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Columbia Economists Suggested Reading Syllabus

Columbia. National accounting. Course outline and readings. Barger, 1963-64

 

Harold Barger was, at least up through 2003, one of the last (if not the last) economics professor to teach in the interdisciplinary core course for Columbia undergraduates, Contemporary Civilization. Similar to the University of Chicago where undergraduate and graduate teaching in economics were strictly segregated, Columbia University’s economics faculty (see Peter Kenen’s description below) was either teaching for the college or for the university. Harold Barger was one of the few exceptions to work both sides of that street. In addition to the official Columbia obituary that gives some sense of the man, I provide a transcription of his syllabus on national economic accounts in this post.

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Barger taught both undergrads and graduate students

Peter Kenen’s description of undergraduate economics education at Columbia at mid-century:

Unfortunately, the Economics Department at Columbia was different from most others there. It was divided sharply between those who taught graduate courses and those who taught undergraduates. There were exceptions. Harold Barger, who taught money and banking, also gave a graduate course on national-income accounting, and C. Lowell Harriss, who taught public finance, gave a graduate course on state and local taxation. But Columbia’s most prominent economists, Ragnar Nurkse, Carl Shoup, Arthur Burns and William Vickrey, to name only a few, did not teach undergraduate courses and did not encourage undergraduates to take their graduate courses. Furthermore, the undergraduate programme did not greatly emphasize econmic theory, because some of its members were overtly hostile to it. The senior seminar, conducted by Horace Taylor, was devoted mainly to the works of Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons and other institutionalists.

Source: Chapter 12, “Peter B. Kenen” in Exemplary Economists: North America , Vol. 1 edited by Roger Backhouse and Roger Middleton (Edward Elgar, 2000), p. 259.

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Harold Barger (1907-1989)
Columbia University Obituary

Harold Barger, former chairman of Columbia’s department of economics and the first director of the University’s Paris center, died Aug. 9 at his home in Kinderhook, N.Y., after a long illness. He was 82.

Barger taught at Columbia almost 40 years, beginning in 1937 as an instructor in economics. He became an assistant professor in 1943, associate professor in 1947 and professor in 1954. Chairman of the economics department from 1961 to 1964 and acting chairman from 1969 to 1970, he had been professor emeritus since his retirement in 1975.

Barger directed Columbia’s Paris campus, Reid Hall, for a year after it was acquired by the University in 1964. Located in the Montparnasse district of Paris, the center houses undergraduate programs of Columbia, Barnard and various other U.S. colleges and universities.

A faculty member of Columbia College from 1943 to 1975, Barger was assistant to the dean of the College from 1954 to 1959. From 1959 to 1964, he was a faculty adviser at the College.

“I remember Harold Barger most for his integrity and total devotion to the University, especially Columbia College,” said Columbia economics professor Donald Dewey. “He always looked out for the interests of students at the College.”

Albert Hart, Columbia professor emeritus of economics, said: “He had a very broad interest in the field of economics and his lectures were full of substance. He was very precise and knew how to organize material.”

Harold Barger was born Apr. 27, 1907, in London. He received the B.A. from Cambridge in 1930 and the Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 1937. He was a lecturer at the University of London from 1931 to 1936 and from 1938 to 1939.

A specialist in monetary policy and income and employment theory, Barger served as a consultant to the U.S. Bureau of the Census and Bureau of Mines. He conducted studies for the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1940 to 1954 and served in the Office of Strategic Services of the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945. From 1945 to 1946, he was an assistant division chief for the State Department.

Barger was the author of numerous articles and books on economics, including the textbook Money, Banking and Public Policy(1962). He coauthored his last book, College on Credit (1981), with his wife, Gwyneth.

Barger was married to the former Anne Macdonald Walls, who died in 1954. In 1955, he married Gwyneth Evans Kahn, who survives him. Other survivors include two nieces and a nephew.

A memorial service was held at Spencertown Academy in Spencertown, N.Y., on Aug. 26. In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center or the Chamber Music Series of Spencertown Academy.

Source: Columbia University Record. Vol. 15, No. 1 (8 September 1989), p. 6.

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ECONOMICS G4431x
Professor Barger
1963-1964

THE MEASUREMENT OF INCOME AND WEALTH

Students should possess the following books containing required readings (marked *):

Richard Ruggles, National Income Accounts and Income Analysis (2nd ed. 1956, $6.50)

Survey of Current Business, Supplement, “US Income and Output,” 1958 (Government Printing Office, $1.50).

