Tag: Mills

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Columbia Economists

Columbia. Excerpt from Dean’s Report dealing with faculty of political science. 1930-1931

The previous post was a backward look from October 1930 at the first fifty-years of Columbia’s Faculty of Political Science (home of its graduate economics department). The following excerpts from the annual report of the Dean of the Faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, and Pure Science give us a snapshot of the Faculty of Political Science for the year 1930-31.

__________________________

FACULTIES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND PURE SCIENCE

REPORT OF THE DEAN
FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1931

To the President of the University

Sir:

As Dean of the Faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, and Pure Science, I submit the following report for the academic year ending June 30, 1931.

The year was marked by a number of events of interest and importance to the Graduate Faculties. Scarcely was it under way when the University celebrated with appropriate dignity and simplicity the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Faculty of Political Science. The details of this celebration, having been elsewhere recorded in print, need not be repeated here. The presence on that occasion of the venerable founder of the Faculty, Emeritus Professor John William Burgess, still in vigor of mind and of personality, gave it peculiarly interesting and dramatic focus. It was a fortunate circumstance that this expression of the University’s homage and debt to him was given at that time. Only a few months thereafter, deservedly honored and mourned, he passed from the earthly scene.

As a permanently useful memento of this celebration there was published a Bibliography of the Faculty of Political Science containing the list of the several thousand books and important articles written by its members as well as the titles of the nearly seven hundred doctoral dissertations that have been prepared and published under its guidance. Important to our University life as the integrity and unity of this Faculty is both historically and presently, it is regrettable that because of this fact this Bibliography falls far short of including the total of our contributions to the field of the social sciences. A complete bibliography of our publications in this wide field would have included numerous books and articles by members of other faculties, notably the Faculties of Business and of Law.

But while the Faculty of Political Science momentarily paused on the threshold of the year to celebrate its semicentenary, to look back upon its achievements and modestly to rejoice in its traditions, its spirit was in 1930, as in 1880, the spirit of youth. Professor Burgess himself was only thirty-five when he fathered the Faculty. And of the early famous small group whom he called to aid him in his high adventure in scholarship Professors Mayo-Smith and Munroe Smith were only twenty-six, and Professors Goodnow and Seligman twenty-four. Even among later arrivals Professor John Bassett Moore was only thirty-one, Professor Dunning thirty-two, Professor Osgood thirty-five, and Professor Giddings thirty-seven, when they joined the Faculty. It was a youthful company courageously and energetically facing the future.

And so this Faculty continues. It was the Department of Economics that was especially called upon this year to take thought of tomorrow. It had suffered severe losses. Professor Henry L. Moore retired in the spring of 1930. Professor Seager died in August of the same year. Professor Seligman retired at the end of the year. Inevitably the School of Business and the Department of Economics have been developing along many related lines of teaching and research. It would have been calamitous had they developed at cross purposes or in ungenerous rivalry. Happily no such misfortune befell. From the inception of the School of Business these two units have been held to common purpose by ties of common sense and of that fine spirit of loyalty and of friendship that is so much a part of the Columbia spirit. But the breach in the ranks of the Department of Economics seemed an appropriate occasion for welding these separate units, at least in so far as graduate work is concerned, into closer organic integration. Everybody recognizes that under our more or less arbitrary, but certainly unavoidable, scheme of departmentalization there are subjects and interests appropriate to a professional school of business that might not properly be included under a graduate department of economics. Conversely, there are manifestly subjects and interests that not only may be, but also should be, included under both. We severed the knot of this difficult problem of University organization by asking five members of the Faculty of the School of Business to become members of the Department of Economics and accept seats in the Faculty of Political Science. These were Professors Bonbright, Haig, McCrea, Mills, and Willis. This is no mere paper arrangement; it means a vital amalgamation of intellectual forces working toward common ends.

In recognition of the growing rapprochement between law and the social sciences it seemed fitting also that two members of the Faculty of Law, whose fields of interest are considerably economic, should be invited into this enlarged departmental membership. Professors Llewellyn and Berle were in consequence drawn into the unit. This was in line with the historic dual relationship that has so long prevailed with profitable results to teaching and scholarship between the Department of Public Law and the School of Law.

In addition to these internal realignments several new members were added to the Department of Economics. These are: Leo Wolman, eminent economist and practitioner in the field of labor problems; Carter Goodrich, whose special field for development will be American economic history; and Harold Hotelling, a distinguished mathematician turned economist. Arthur R. Burns, Lecturer in Economics in Barnard College, will henceforth devote himself to graduate instruction and research upon problems of industrial and business organization. Michael Florinsky, working upon recent economic developments in Europe, and Joseph Dorfman upon the development of American economic thought, have been made Associates in the Department. The remolding of this important Department at a moment of unprecedentedly swift change in the economic world augurs for the years ahead rich results in scholarship and in service.

In the closely related Department of Social Science the appointment of Robert S. Lynd, distinguished sociological investigator and for some years past Secretary of the Social Science Research Council, is likewise an omen of certain promise. It can scarcely fail to quicken, expand, and deepen the activities of our sociologists in this great laboratory of society in which we live, the city of New York.

[…]

I express the deep grief of the University over the death in August, 1930, of Henry Rogers Seager, Professor of Political Economy, and in June, 1931, of Franklin Henry Giddings, Professor Emeritus in Residence of Sociology and the History of Civilization. For a quarter of a century or more here at Columbia, Professor Seager studied with and expounded to his students the problems of labor in a changing industrial society and the economic problems of corporations and trusts. Scholar, teacher, writer, humanitarian, active participant in welfare movements and organizations, he died at the age of sixty, depriving us of many years of companionship and service upon which we had never thought not to count. Beloved of both students and colleagues, his deep personal interest in and influence upon the former will not be easily supplied by another. His loss to the latter is irreparable.

Professor Giddings’ death brought to its close a long, rich life of labor, of profound reflection, and of purposeful achievement. Trail blazer in an almost unexplored and unstaked field of social inquiry he more than any other American gave meaning to the term sociology and direction to its course. His numerous writings attest the catholicity of his interests, the depth of his penetrating scholarship, and the clarity of his thinking on social problems and developments. Scholars the world over acclaimed him, while the large company of his students and the small company of his immediate colleagues held him in the affectionate regard which his rich humanity and his fineness of spirit inspired and compelled.

The end of the academic year brought with it the retirement from active service to the University of Edwin R. A. Seligman, McVickar Professor of Political Economy, and of Edward Delavan Perry, Jay Professor of Greek. Professor Seligman’s enormous and varied contributions to modern economic thought, especially in the field of public finance, as well as his numerous public and quasi-public services are so widely and so favorably known that it seems quite as useless as it is impossible summarily to estimate them here. His name is known and his views are valued wherever informed men in almost any land discuss problems of finance, and many are the important laws embodying fiscal policies of city, state, and nation that bear in their contours the impress of his studious acumen and practical genius. A scholar in affairs he was and continues to be. Happily he tarries with us in residence as active and as interested as ever. For him relief from classroom instruction can but mean an increase of productive scholarship and of public activity, if such a thing be conceivable.

[…]

Respectfully submitted,
Howard Lee McBain,
Dean

June 30, 1931

Source: Columbia University. Annual Report of the President and Treasurer to the Trustees…for the year ending June 30, 1931. Pp. 202-204; 208-209; 214.

Image Source: Low Memorial Library, Columbia University from the Tichnor Brothers Collection, New York Postcards, at the Boston Public Library, Print Department.

