraduates may move on to the type of courses referred to above in the first paragraph, such as courses 330, 340, 335, 345, etc. In general the prerequisites for admission to these courses (as far a undergraduates are concerned) would be a certain number of majors in our work plus 27 majors with an average of B. Under the regulations which the Graduate Faculty has laid down, students who have less than 27 majors could not be admitted to these courses except with the consent of the group and Dean Laing.
It is highly essential that our work in these advanced survey courses such as 330, 340, 335, 345, etc. shall:
- Really assume the method courses mentioned above: really be conducted at a level which assumes that the student possesses certain techniques.
- Really assume an adequate background of subject-matter content.
Will the person whose name is underscored in each group undertake (as promptly as reasonably may be) the responsibility of conducting conferences designed
- To lead to explicit definite arrangements looking toward the actual utilization of the earlier method courses in these advance survey courses
- To prepare a bibliography that can be mimeographed and placed in each student’s hands who enters one of these advanced survey courses. This bibliography is not to be a bibliography of the course (that is a separate matter) but a bibliography of what is assumed by way of preparation for the course. Whether a somewhat different bibliography should be made for the Economics course and the Business course in a given field is left for each group to discuss. Personally I hope that it will be a single bibliography for the two. Mr. Palyi suggests the desirability of a bibliographical article (worthy of publication) for each field. This seems to me an admirable suggestion—one difficult to resist.
Will each leader of the group referred to below please put the outcome of your discussion in writing and send to the undersigned? It is to be hoped that you will find other matters to report upon in addition to the foregoing.
GROUPS
- The Financial System and Financial Administration
Meech, Mints, Cox, Palyi
- Labor and Personnel Administration
Douglas, Millis, Stone, Kornhauser
- The Market and the Administration of Marketing
Palmer, Duddy, Barnes, Dinsmore
- Risk and Its Administration
Nerlove, Cox, Millis, Mints
- Transportation, Communication and Traffic Administration
Sorrell, Wright, Duddy, Douglas
- Government Finance
Viner, Millis, Douglas, Stone
- Population and the Standard of Living
Kyrk, Douglas, Viner
- Resources, Technology and the Administration of Production
Mitchell, Daines, McKinsey
The following fields are not included in this memorandum either because of specific course prerequisites or because of obvious difficulties in the case:
- Economic Theory and Principles of Administration
- Statistics and Accounting
- Economic History and Historical Method
- Social Direction and Control of Economic Activity.
Source: University of Chicago Archives. Department of Economics, Records. Box 22, Folder 6.
Image Source: Leon Carroll Marshall. University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-04114, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.