The following books also contain required readings (marked *):

Colin Clark, National Income and Outlay

International Association for Research in Income and Wealth,Income and Wealth, Series I, VIII.

National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vols. II, VI, VIII, XII, XLV, XX.

A.C. Pigou, Economics of Welfare, 3rd (1929) or subsequent edition.

Richard Stone, Role of Measurement in Economics.

Simon Kuznets, Economic Change.

United Nations, National Income and its Distribution in Underdeveloped Countries (1951).

Milton Gilbert and I.B. Kravis, International Comparison of National Products (1954; reissued 1957 as Comparative National Products and Price Levels).

Alexander Eckstein, The National Income of Communist China.

Abram Bergson, The Real National Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928.

U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, “Comparisons of the U.S. and Soviet Economies,” Papers submitted by Panelists, Parts I and II, 1959 (Government Printing Office, $1.45).

The following books contain recommended readings:

John P. Powelson, Economic Accounting.

Harold Barger, Outlay and Income in the United States (NBER Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol IV).

James C. Bonbright, Valuation of Property, Vol. I.

Simon Kuznets, National Income and its Composition; National Income Since 1869.

Wassily Leontief, Structure of the American Economy.

National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vols. III, X, XVIII.

International Association for Research in Income and Wealth,Income and Wealth, Series II, III, IV.

Survey of Current Business, 1954 National Income Supplement.

 

  1. INCOME
    1. ELEMENTARY IDEAS: HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT: RELATION OF SOCIAL ACCOUNTING TO WELFARE
      1. *Ruggles, pp. 3-15
      2. *Clark, Chap. X
      3. *Pigou, Part I, Chaps. I, II
      4. Phyllis Deane in Economic Development and Cultural Change 1955, pp. 3-38
      5. Phyllis Deane, Economic History Rev. 1956, pp. 339-354; Apr. 1957, pp. 451-461
    2. FUNDAMENTALS OF ACCOUNTING
      1. *Ruggles, pp. 16-44
      2. Powelson, Ch. 1-8
    3. THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL ACCOUNTS
      1. *Ruggles, pp. 45-106
      2. *Stone, “Functions and Criteria” in International Association Series I, or Stone, Role of Measurement, pp. 38-60
      3. Powelson, Chaps. 9, 10, 15, 16
    4. GNP AND NATIONAL INCOME AS ACCOUNTING CONCEPTS
      1. *Ruggles, pp. 107-131
      2. *“U.S. Income and Output,” pp. 50-69; 114-116
      3. Powelson, Chs. 17-20
      4. Copeland in Studies, Vol. XX, pp. 19-111
    5. RELATION OF NATIONAL INCOME ACCOUNTING TO INPUT-OUTPUT AND MONEY FLOW ANALYSIS
      1. *Ruggles, pp. 187-210
      2. Studies, Vol. XVIII, especially pp. 137-182, 253-320
      3. Leontief, Structure of the American Economy
    6. THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING INCOME
      1. *Pigou, Part I, Chs. III, IV
      2. *Haberler and Hagen in Studies, Vol. VIII, pp. 3-31
      3. *Hance, in Studies, Vol. VI, pp. 238-270
      4. Kuznets, “Government Product and National Income” in International Association, Series I
      5. Kuznets, National Income and its Composition, Ch. I
      6. 1954 National Income Supplement, pp. 40-60
    7. STATISTICAL MEASUREMENTS
      1. *Ruggles, pp. 158-186
      2. *“U.S. Income and Output,” pp. 70-105
      3. Goldsmith in Studies, Vol. III, pp. 220-244
      4. Kuznets, National Product since 1869, Parts I and II
        ______, National Income and its Composition, Chs. 3, 12
      5. 1954 National Income Supplement, pp. 61-152
      6. Barger, Ch. III and pp. 302-04
    8. THE DEFLATION PROBLEM AND INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS
      1. *Ruggles, pp. 131-143
      2. *Pigou, Part I, Chs. V-VII
      3. *Gilbert and Kravis, pp. 13-33, 61-95
    9. NATIONAL INCOME MEASUREMENTS IN UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES
      1. *Kuznets, Economic Change, pp. 145-191, 216-252
      2. *United Nations, Chs. I and II
      3. *Kravis in Studies, Vol. XX, pp. 349-400
      4. *Eckstein, pp. 1-90
      5. Rao in International Association, Series III
    10. NATIONAL INCOME IN SOVIET RUSSIA
      1. *Bergson, pp. 1-298
      2. *Joint Economic Committee, Part I (Campbell, Nutter, Turgeon) and Part II (Bornstein, Boddy)
  1. WEALTH
    1. THE ESTIMATION OF NATIONAL WEALTH
      1. *Kuznets in Studies, Vol. II, pp. 3-82
      2. *Goldsmith and Hart in Studies, Vol. XII, pp. 23-186
      3. *Goldsmith in Studies, Vol. XIV, pp. 5-73
      4. Goldsmith in International Association, Series II and IV
      5. International Association, Series VIII, pp. 1-59
      6. Bonbright, Vol. I, Chs. I-XII
      7. Kuznets, National Income since 1869, pp. 185-234