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Columbia Curriculum

Columbia. Proposed plan to review economics curriculum, 1944

 

A transcription of a 1945 memo from the curriculum committee of the department of economics at Columbia University regarding curricular issues brought up during discussions during the spring of 1944  was posted earlier. In a different box of departmental records I found the following memo that initiated the series of meetings and that provides us some of the backstory for the 1945 memo. I find the curious ordering of the meetings by topics rather random, e.g. theory courses only to be discussed in the second to last session. 

As the note stapled to the bottom of the memo indicates, the proposed days for the meeting were suggested to be shifted to Mondays. The penciled dates shown in square brackets in the transcription are all Mondays.

______________________

Plan to review Columbia’s economics curriculum

January 13, 1944

To the Members of the
Graduate Department of Economics

At our meeting on December 6th there was, we think, general agreement on the need of reviewing our course offerings and some of our present methods of graduate instruction. For such review, and for a more careful consideration of the problems we shall face in the Department during the years immediately following the war, we suggest that a series of meetings be held during the Spring Session. Each meeting could be devoted to consideration of a particular subject or group of subjects in our present curriculum. One meeting could be given to economic theory, another to economic history, another to labor and industrial relations, and so on. It would be desirable, of course, that at each session we have, not the casual and rather unfocussed discussion that was inevitable at our first meeting, in December, but intensive examination of what we are doing, and a consideration of what we should and can do.

As an indication of what might be covered, we list certain matters that might be given attention, each time:

—the substance of our present offering (i.e. a summary account of what is given in our present courses, including an indication of the subjects covered and of the manner in which each course is organized.
—chief present problems in this field of knowledge, and prospective problems in the post-war period.
—relation of work in this field to other fields and the curriculum as a whole.
—teaching procedures employed, and appraisal of results (If seminar system, how effective? If lecture system, or modified lecture system, how effective?)
—relation of our work to what is done elsewhere (in several other leading graduate schools) in this field.
—needs of this field, in the way of equipment of trained men (What equipment is needed by men undertaking work in this field? What are the best means of providing the needed equipment and research experience?)
—recommendations, if any, as to what we should do in the future in this field at Columbia.

This list is, of course, suggestive only; it is not intended to be an outline that should be followed each time. We should doubtless, throughout, keep the whole curriculum in mind, and the relations among activities in different fields, although the discussion at each meeting would center on a particular topic.

Following is a provisional grouping of subjects for discussion at successive meetings:

  1. Labor and industrial relations (including labor law and social insurance) [February 14]
  2. Economic history (excluding the courses on capitalism and investment, which are placed in group #6) [February 21]
  3. International trade and finance [February 28]
    Banking, and monetary economics
  4. Industrial organization [March 6]
    Capitalism in the 19thand 20thcenturies
    Investment and economic change
    Economics of business enterprises
  5. Business cycles[March 13]
    Structure of the American Economy
    Prices
  6. Types of economic organization [March 20]
    …Socialism
    …Types of national planned economy
  7. Statistics[March 27]
    Accounting
  8. Economic theory (including all courses on theory, the history of theory, institutional economics and mathematical economics) [April 3]
  9. Public finance and taxation [April 10]
    Corporation finance
    Public utilities

This tentative grouping is subject to modification, if the general plan is approved by the Department. We hesitate to suggest covering several important topics at a single meeting, but we can see no other way to keep the time schedule within reasonable limits.

Our purposes in holding these meetings would perhaps be better served by afternoon meetings, running for two hours, than by evening sessions. As a possibility we suggest Wednesday, from 3 to 5 o’clock in 304 Fayerweather, beginning on February 9th. We should probably plan to have the discussion of each topic opened with a statement from the Department member concerned—a statement that might run from 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the number of subjects to be covered at that meeting. Thereafter time should be given for general discussion. Particular attention would be given in this discussion to the relation of the topic in question to other subjects covered in our curriculum.

The Curriculum Committee would be glad to have the judgment of the members of the Department on this proposal. If you approve the general plan, will you let us know whether you could attend meetings on Wednesday afternoon from 3 to 5 o’clock?

Sincerely yours,

CARTER GOODRICH
FREDERICK C. MILLS
CARL S. SHOUP
WESLEY C. MITCHELL, Chairman

[added] NOTE: We find that a Wednesday afternoon schedule for the proposed meetings would involve at least one serious conflict. Accordingly, we suggest that the meetings be held on Monday afternoon from 4 to 6. Is this time suitable? If so, our first session might be held on Monday, February 14th.

Curriculum Committee

 

Source:  Columbia University Archives. Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection. Box 2 “Faculty”, Folder “Department of Economics—Faculty, Beginning January 1, 1944”.

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Columbia Computing

Columbia. Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory, 1948

 

 

Columbia professor of economics and statistics and NBER researcher Frederick C. Mills was sent the following invitation to visit an open-house at Columbia’s Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory followed by a dinner in honor of Thomas J. Watson (IBM) that was to take place April 20, 1948. [In absence of evidence to the contrary, I presume for now that the dinner took place as announced.] A link is provided below to a history of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory. My favorite illustration is a photo of a “grandfather type clock” that synchronized all clocks throughout the laboratory.

 

_______________

Carbon Copy of Invitation from Frank Diehl Fackenthal to Frederick C. Mills

[handwritten note:] 3.30.48

Professor Frederick C. Mills
401 Fayerweather

Dear Professor Mills:

I am inviting you to join a small group of approximately fifty scientists who are interested in modern calculating devices to dine with me on April 20 to honor Mr. Thomas J. Watson for his outstanding leadership in the development of mathematical calculating machines and laboratories which has stimulated research in many fields of science. The dinner will be at Faculty House, 400 West 117th Street, at six-thirty p.m. The Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory, at 612 West 116th Street, will be open for inspection from five to six-fifteen p.m., and you are invited to visit that laboratory just before the dinner.

Mr. Watson’s interest in scientific calculating machines began twenty years ago with a series of adaptations of IBM tabulating machines for complex statistical computations which were first applied on a large scale in the Columbia University Statistical Bureau. In 1934 Mr. Watson set up the computing laboratory which has become the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau. In 1940 came the Matrix Multiplier adaptation of the IBM Test Scoring Machine announced in 1936. In 1944 several projects came to dramatic fruition in the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, The Relay Calculators, and the Automatic Recording and Computing Equipment for the wind tunnel laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. In 1945 the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory was established, and in January 1947 the great IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator was dedicated to science.

It will give me and my colleagues much pleasure to have word that you will be our guest on April 20.

Sincerely yours,

Frank Diehl Fackenthal
Acting President

(Business dress at the dinner)

 

Source: Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890-. Box 396, Folder “Mills, Frederick Cecil”

Image Source: First home of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory was a renovated former fraternity house. Illustration on page 15 from The IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University—A History by Jean Ford Brennan. 1971.

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Berkeley Chicago Columbia Economists NBER New School

Columbia. Memorial Minute for Wesley Clair Mitchell, 1949

 

Memorial minutes entered into a faculty’s record have the virtue of being brief and typically are written by someone who has had a close personal/professional relationship with the subject as seen in the following memorial minute delivered by Wesley Clair Mitchell’s student and later colleague, Frederick C. Mills.

The dual memoir Two Lives–The Story of Wesley Clair Mitchell and Myself, written by Mitchell’s wife Lucy Sprague Mitchell is available at hathitrust.org and provides much detail, e.g. an eight page autobiographical letter written by Mitchell in 1911.

______________________

WESLEY CLAIR MITCHELL
Memorial Minute read by Professor F. C. Mills
February 18, 1949

Wesley Clair Mitchell, Professor Emeritus of Economics, died in New York City on October 29, 1948. In his death the world lost one of the great scholars of our generation and the members of this Faculty lost a distinguished colleague and a cherished friend.

Wesley Mitchell was born in Rushville, Illinois, on August 5, 1874, the son of a country doctor who had won the rank of Brevet Colonel as a Civil War surgeon. The family was of New England stock, and although a middle-western boyhood and later adult years in California and New York left their impress on Mitchell, something of the New England strain was always discernible in the pattern of his thought and life.

Mitchell’s student days, undergraduate and graduate, were spent at the University of Chicago, with a one-year interim period at Halle and Vienna. The influence of the German and Austrian residence was slight; Mitchell was a product of American university training in the period of vigorous growth that came at the turn of the century. His outstanding qualities as an economist were distinctive of ways of thought and study that were largely indigenous to this country. Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, J. Laurence Laughlin in their several ways deeply affected Mitchell’s thinking and his way of conceiving of the problems of society.

Following a year at the Census Bureau and a short term as instructor at the University of Chicago, Mitchell moved in 1902 to the University of California, at Berkeley, to begin a decade of fruitful work and of steady personal growth. His tools of research were sharpened and his mastery of them perfected. The brilliant studies of the greenback period, in which the pattern of his scholarly work was first defined, were extended. The massive monograph on Business Cycles, one of the great products of scholarship in the social sciences, was here completed. But beyond these solid contributions to economic thought and method this was a rich period inMitchell’s life, to which he always looked back as something of a personal golden age. A young man intellectually somewhat aloof and inclined toward austerity mellowed in the sunshine of the west and in the easy, pleasant companionships of the young University. He took to the Sierras avidly, relishing the free ways, the free language and the physical release to be found in mountain climbing. A companion of those days says that Wesley’s inhibitions were peeled off like the layers of an onion as successive altitude levels were passed. He found a wife, too, in the west; when he left California in 1912 he took with him the Dean of Women of the University.

Wesley Mitchell’s service at Columbia began in 1913 and extended to the date of his retirement in 1944, except for a three-year term at the New School for Social Research. Indeed, his Columbia connection extended, properly, to the day of his death, for there was no time when we did not consider him one of us, or when he did not so regard himself. Mitchell’s reputation had been established by the time he came to Columbia; he had reached full scholarly maturity. Yet his growth continued and his accomplishments multiplied. A steady (but not a voluminous) flow of papers, reviews, addresses and more extensive studies came from his pen. Into each, whether brief or extended, went care in the construction of a logical and orderly argument, skill in the marshaling of evidence, and objectivity in the use of that evidence. Each, too, was in exposition a work of craftsmanship by a man whose ear was extraordinarily sensitive to the rhythms of our language and whose mind was alert to shades of meaning and subtleties of expression.

There was also an almost uninterrupted series of public and professional services and of accumulating honors. He was Chief of the Price Section of the War Industries Board during the first World War, chairman of the President’s Committee on Recent Social Trends, a member of the National Planning Board, the National Resources Board, and the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, and chairman of the Committee on the Cost of Living when that burning issue threatened to check the steady production of goods during the second World War. There was the launching in 1920 and the directing for a quarter of a century of a new instrument for the advancement of knowledge—the National Bureau of Economic Research. Over a long stretch of years he helped to break down the barriers between the social sciences and to unify their activities in the Social Science Research Council. He was one of those who founded and shaped the New School for Social Research. Counsel and guidance were given over many years to the Bureau of Educational Experiments. He was called upon to direct the affairs of professional societies, serving as President of the American Economic Association, the American Statistical Association, the Econometric Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There were elections to learned societies at home and abroad. Honorary degrees came from Oxford, the University of Paris, and from major universities in this country. These were rich honors and they were not unwelcome; but he remained to the day of his death a modest scholar, who would both gladly learn and gladly teach.

It was as teacher and scholar that Mitchell’s greatest services were rendered to Columbia, and it was in these roles that he was best known to us of this Faculty. Mitchell possessed in high degree the qualities of a good teacher. There was insight in his analyses; there was a freshness of view that he never lost; there was lucidity of thought and expression; there was a sense of sharing with the student the task of inquiry. Above all, perhaps, was the sense of integrity. Here was a man without affectation, without pretense, who honestly sought understanding.

The specific contributions that Mitchell made to economics will be duly appraised by his colleagues in that profession. As members of a political science faculty, however, it is proper for us to recognize the service of Mitchell in breaking economics out of the tight formalism of the tradition that prevailed when he came to the subject. He was profoundly unhappy about economics as a branch of logic, dealing with the interaction of atoms in the form of human reasoning machines, subjecting itself only to tests of logical consistency, almost indifferent to the relevance of its principles to complex and constantly changing reality. Mitchell himself was not unskilled in the spinning of deductive arguments, but he was keenly aware of the dangers of self-delusion in unchecked rationalism. His bent was empirical; his emphasis in research was on the constant checking of reason against observation. First in the monetary field, later in the study of prices, of business cycles, and of national income, he developed and refined methods of quantitative analysis and stimulated a movement that has deeply affected the character of economic research and the content of economic thought the world over. But Mitchell’s concern was never with method as method. Man was at the center. Economics was to him on of the sciences of human behavior. And the human being with whose actions he was concerned was a complex creature whose motives could not be reduced to the reasoned balancing of satisfactions against pains or of prospective gains against prospective losses. He stressed the role in economics of institutions — of money, of the industrial system — which man had shaped and which in turn were shaping him; in so doing he helped to turn many younger economists to the study of a neglected phase of economic life. These various aspects of Mitchell’s thought are developed in treatises and shorter papers published over a period of fifty years. They are outstandingly revealed in the series of books on business cycles that are Mitchell’s greatest substantive contribution to economics.

Some of the personal qualities of Wesley Mitchell have been suggested in this brief account of his work. But there was much more than this. He was a lover of poetry whose mind was stocked with verse. He was a connoisseur of mystery stories who could warmly resent the moral betrayal of the reader when the author played unfairly with him. He was a craftsman, skilled in the fine art of woodwork. He was tenacious and unremitting in seeking principles of order in human affairs, yet free from dogmatism and open to criticism and advice from his youngest associates. He was a kindly and generous man, a source of continuing and friendly inspiration to students and colleagues alike. In his life’s work Mitchell served the human race. In his own being he helped to give dignity to that race.

 

Source: Memorial Minute on Professor Wesley C. Mitchell read by Professor F. C. Mills at the meeting of Faculty of Political Science of February 18, 1949. Appended to the Minutes of the Faculty Meeting.

Image Source:Foundation for the Study of Cycles Website  .

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Columbia Economists

Columbia. History of Economics Department. Luncheon Talk by Arthur R. Burns, 1954

The main entry of this posting is a transcription of the historical overview of economics at Columbia provided by Professor Arthur R. Burns at a reunion luncheon for Columbia economics Ph.D. graduates [Note: Arthur Robert Burns was the “other” Arthur Burns of the Columbia University economics department, as opposed to Arthur F. Burns, who was the mentor/friend of Milton Friedman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Fed, etc.]. He acknowledges his reliance on the definitive research of his colleague, Joseph Dorfman, that was published in the following year:

Joseph Dorfman, “The Department of Economics”, Chapt IX in R. Gordon Hoxie et al., A History of the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955.