Source: Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library. William Vickrey Papers, Box 35, Folder “Columbia Correspondence, 1947-1969”.

Image Source: Harold Barger from J. W. Smit “Wisdom, Training and Contemporary Civilization”, Columbia College Today (November 2003).

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Columbia Economist Market Economists Harvard

Columbia. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus, Clement Lowell Harriss, 1940.

 

In this post we have a nice pair of bookends for the career of Columbia economics Ph.D. (1940) and later Columbia professor, C. Lowell Harriss:  a letter from 1946 recommending his appointment to an assistant professorship and a memorial webpage from the Columbia economics department.

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Columbia University
in the City of New York

Faculty of Political Science

November 26, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
213 Low Memorial Library

Dear Mr. President:

On recommendation of the College Committee appointed in accordance with your letter of October 3d and with the approval of the Committee on Instruction of Columbia College, the Department of Economics requests the promotion of C. Lowell Harriss from instructor to assistant professor, effective January 1, 1947.

The Department considers that this promotion would be a well earned recognition of ability and service. The reasons set forth in the enclosed letter from Professor Horace Taylor, chairman of the College Committee, in our judgment amply justify our request that this action be taken at an exceptional time.

Dr. Harriss’ salary as instructor is $3,300 for the year. We recommend that his salary as assistant professor should be at the rate of $3,600. Funds for the additional $2150 required on the 1946-47 budget are available in the unexpended salary of Carl T. Schmidt.

Respectfully yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive officer, Department of Economics

*  *  *  *  *  *

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Columbia University
in the City of New York

Faculty of Political Science

November 26, 1946

Professor Carter Goodrich
Fayerweather Hall
Columbia University

Dear Professor Goodrich:

The newly constituted Committee on Economics Instruction in Columbia College held its first meeting on October 28. I have reported separately the formal action taken at this meeting with regard to the nomination of a Departmental Representative.

Its most urgent matter of regular business in the view of the Committee is its unanimous recommendation that Dr. C. Lowell Harriss, instructor in Economics, be promoted to Assistant Professor of Economics. It is the opinion of the Committee that Dr. Harriss has reached a maturity and a competency in this field that cause him to be considerably underranked in his present position. The Committee not only recommends promotion for Dr. Harriss, but strongly urges that the promotion be made immediately and to take effect January 1, 1947. This recommendation is made both because it would provide immediate recognition to a man who, in the Committee’s judgment, thoroughly deserves it, and also because we believe that action of this kind would have distinct morale value, both for Dr. Harriss, and for other members of the College staff who feel as we do about Dr. Harriss as a teacher, a scholar, and a person.

Dr. Harriss is thirty-four years old. He joined this Department as an instructor in economics in 1938. He is a man of such broad intellectual background and training that he has been extraordinarily well qualified for work in the course in Contemporary Civilization, and has made substantial contributions to the planning and teaching of this difficult course. He also has contributed materially to the Departmental work in the College, and one of our plans for the next academic year is that Dr. Harriss will offer an undergraduate course in his speciality [sic], which is Public Finance. During the current year, he is giving a course in this field designed for University Undergraduates. If Dr. Harriss receives the promotion that is recommended, it is planned that he will be a member of the Faculty of Columbia College and also of the Faculty of the new School for General Studies. One of the reasons that we strongly believe that we should, in the interests of the University, increase the number of young men of professorial rank is that the College Faculty will be expected to provide members to the Faculty of the School for General Studies.