The cost of the luncheon was $2.15 per person. 36 members of the economics faculty attended, who paid for themselves, and some 144 attending guests (includes about one hundred Columbia economics Ph.D.’s) had their lunches paid for by the university.

_____________________________

[LUNCHEON INVITATION LETTER]

Columbia University
in the City of New York
[New York 27, N.Y.]
FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

March 25, 1954

 

Dear Doctor _________________

On behalf of the Department of Economics, I am writing to invite you to attend a Homecoming Luncheon of Columbia Ph.D.’s in Economics. This will be held on Saturday, May 29, at 12:30 sharp, in the Men’s Faculty Club, Morningside Drive and West 117th Street.

This Luncheon is planned as a part of Columbia University’s Bicentennial Celebration, of which, as you know, the theme is “Man’s Right to Knowledge and the free Use Thereof”. The date of May 29 is chosen in relation to the Bicentennial Conference on “National Policy for Economic Welfare at Home and Abroad” in which distinguished scholars and men of affairs from the United States and other countries will take part. The final session of this Conference, to be held at three p.m. on May 29 in McMillin Academic Theater, will have as its principal speaker our own Professor John Maurice Clark. The guests at the Luncheon are cordially invited to attend the afternoon meeting.

The Luncheon itself and brief after-luncheon speeches will be devoted to reunion, reminiscence and reacquaintance with the continuing work of the Department. At the close President Grayson Kirk will present medals on behalf of the University to the principal participants in the Bicentennial Conference.

We shall be happy to welcome to the Luncheon as guests of the University all of our Ph.D.’s, wherever their homes may be, who can arrange to be in New York on May 29. We very much hope you can be with us on that day. Please reply on the form below.

Cordially yours,

[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Chairman of the Committee

*   *   *   *   *   *

Professor Carter Goodrich
Box #22, Fayerweather Hall
Columbia University
New York 27, New York

I shall be glad…
I shall be unable… to attend the Homecoming Luncheon on May 29.

(signed) ___________

Note: Please reply promptly, not later than April 20 in the case of Ph.D.’s residing in the United States, and not later than May 5 in the case of others.

_____________________________

[INVITATION TO SESSION FOLLOWING LUNCHEON]

Columbia University
in the City of New York
[New York 27, N.Y.]
FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

May 6, 1954

 

TO:                 Departments of History, Math. Stat., Public and Sociology
FROM:            Helen Harwell, secretary, Graduate Department of Economics

 

Will you please bring the following notice to the attention of the students in your Department:

            A feature of Columbia’s Bicentennial celebration will be a Conference on National Policy for Economic Welfare at Home and Abroad, to be held May 27, 28 and 29.

            The final session of the Conference will take place in McMillin Theatre at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 29. The session topic is “Economic Welfare in a Free Society”. The program is:

Session paper.

John M. Clark, John Bates Clark Professor. Emeritus of Economics, Columbia University.

Discussants:

Frank H. Knight, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
David E. Lilienthal, Industrial Consultant and Executive
Wilhelm Roepke, Professor of International Economics, Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva

 

Students in the Faculty of Political Science are cordially invited to attend this session and to bring their wives or husbands and friends who may be interested.

Tickets can be secured from Miss Helen Harwell, 505 Fayer.

_____________________________

[REMARKS BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR ROBERT BURNS]

Department of Economics Bicentennial Luncheon
May 29th, 1954

President Kirk, Ladies and Gentlemen: On behalf of the Department of Economics I welcome you all to celebrate Columbia’s completion of its first two hundred years as one of the great universities. We are gratified that so many distinguished guests have come, some from afar, to participate in the Conference on National Policy for Economic Welfare at Home and Abroad. We accept their presence as testimony of their esteem for the place of Columbia in the world of scholarship. Also, we welcome among us again many of the intellectual offspring of the department. We like to believe that the department is among their warmer memories. We also greet most pleasurably some past members of the department, namely Professors Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, Eugene Agger, Eveline M. Burns and Rexford Tugwell. Finally, but not least, we are pleased to have with us the administrative staff of the department who are ceaselessly ground between the oddity and irascibility of the faculty and the personal and academic tribulations of the students. Gertrude D. Stewart who is here is evidence that this burden can be graciously carried for thirty-five years without loss of charm or cheer.

We are today concerned with the place of economics within the larger scope of Columbia University. When the bell tolls the passing of so long a period of intellectual endeavor one casts an appraising eye over the past, and I am impelled to say a few retrospective words about the faculty and the students. I have been greatly assisted in this direction by the researches of our colleague, Professor Dorfman, who has been probing into our past.

On the side of the faculty, there have been many changes, but there are also many continuities. First let me note some of the changes. As in Europe, economics made its way into the university through moral philosophy, and our College students were reading the works of Frances Hutcheson in 1763. But at the end of the 18th century, there seems to have been an atmosphere of unhurried certainty and comprehensiveness of view that has now passed away. For instance, it is difficult to imagine a colleague of today launching a work entitled “Natural Principles of Rectitude for the Conduct of Man in All States and Situations in Life Demonstrated and Explained in a Systematic Treatise on Moral Philosophy”. But one of early predecessors, Professor Gross, published such a work in 1795.

The field of professorial vision has also change. The professor Gross whom I have just mentioned occupied no narrow chair but what might better be called a sofa—that of “Moral Philosophy, German Language and Geography”. Professor McVickar, early in the nineteenth century, reclined on the even more generous sofa of “Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, Rhetoric, Belles Lettres and Political Economy”. By now, however, political economy at least existed officially and, in 1821, the College gave its undergraduates a parting touch of materialist sophistication in some twenty lectures on political economy during the last two months of their senior year.

But by the middle of the century, integration was giving way to specialization. McVickar’s sofa was cut into three parts, one of which was a still spacious chair of “History and Political Science”, into which Francis Lieber sank for a brief uneasy period. His successor, John W. Burgess, pushed specialization further. He asked for an assistant to take over the work in political economy. Moreover, his request was granted and Richmond Mayo Smith, then appointed, later became Professor of Political Economy, which, however, included Economics, Anthropology and Sociology. The staff of the department was doubled in 1885 by the appointment of E. R. A. Seligman to a three-year lectureship, and by 1891 he had become a professor of Political Economy and Finance. Subsequent fission has separated Sociology and Anthropology and now we are professors of economics, and the days when political economy was covered in twenty lectures seem long ago.

Other changes stand out in our history. The speed of promotion of the faculty has markedly slowed down. Richmond Mayo Smith started as an instructor in 1877 but was a professor after seven years of teaching at the age of 27. E. R. A. Seligman even speeded matters a little and became a professor after six years of teaching. But the University has since turned from this headlong progression to a more stately gait. One last change I mention for the benefit of President Kirk, although without expectation of warm appreciation from him. President Low paid J. B. Clark’s salary out of his own pocket for the first three years of the appointment.

I turn now to some of the continuities in the history of the department. Professor McVickar displayed a concern for public affairs that has continued since his time early in the nineteenth century. He was interested in the tariff and banking but, notably, also in what he called “economic convulsions”, a term aptly suggesting an economy afflicted with the “falling sickness”. Somewhat less than a century later the subject had been rechristened “business cycles” to remove some of the nastiness of the earlier name, and professor Wesley Mitchell was focusing attention on this same subject.

The Columbia department has also shown a persistent interest in economic measurement. Professor Lieber campaigned for a government statistical bureau in the middle of the 19th century and Richmond Mayo Smith continued this interest in statistics and in the Census. Henry L. Moore, who came to the department in 1902, promoted with great devotion Mathematical Economics and Statistics with particular reference to the statistical verification of theory. This interest in quantification remains vigorous among us.

There is also a long continuity in the department’s interest in the historical and institutional setting of economic problems and in their public policy aspect. E. R. A. Seligman did not introduce, but he emphasized this approach. He began teaching the History of Theory and proceeded to Railroad Problems and the Financial and Tariff History of the United States, and of course, Public Finance. John Bates Clark, who joined the department in 1895 to provide advanced training in economics to women who were excluded from the faculty of Political Science, became keenly interested in government policy towards monopolies and in the problem of war. Henry R. Seager, in 1902, brought his warm and genial personality to add to the empirical work in the department in labor and trust problems. Vladimir G. Simkhovitch began to teach economic history in 1905 at the same time pursuing many and varied other interests, and we greet him here today. And our lately deceased colleague, Robert Murray Haig, continued the work in Public Finance both as teacher and advisor to governments.

Lastly, among these continuities is an interest in theory. E. R. A. Seligman focused attention on the history of theory. John Bates Clark was an outstanding figure in the field too well known to all of us for it to be necessary to particularize as to his work. Wesley C. Mitchell developed his course on “Current Types of Economic Theory” after 1913 and continued to give it almost continuously until 1945. The Clark dynasty was continued when John Maurice Clark joined the department as research professor in 1926. He became emeritus in 1952, but fortunately he still teaches, and neither students nor faculty are denied the stimulation of his gentle inquiring mind. He was the first appointee to the John Bates Clark professorship in 1952 and succeeded Wesley Mitchell as the second recipient of the Francis A. Walker medal of the American Economic Association in the same year.

Much of this development of the department was guided by that gracious patriarch E. R. A. Seligman who was Executive Officer of the Department for about 30 years from 1901. With benign affection and pride he smiled upon his growing academic family creating a high standard of leadership for his successors. But the period of his tenure set too high a standard and executive Officers now come and go like fireflies emitting as many gleams of light as they can in but three years of service. Seligman and J. B. Clark actively participated in the formation of the American Economic Association in which J. B. Clark hoped to include “younger men who do not believe implicitly in laisser faire doctrines nor the use of the deductive method exclusively”.

Among other members of the department I must mention Eugene Agger, Edward Van Dyke Robinson, William E. Weld, and Rexford Tugwell, who were active in College teaching, and Alvin Johnson, Benjamin Anderson and Joseph Schumpeter, who were with the department for short periods. Discretion dictates that I list none of my contemporaries, but I leave them for such mention as subsequent speakers may care to make.

When one turns to the students who are responsible for so much of the history of the department, one is faced by an embarrassment of riches. Alexander Hamilton is one of the most distinguished political economists among the alumni of the College. Richard T. Ely was the first to achieve academic reputation. In the 1880’s, he was giving economics a more humane and historical flavor. Walter F. Wilcox, a student of Mayo Smith, obtained his Ph.D. in 1891 and contributed notably to statistical measurement after he became Chief Statistician of the Census in 1891, and we extend a special welcome to him here today. Herman Hollerith (Ph.D. 1890) contributed in another way to statistics by his development of tabulating machinery. Alvin Johnson was a student as well as teacher. It is recorded that he opened his paper on rent at J. B. Clark’s seminar with the characteristically wry comment that all the things worth saying about rent had been said by J. B. Clark and his own paper was concerned with “some of the other things”. Among other past students are W. Z. Ripley, B. M. Anderson, Willard Thorp, John Maurice Clark, Senator Paul Douglas, Henry Schultz and Simon Kuznets. The last of these we greet as the present President of the American Economic Association. But the list grows too long. It should include many more of those here present as well as many who are absent, but I am going to invite two past students and one present student to fill some of the gaps in my story of the department.

I have heard that a notorious American educator some years ago told the students at Commencement that he hoped he would never see them again. They were going out into the world with the clear minds and lofty ideals which were the gift of university life. Thenceforward they would be distorted by economic interest, political pressure, and family concerns and would never again be the same pellucid and beautiful beings as at that time. I confess that the thought is troubling. But in inviting our students back we have overcome our doubts and we now confidently call upon a few of them. The first of these is George W. Stocking who, after successfully defending a dissertation on “The Oil Industry and the Competitive System” in 1925, has continued to pursue his interest in competition and monopoly as you all know. He is now at Vanderbilt University.

The second of our offspring whom I will call upon is Paul Strayer. He is one of the best pre-war vintages—full bodied, if I may borrow from the jargon of the vintner without offense to our speaker. Or I might say fruity, but again not without danger of misunderstanding. Perhaps I had better leave him to speak for himself. Paul Strayer, now of Princeton University, graduated in 1939, having completed a dissertation on the painful topic of “The Taxation of Small Incomes”.

The third speaker is Rodney H. Mills, a contemporary student and past president of the Graduate Economics Students Association. He has not yet decided on his future presidencies, but we shall watch his career with warm interest. He has a past, not a pluperfect, but certainly a future. Just now, however, no distance lends enchantment to his view of the department. And I now call upon him to share his view with us.

So far we have been egocentric and appropriately so. But many other centres of economic learning are represented here, and among them the London School of Economics of which I am proud as my own Alma Mater. I now call upon Professor Lionel Robbins of Polecon (as it used sometimes to be known) to respond briefly on behalf of our guests at the Conference. His nature and significance are or shall I say, is, too well known to you to need elaboration.

[in pencil]
A.R. Burns

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections, Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection, Box 9, Folder “Bicentennial Celebration”.

_____________________________

[BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION FOR ARTHUR ROBERT BURNS]

 

BURNS, Arthur Robert, Columbia Univ., New York 27, N.Y. (1938) Columbia Univ., prof. of econ., teach., res.; b. 1895; B.Sc. (Econ.), 1920, Ph.D. (Econ.), 1926, London Sch. of Econ. Fields 5a, 3bc, 12b. Doc. dis. Money and monetary policy in early times (Kegan Paul Trench Trubner & Co., London, 1926). Pub. Decline of competition (McGraw-Hill 1936); Comparative economic organization (Prentice-Hall, 1955); Electric power and government policy (dir. of res.) (Twentieth Century Fund, 1948) . Res. General studies in economic development. Dir. Amer. Men of Sci., III, Dir. of Amer. Schol.

Source: Handbook of the American Economic Association, American Economic Review, Vol. 47, No. 4 (July, 1957), p. 40.

 

Obituary: “Arthur Robert Burns dies at 85; economics teacher at Columbia“, New York Times, January 22, 1981.

Image: Arthur Robert Burns.  Detail from a departmental photo dated “early 1930’s” in Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections, Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection, Box 9, Folder “Photos”.

Categories
Columbia

Columbia. Preparation for Graduate Economics, 1941

Up through the 1941-1942 Course Announcements of the Columbia University Faculty of Political Science did not provide prospective graduate students of economics any guidance with respect to their undergraduate preparation. Late in the Fall of 1941 the Executive Officer of the Department of Economics, i.e. chairman, Robert Murray Haig received suggestions and comments that were discussed at the December 2, 1941 faculty meeting that resulted in the insertion of two paragraphs into the Course Announcements that address undergraduate preparation in general and mathematical preparation in particular. Horace Taylor’s suggestion for the general preparation was taken over with only minor revisions. However we can see that the suggestion for mathematical preparation by Harold Hotelling and Frederick Mills was significantly toned down.

_________________________________

12 copies send around
Nov.