Dr. Harriss’s intellectual attainments are extraordinarily high. He received the B.S. degree at Harvard Summa Cum Laudein 1934, having majored in history. My impression is that the degree with highest distinction is awarded to a major student in a particular department only once in several years at Harvard or, at least, it averages out about this way. On graduating from Harvard, Dr. Harriss was awarded the highest scholarship (one for travel in Europe) that is given to a graduate of Harvard College. He then became a Council for Research in the Social Sciences Fellow in economics and pursued graduate studies at both Chicago and Columbia. He was awarded our Ph.D. in 1940. As a graduate student, he won the high opinion of his professors. His dissertation on “Gift Taxation in the United States” was written under the direction of Dr. Haig. This dissertation was of such excellence that it immediately established Dr. Harriss as an authority on this subject. This was pointedly demonstrated when he was made head of the Gift Tax Section in the Division of Research of the United States Treasury Department. He held this post from November 1941, until April, 1943. He then entered the Army and rather rapidly rose to the rank of Captain. His distinction as a student was continued in the fact that he was the first ranking man in his class in Officers Candidate School. During his service in the Army, he was in charge of important work connected with procurement for the Army Air Forces, and was stationed at Air Force Headquarters, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio. For his work there, he received the Army Commendation Award. He returned to his work with us at the beginning of the Spring Term.

Last summer Dr. Harriss received a firm offer of an Associate Professorship at Syracuse University at a salary of $4,000. He also received inquiries which appear to anticipate firm offers from both Rice Institute and the University of Indiana. Both of these institutions talked with him in terms of an Associate Professorship at a salary of about $4,000. Dr. Harriss declined to consider the inquiries and turned down the offer made by Syracuse. I believe that I am not exaggerating when I say that there is not a young man in this country of greater competence or promise in the field of public finance than Dr. Harriss, and I believe that Professors Haig and Shoup rate him at about the same level.

During his time with us and the period that he was in the Army, Dr. Harriss has outgrown his academic rank. Our Committee believes that his appointment in the fashion we have recommended will be in the long-run interest of education and scholarship in Columbia College and in the University at large.

Sincerely yours,

[signed]
Horace Taylor

HT:mdl

Source:Columbia University Archives. Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Central Files 1890-, Box 406, Folder “Goodrich, Carter 1/4”.

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C. Lowell Harriss (1912-2009)
In Memoriam

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATOR, ECONOMIST AND ADVOCATE OF LAND TAX REFORM DIES

C. Lowell Harriss, an economist whose groundbreaking theories on land tax reform led to a widening of public spaces and improved quality of life in domestic and international urban and rural areas, died on December 14, 2009 at his home in Bronxville, N.Y. He was 97.

He died from natural causes.

An author of 16 books on economics and hundreds of articles, Professor Harriss was one of the last living economists to experience the Depression. He was known for his seminal work on taxation of land, property tax, finance reform, land values and planning land use.

He was a professor emeritus of economics at Columbia University, where he taught for 43 years, from 1938 to 1981. He also taught at Stanford University, UC-Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, The Wharton School, the New School for Social Research and Pace University. He earned Fulbright professorships from the Netherlands School of Economics (now Erasmus University), Cambridge University, and the University of Strasbourg, France.

His professional interests beyond education were extensive, including: Executive Director of The Academy of Political Science; President, National Tax Association-Tax Institute of America; Vice President, International Institute of Public Finance; Chairman, Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, Inc.; Trustee, American Institute for Economic Research; Advisory Member, American Enterprise Institute; Academic Advisor, Center for the Study of the Presidency; and Advisor, Thomas Jefferson Research Center. He was a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and a board member of the American Institute of Economic Research in Cambridge, both institutions that serve as leading resources for policy makers and practitioners including the use, regulation and taxation of land.

He advised state, federal and foreign governments on tax policy including the U.S. Department of Treasury; the City of New York; New York State; the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; the Federal District of Venezuela; the Ministry of Finance, Republic of China; the United Nations; and the Agency of International Development of the U.S. Department of State.

In addition to his academic and professional pursuits and achievements, Professor Harriss was well known for his great respect of the role that humor has in making daily life enjoyable and more civilized. He often said that “a smile costs nothing.” He was known for his frequent compilations of cartoons, which he distributed in his mailings to colleagues and friends. As he said, “they get people’s attention”.

Clement Lowell Harriss was born Aug. 2, 1912, in Fairbury, Nebraska. He attended Harvard College and graduated summa cum laude in 1934. Upon graduation, he received a Sheldon Fellowship which enabled him to travel for 13 months throughout Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and Northern Africa, before arriving in Berlin the day Hitler assumed the presidency. This experience was the beginning of a lifetime of travel that would take him around the world nine times and stimulate his academic and personal curiosity and inquiry.