Dear Colleague:

Will you kindly examine the attached exhibits relating to material to be inserted in the announcements of the Faculty of Political Science and of Columbia College and be prepared to pass judgment at the meeting on December 2nd?

 

(A) The Proposed Statement on Mathematical Preparation to be Inserted in the “Announcement of Courses” of the Faculty of Political Science.
Hotelling, Mills. October 13, 1941

Mathematical Preparation. The use of mathematics, including higher mathematics, has become important in several branches of economics and advanced statistics. Calculus, probability, the algebra of matrices and quadratic forms and the calculus of variations, for example, have important applications in economic study. Since the acquisition of an adequate mathematical training requires several years, students planning work that entails the use of advanced mathematics should include in their undergraduate studies courses providing the mathematical foundation essential to these advanced studies.

 

(B) Suggestion from Horace Taylor for Paragraph to be Inserted in the Columbia College Announcement and Comment on Hotelling and Mills’ Statement

October 20, 1941

 

Professor Robert M. Haig,
Fayerweather Hall.

Dear Professor Haig:

I enclose* two copies of a tentative paragraph intended to give effect in the Announcement to the recommendation made at our last departmental dinner. I would be glad to amend or amplify this in any way that seems desirable.

I have one or two misgivings as to the statement on mathematical preparation that has been prepared for the Announcement. In the first place it almost never happens that an undergraduate student decides to study economics in the graduate school earlier than the end of his junior year. Very often it happens at the end of his senior year. This lateness makes it impossible for such students to get the amount of mathematical training that is presented as desirable in this statement. In the second place, even those students who do decide to go in for graduate study at some point fairly early in their college careers are not likely to refer to our Announcement until a very short time before their actual application for admission as graduate students. Consequently the message presented in this statement would not reach them until too late. In the third place, I believe that the indefiniteness of the statement as it now stands might serve to frighten well qualified people away from graduate study of economics – at least in our department. Perhaps this difficulty would be relieved by making it more explicit as to just the fields of work in which such intensive mathematical preparation is a desirable prerequisite.

I doubt if we can accomplish very much in this regard by our own individual effort. I wonder if a broader attack in which it would be attempted to get the understanding and support of collegiate departments of economics would not be more successful. If, for example, the economics departments at Columbia, Chicago, Harvard, and perhaps two or three other principal graduate schools would agree on a general statement of what is desirable in the way of mathematical training and would publicize this through one or another of the Journals or by some other means, I think that better results would ensue. As I understand it, this question may come up for consideration at one of our later dinner meetings.

Sincerely,

HORACE TAYLOR

* “Undergraduate preparation. Since graduate study in economics necessarily entails a high degree of concentration in this field, students planning to enter graduate work are advised not to specialize narrowly in economics during their undergraduate study. Basic training in economics and a knowledge of its general literature and methods is desirable, but for the purposes of the more advanced work in graduate school, there is greater advantage in the study of history, philosophy, modern languages and mathematics than in narrowly specialized courses in economics taken as undergraduates.”

 

(C) Memorandum to Professor Haig from Professor Wolman: November 11, 1941

Professor Wolman agrees to the last paragraph typed on the page containing the memorandum from Professor Taylor. Doesn’t care how much Mathematics they are getting, no time to scare students away.

 

(D) Comment of Dean Calkins

 

Columbia University
in the City of New York

School of Business
Local

November 11, 1941

Professor R. M. Haig
Fayerweather

Dear Professor Haig

Your request for my comments on the proposed recommendation of undergraduate preparation for graduate study in economics and on Professor Taylor’s observations with respect to it prompts the following response:

  1. I am impressed by the three points raised by Professor Taylor. They represent my own views after experience at California and Stanford. No satisfactory system now exists for detecting undergraduates who will later pursue graduate work in economics, and hence advice can rarely be given in time to be effective. It is my impression that most students who undertake graduate work in economics are as undergraduates either unacquainted with the opportunities in the field, unaware of their own interest in it, uncertain of their academic abilities to pursue graduate work, without prospects of financing graduate study, or forced by financial circumstances to utilize their four years of undergraduate study for instruction which might lead to employment upon graduation. Moreover many of these conditions also apply to first year graduate students and candidates for the master’s degree.

            That there is no easy way to overcome the foregoing conditions is evident. Ordinarily a student needs to proceed some distance in the subject as an undergraduate to convince himself that he wishes to go on for graduate study, that he has the ability to go on, and that his opportunities in the field are sufficiently promising to justify the effort. I am impressed, too, with the number of cases in which graduate students receive their first impulse to go on for advanced study from an interest in a specialized course.

  1. No statement in the Columbia College catalog alone can produce more than a small effect on the preparation of your graduate students, who are recruited so largely from other institutions. It is too vague to mean very much to the average undergraduate and will be interpreted by advisers according to their own predilections.
  2. While I agree that more graduate students ought to have more of the sort of preparation recommended, we cannot be certain that this prescription is the only, best, or preferred preparation for either the students who may wish to undertake the graduate study of economics or who should be encouraged to do so.

            In guiding the preparation of students who will be able to excel in economics we seek to produce graduates who can maintain high standards of competence, not standardized products.

  1. I have no serious objection to the statement as a guide for one type of preparation, but this is clearly not the only desirable type of preparation. Its value probably lies in the prospect that a few will heed it, and that may be desirable, and the great majority will ignore it and that may also be desirable.

I shall be glad to discuss this with you if you desire an amplification of these opinions.

Sincerely yours,
[signed] Robert D. Calkins
Dean

 

Source: Columbia University Libraries, Manuscript Collections. Columbiana, Department of Economics Collection, Faculty. Box 2, Folder “Department of Economics—Faculty Beginning Jan 1, 1944”.

_________________________________

Recommended preparations printed in the 1942-43 Course Announcements

General Undergraduate Preparation. Since graduate study in economics necessarily entails a high degree of concentration in this field, students planning to enter graduate work are advised not to specialize narrowly in economics during their undergraduate study. Basic training in economics and a knowledge of its general literature and methods is desirable, but for the purposes of the more advanced work on the graduate level, there is greater advantage in the study of history, philosophy, modern languages and mathematics than in narrowly specialized courses in economics taken as undergraduates.

Mathematical Preparation. The use of mathematics, including higher mathematics, has become important in several branches of economics and statistics. Much of the recent important literature of general economics is written in a language not easily understood without some knowledge of the differential and integral calculus. Students planning to work for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in economics will therefore find it advantageous to acquire familiarity with the calculus and with higher algebra before beginning their graduate studies in economics.

 

Source: History, Economics, Public Law, and Sociology. Courses Offered by the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions 1942-1943. Columbia University, Bulletin of Information, Forty-second Series, No. 24, May 23, 1942, p. 18.

_________________________________

 

The 1948 Directory of the American Economic Association. American Economic Review, Vol. 39, No. 1 (January 1949).

HAIG, Robert Murray, Columbia Univ., Fayerweather Hall, New York 27, N.Y. (1911) Columbia Univ., McVikar Prof. of Polit. Econ., teach., res.; b. 1887; A.B., 1908, LL.D., 1925, Ohio Wesleyan; M.A., 1909, Illinois; Ph.D., 1914, Columbia; LL.D., 1944, Rollins. Field 9 [Public Finance]. Doc.dis. History of general property tax in Illinois ([Flanigan-Pearson Company, Printers] Univ. of Illinois, 1914). Pub. “Taxation of excess profits in Great Britain,” A.E.R., 1920; Economic factors in metropolitan growth and arrangement (Russell Sage Found., 1927); Sales tax in American states (with Shoup) (Columbia Univ. Press, 1929). Res. Concept of taxable income; federal state financial relations. Dir. W.W. in Amer., Dir. of Schol., Lead. in Educa. Int. W.W. [p. 77]

MILLS, Frederick Cecil, Columbia Univ., New York 27, N.Y. (1920) Columbia Univ., prof of econ. and statis.; Nat. Bur. of Econ. Res., memb. res. staff; teach., res., govt. serv.; b. 1892; B.L., 1914, M.A., 1916, LL.D., 1947, California; Ph.D., 1917, Columbia; 1919, London School of Econ. Fields 3 [Statistics and Econometrics], 6 [Business Fluctuations], 5 [National Income and Social Accounting]. Doc dis. Contemporary theories of unemployment (Columbia Univ. Press, 1917). Pub. Behavior of prices (1927), Economic tendencies in U.S. (1932) (Nat. Bur. of Econ. Res.); Statistical Methods (Holt, 1924, 1938). Res. Prices in business cycles; industrial productivity. Dir. W.W. in Amer., Dir. of Schol. [p. 129]

WOLMAN, Leo, 993 Park Ave., New York 28, NY. (1915) Columbia Univ., prof. of econ.; Nat. Bur. of Econ. Res., res. staff; b. 1890; A.B., 1911, Ph.D., 1914, LL.D., 1948, Johns Hopkins. Fields 16 [Labor], 6 [Business Fluctuations], 3c [Economic Measurements]. Doc. dis. Boycott in American trade unions (Johns Hopkins Press, 1916). Pub. Growth of American trade unions, 1880-1923 (1924), Planning and control of public works (1930), Ebb and flow in trade unionism (1936) (Nat. Bur. of Econ. Res.). Res. Wages in U. S. since 1860; changes in union membership. Dir. W.W. in Amer., Dir. of Schol. Lead in Educa. [p. 204]

 

CALKINS, Robert D., 445 Riverside Dr., New York 27, N.Y. (1930) Gen. Educa. Bd., dir.; B.S., 1925, LL.B., 1942, William and Mary; M.A., 1929, Ph.D., 1933, Stanford. Fields 11a [Business Organization, Administration, Methods, and Management], 12a [Industrial Organization and Market Controls; Policies Concerning Competition and Monopoly], 14a [Industry Studies: Manufacturing]. Doc. dis. Price leadership among major wheat futures markets (Wheat Studies, Nov., 1933). Dir. W.W. in Amer. [p. 30]

_________________________________

 

The 1942 Directory of the American Economic Association. American Economic Review, Vol. 33, No. 1, Part 2, Supplement (March 1943).

TAYLOR, Horace, Columbia Univ., New York City. (1924) A [Institution, rank, nature of activity]Columbia Univ., prof. of econ., TRA [teaching, research, administration]. B [Degrees] A.B., 1922, Oklahoma; A.M., 1924, Ph.D., 1929, Columbia. C [doctoral dissertation]Making goods and making money (Macmillan, 1929). D [Fields] 1 [Economic theory; general works], 10 [Public control of business; public administration; national defense and war], 3 [Economic systems; national economics]. E [Research projects underway] Systematic economic theory. F [Most significant publications]Main currents in modern economic life (Harcourt, Brace, 1941). G [Directories cross referenced] SE [Biographical Directory of American Scholars, Leaders in Education].  [p. 11]

 

_________________________________

 

Harold Hotelling. Professor of Economics

A.B. Washington, 1919; M.S., 1921; Ph.D., Princeton, 1924.

Source: History, Economics, Public Law, and Sociology. Courses Offered by the Faculty of Political Science for the Winter and Spring Sessions 1942-1943. Columbia University, Bulletin of Information, Forty-second Series, No. 24, May 23, 1942, p. 4.

_________________________________

Image Source: Columbia Spectator Archive. Left: Horace Taylor (14 April 1959). Right: Frederick C. Mills (11 February 1964)

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Columbia Curriculum

Columbia. Curricular Suggestions and Comments. 1945

In my examination of departmental records at Columbia, Chicago, Harvard and M.I.T. I have found relatively few written reflections on the rules/regulation/courses of the graduate programs. Today’s posting provides a memo of miscellaneous ruminations by Arthur F. Burns, Carter Goodrich and Carl Shoup who served as members of the Columbia Economic Department’s Curriculum Committee in 1945. Having a major field of comparative economic systems myself, I found Arthur Burns’ rather dismissive remarks about whether the graduate program should add a course in that field noteworthy.

_____________________________

April 30, 1945

To the Members of the Department of Economics:

During the year the Curriculum Committee has given thought to problems growing out of the Department discussions of last spring. Although the Committee is not prepared to place definite recommendations before the Department, I think it desirable that the members of the Department review certain suggestions and other changes that have been considered by the Committee. These suggestions, with comments of Committee members, are enclosed. There should be opportunity to discuss these at our meeting on me second. May 2.

Frederick C. Mills

_____________________________

SUGGESTIONS FOR CURRICULAR AND OTHER CHANGES
with comments by Committee Members

 

  1. We should formulate a more definite statement of requirements to be met by applicants for admission to the graduate department of economics.
    (Can we agree on basic requirements? Should we include mathematics, accounting, statistics, history, economic principles, English composition, psychology, one laboratory science?)

 

A. F. Burns

I doubt if much progress in this direction can be made this year or next. For one thing, there is likely to be slight unanimity among the staff. For another, each of us will have difficulty in convincing the others unless judgment be implemented by a canvas of experience. What do other graduate departments do? Would there be any advantage in drawing up a sample list of former graduate students in the department and analyzing the undergraduate training of those who proved especially “successful” and those who “got nowhere”?

 

Carter Goodrich

This is the point on which I am most doubtful of the general tendency. I do not believe we can agree on “basic requirements”. Even on recommendations I think we should be most cautious. We may be justified in making a strong recommendation for things we consider specific prerequisites, – perhaps economic principles, mathematics, accounting or statistics. I should see no justification for such specifications as “one laboratory science”. If we are to make a recommendation regarding preliminary training in economics, I feel strongly that it should be accompanied by a recommendation against over-specialization in economics at the undergraduate level. An excellent statement of this general point of view is contained in the Princeton catalog in a passage referring to pre-professional training.

 

Carl S. Shoup

As I see it, the Department faces two general alternatives. First, it can continue to admit graduate students who have had little or no economic training during their undergraduate days and who must therefore be given some general courses on a fairly elementary level. Owing to the number of students involved, these courses would presumably be of the traditional lecture type. Students who have already had substantial training in economics might be excused from these courses to take instead either special seminars designed for first-year students, or the usual advanced seminars. This alternative is inviting in many ways, but I fear that, inevitably, two undesirable consequences would follow: (1). Since our resources are not unlimited, even though they may be expanded from the present level, the use of some resources to give the rather elementary lecture courses would, necessarily, decrease the time and effort that the faculty members could otherwise give to the students entering with a good background in economics; (2) The fact that the graduate department would be supplying a pretty complete series of lectures in the various subjects on this level would tend to discourage the better undergraduate schools from maintaining high standards in their economics teaching. This would particularly be the case if students coming here with good undergraduate training in economics were required or allowed to attend these general lecture courses, and I think that experience indicates that this is what would happen: Word would get back to the undergraduate colleges that there is no particular point in working too hard on students who hope to go on for graduate economics work since they will have to, or will be induced to, or will allow themselves to spend a good deal of time in the graduate school going over, at much the same pace and with much the same intensity, the same material they covered in their undergraduate courses. To a certain extent, I believe this hypothetical situation I outlined has already developed in fact it will simply be intensified if we do not set up some sort of professional standards for admission.