Professor Harriss met and married Agnes Bennett Murphy in 1936. While pursuing graduate studies at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, he began his teaching career in 1938 at and received his Ph.D. in 1940 from Columbia University.

Professor Harriss served as an officer in the Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946, working on aircraft and manpower procurement, later on the economic problems of the shift of fighting to the Pacific, and finally, on the problems of economic demobilization and the postwar aircraft industry.

He is the namesake of the C. Lowell Harriss Scholarship at Columbia College, the C. Lowell Harriss Chair of Economics at Columbia University, and the Professor C. Lowell Harriss Scholarship at the School of General Studies at Columbia University. In 1996 he accepted the Nobel Prize in Economics on behalf of long-time Columbia colleague William Vickrey, who had died shortly before the ceremony.

He is survived by his sister, Marion Engelhart, of Gross Pointe, Michigan, his four children, L. Gordon Harriss, of Bronxville, New York; Patricia Harriss, of Bronxville, New York, Martha Harriss, of New York, and Brian Harriss, of Greenwich, Connecticut, five grandchildren, and by his two daughters in law, Elizabeth Harriss, Bronxville, New York, and Lucinda Harriss, Greenwich, Connecticut. His wife died in 1992.

Source:  Columbia University. Department of Economics. Webpage: In Memoriam; C. Lowell Harriss (1912-2009).

 

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In Memoriam: from Columbia College Today

C. Lowell Harriss ’40 GSAS, professor emeritus of economics, died on December 14, 2009, at his home in Bronxville, N.Y. He was 97.

Born in Fairbury, Neb., on August 2, 1912, Harriss graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1934. Upon graduation, he received a Sheldon Fellowship, which enabled him to travel for 13 months throughout Europe, including Berlin and the Balkans, as well as Turkey and Northern Africa. This trip was the beginning of a lifetime of travel that would take him around the world nine times.

Harriss served as an officer in the Army Air Corps from 1943–46, working on aircraft and manpower procurement, on the economic problems of the shift of fighting to the Pacific, and finally on the problems of economic demobilization and the postwar aircraft industry. He began teaching at Columbia in 1938 while pursuing a Ph.D. in economics at GSAS and remained at Columbia until retiring from teaching in 1981.

University Trustee Mark E. Kingdon endowed, in 1998, the C. Lowell Harriss Professorship of Economics in honor of “my teacher, mentor and friend.”

“I took Professor Harriss’ public finance course in the late 1960s, when it was not cool to be a conservative, especially at Columbia,” said Kingdon. “I remember Professor Harriss warning us about the extraordinary power of the government: ‘Nothing can be as cruel as the government.’

“During the 1970 student strike, I learned later, a classmate was picketing a building that the professor wanted to enter. ‘You can’t go in,’ my friend declared. ‘Why not?’ Professor Harriss asked. ‘Because then you would be a scab.’ In response, Professor Harriss brushed by and entered the building while declaring, ‘A scab is part of the natural healing process.’

“Teachers in the department on both the left and right loved the man. He was soft-spoken, tolerant, smart, non-dogmatic but firm in his beliefs. His classroom style was brusque, informative and clear. He committed many random acts of kindness, such as writing a complimentary note about me to my father, and helped students with letters of recommendation to his many friends that led to jobs or entry into grad school.

“I watched him age gracefully almost to the very end, vigorous in mind, body and spirit, an inspiration to us all. I miss him very much.”

Harriss also taught at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, The Wharton School, the New School for Social Research and Pace. He earned Fulbright professorships from the Netherlands School of Economics (now Erasmus University), Cambridge and the University of Strasbourg, France.

One of the last living economists to have experienced the Depression, Harriss authored 16 books on economics and hundreds of articles. He was known for his seminal work on taxation of land, property tax, finance reform, land values and planning land use.

Harriss also had advised state, federal and foreign governments on tax policy including the Depart- ment of Treasury; the City of New York; New York State; the Common- wealth of Puerto Rico; the Federal District of Venezuela; the Ministry of Finance, Republic of China; the United Nations; and the Agency of International Development of the U.S. Department of State.

Harriss met and married Agnes Bennett Murphy in 1936. She predeceased him in 1992. Harriss is survived by his children, L. Gordon ’68, Patricia, Martha and Brian; five grandchildren; and sister, Marion Engelhart.

Source: In Memoriam. Columbia College Today, March/April 2010.

Image Source:  In Memoriam. Columbia College Today, March/April 2010.

 

 

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Columbia Economists

Columbia. Economics department in WWII. Excerpt from letter to President Butler, Nov. 1942

 

There is a lot of information packed into the annual budget requests submitted by an economics department. Below I have limited the excerpt from the November 30, 1942 budget submission by the head of the economics department to Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler to a brief introduction that provides an executive summary of the state of staffing and enrollment one year into the Second World War for the U.S. 

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Excerpt from R. M. Haig’s Budgetary Requests for 1943-44

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

File: R. M. Haig
November 30, 1942

President Nicholas Murray Butler
Columbia University

My dear Mr. President:

[…]

Introductory

Before turning to the detailed proposals, it may be helpful to outline certain facts regarding the general situation we face.

  1. The war has made heavy inroads on both our staff and our students. Two ([James W.] Angell and [Arthur R.] Burns) of our ten regular professor offering graduate instruction are in Washington on war service and most of those who remain are devoting a substantial portion of their time to the war effort. The staff of Columbia College has been even more heavily hit. Of the men giving instruction in the college in 1940-1941, [Carl Theodore] Schmidt and [Charles Ashley] Wright are now army officers, [Hubert Frank] Havlik, [Clement Lowell] Harriss, [Walt Whitman] Rostow and [Donald William] O’Connell are in war work in Washington, and [Robert] Valeur is devoting most of his time to aiding the Free French. However, we have been exceedingly fortunate in the substitutes we have been able to secure and (especially as compared with other institutions) we present a strong front in spite of our losses.
  2. It was apparent a year ago that the demand from Washington for persons with graduate training would sweep large numbers of our students from their classrooms before the completion of their courses. Requisitions for economists continue to arrive in almost every mail although we have long since placed in positions everyone on our eligible lists. Yet, as we anticipated last year, our body of graduate students still remains at a figure that makes it desirable and necessary to offer substantially all of our fundamental courses. The decline in the number of our students since our peak year (1938-1939, when 340 were registered) has been very great. However, we still are the largest graduate department of economics in the country by a wide margin. I am told that at Harvard, where there were 115 students last year, only 33 are in attendance this semester, and that at Chicago a similar loss has been suffered. In my letter dated December 30, 1941, it was suggested that we might have as many as 150 graduate students registered in our department this year. The latest count shows 130, with a fair prospect that the figure of 150 will be reached in the Spring session. A poll of the staff shows that, in the opinion of some, the number will be fully as large next year and the consensus is that the number will not be less than 100. Moreover all agree that with the coming of peace we shall be faced with an influx of students which may easily swamp the facilities of our graduate staff. For Columbia College, where this year the enrollment has been large, the outlook for economics in 1942-1943 is very obscure. At this time, it appears probable that the regular offering of courses, at least in skeleton form, will be required to serve a small number of regular students. Fortunately the commitments of the University to individuals on the College staff are such that the situation is highly flexible and can be accommodated with relative ease to whatever special program may be adopted for the undergraduates. In this budget, request is made for appropriations in blank for several instructorships, to be utilized only in case the need for them develops as plans for the college become more definite.
  3. Because of retirements, actual or more or less immediately impending, the department is faced with a serious problem of wise replacement of staff in its graduate division, if we are to maintain in the future the position of eminence we have held in the past. In view of this problem, it has seemed wise to make a virtue of our necessities and to utilize the need for temporary replacements for professors absent on leave during the emergency as an opportunity to invite as visiting professors certain men whom we rate high in the list of possible future staff members. This year we have three such men on the campus ([Oskar] Lange, Arthur F. Burns and [Clarence Arthur] Kulp). We believe that it will be wise to continue this policy of exploration and experimentation next year with funds released from the appropriations for the salaries of [James W.] Angell and Arthur R. Burns, in case the war continues and they do not return to their regular posts.
  4. As an incident to the policy referred to in the preceding paragraph, we have been able this year to offer a remarkably strong series of courses in the field of economic theory. However, we are this year relatively weak in economic history, socialism and industrial organization, offering no courses at all in the last-named subject. The chief embarrassment experienced this year by the unsettled staff situation has been in connection with the supervision of student research. Some of our students who have dissertations in progress have been seriously inconvenienced by the absence of the professors under whom they initiated their studies.

[…]

Source: Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890-. Box 386, Folder “Haig, Robert Murray 7/1942—1/1943”.