The other alternative is to require that a student show a certain degree of proficiency in the elementary subjects of economics before he is admitted to the graduate school. This might be done simply on showing of courses taken and grades given, but I should prefer to work toward a system of entrance examinations without any requirements at all concerning specific undergraduate courses. We would be more sure that we were getting people with the kind of background desired and we would also thereby allow individuals to qualify, if they were able enough to do so, on the basis of study without taking courses. Assuming that the department had the same total resources and manpower is under the first alternative, these resources could then be thrown wholly into the training of graduate students in small groups through individual conferences, on research projects, etc. The resulting rise in the standard of our graduate teaching and in the quality of our product, as embodied in the successful Ph.D. Candidates — and also indeed, in those who get the Master’s degree — would, in my opinion, be marked. Moreover, since all of the graduate students would have shown proficiency in the elementary branches of economics, the could and should be encouraged to branch out in allied fields of graduate work: philosophy, psychology, etc. This alternative, however, has the disadvantage of borrowing from the graduate school able students who have taken little or no economics in their undergraduate days. I look upon this I look upon this as a necessary cost that must be paid if we are really to step up, in any marked degree, the quality and intensity of our graduate training. I wish it did not have to be paid, but I think that we shall be unrealistic if we think that we can change the present situation greatly without incurring that cost. It would, of course, still be possible for an able student, who had decided that he wanted to switch to economics, to get enough economics to pass the entrance examinations by six months or so of intensive study by himself. Only the very able ones could do this, but I doubt whether we should make much effort to get the merely average student who has had no economics at all in his undergraduate days.

 

 

  1. Standards of admission to graduate study in economics should be reviewed with the Office of Admissions. Tightening up may be possible, but fairly liberal principles of admission should prevail for the present.

 

Arthur F. Burns

I Agree.

 

Carl Goodrich

Yes

 

Carl S. Shoup

If we follow the first alternative outlined in number 1 above, I should agree that the general standards of admission should be tightened up somewhat. If the second alternative is followed, the nature of the qualifying examinations would pretty much settled this question.

 

  1. A nuclear program of first-year courses is to be planned. Provision should be made for some flexibility, but most students would be expected to take three or four basic first-year courses (including theory, statistics, money and banking, and economic history). Requirements in these courses would be fairly rigorous, and all students would take examinations and receive letter grades. A special reading course might be taken in view of a basic course by the student already reasonably well-prepared in that subject.

 

Arthur F. Burns

I agree with some interpretations and qualifications. (a) The essential thing is that in his first year a student attend to certain basic courses (a list to be discussed). (b) If a student has had satisfactory training at college in any one or all of these courses (the latter, of course, is rather unlikely), he should not be required to take them again. (c) Whether letter grades are to be given in these courses should be decided on the basis of the general policy in regard to letter grades. Note also that there are bound to be second-and third-year students in the basic courses. (d) Special reading courses are a very doubtful educational expedient, unless the faculty is willing to give real time to the work.

 

Carter Goodrich

On the whole, yes, as long there is 5 to provide flexibility and provided that at some stage we really encourage a considerable number of our students to take relevant work outside the Department.

 

Carl S. Shoup

The program of first-year courses is necessary only under the first alternative in number 1. A student who is already reasonably well prepared in a subject should not, I think, be required to take even a special reading course. He should, instead, be admitted at once to the advanced seminars.

 

 

  1. M.A. candidates should be required to have letter grades of B or better in courses carrying 21 points of credit. Department members should be requested to test first-year students systematically and grade rigorously.

 

A.F. Burns

I am inclined to agree, but I do not expect very much from this proposal. It may merely mean that we will now say B where we formerly said P.

 

Carter Goodrich

Like Walton Hamilton on monogamy, “I suppose I’d vote for it but I’ll be damned if I’d electioneer for it.”

 

Carl S. Shoup

I suggest that we give only a “P” grade with the understanding that the passing level is “B” rather than “C”. Under the first alternative in number 1, I would be willing to go so far as to require passing grades in all of the thirty points, both for candidates for M:A. and for those who are not taking the M.A. but want to go on to the Ph.D. If we are to assume real responsibility for the product that we turn out, I do not see how we can afford to give a degree to anybody who is not good enough to pass all of the courses that he takes. (Do the medical schools give degrees to people who are unable to pass all of the courses?)

 

  1. We should provide seminar courses for first-year students of outstanding ability and satisfactory preparation. Admission would be by consent of the instructor. Admission would be restricted to men of clear promise. Such a man might have a first-year program consisting of three basic courses and two seminars.

 

A. F. Burns

I think it is desirable to admit qualified first-year students to seminars. But it would be unwise and impractical to run one special seminar for first-year students and another for second-year students. It is an artificial distinction. (However, it might be well to organize a seminar for M.A. students who are writing their theses, one requirement (among others) for admission being that a student have a definite topic that he already has done a little work on and that he expects to complete within the year. This suggestion raises serious questions as to administration, teaching load, etc.)

 

Carter Goodrich

Yes. These seminars would not in all case have to be for first-year students only.

 

Carl S. Shoup

This problem is covered in the discussion under number 1 above. I should add that even under the second alternative, I should visualize fairly frequent and rigorous examinations of some kind or other to be sure that the graduate student was not losing his grasp of his tools of analysis and his basic information, and was, indeed, improving them as he went along.

 

  1. There should be a rigorous weeding out of graduate students at the end of the first graduate year. At the end of the spring term a committee of the department should review the records of all candidates for degrees. Only those of clear merit should be permitted to carry forward studies for the doctorate. We should have a restricted group of second and third-year graduate students of high ability.

 

A. F. Burns

I agree heartily.

 

Carter Goodrich

Yes, decidedly.

 

Carl S. Shoup

I agree with this proposal, whether under the first or second alternatives in number 1 above.

 

  1. We should consider introducing comprehensive written matriculation examinations, to come before more than 45 residence credits have been acquired.

 

A. F. Burns

I feel handicapped because I don’t know precisely what matriculation means or involves. Would the comprehensive examination come six months after a student has been encouraged to try for the doctorate? If so, is the interval too short?

 

Carter Goodrich

Not with this timing. It would be too late for the privileges of matriculation and I think too early for a comprehensive test. Possibly such examinations might supplement the oral on subjects and replace certification.

 

Carl S. Shoup

I agree that it is desirable to have comprehensive written examinations from time to time through the graduate work (see comments under numbers 4 and 5 above).

 

 

  1. Doctoral candidates should be required to pass a third year in residence or in an approved research position. This year should be given to rigorous research training, under the supervision of the department.

 

Arthur F. Burns

I agree if “Rigorous research training” means the writing of a dissertation on the premises, or at least working on it for a year under the supervision of the department. But there is a good deal to think through before making a definite proposal. For example, would the orals have to be taken before this research year?

 

Carter Goodrich

Yes, as an ideal to press for as rapidly as possible. In my judgment, this is the direction that promises the most significant improvement.

 

Carl S. Shoup

This is an excellent idea; if doctoral candidates would pass a third year in residence or in an approved research position, many of our difficulties at the thesis level would disappear.

 

 

  1. A sum equivalent to approximately 10 per cent of the departmental budget for salaries should be allocated to research. This would be available to members of the department for employment of research assistants on research activities approved by a departmental committee on research, and for meeting other research costs. It is to be expected that some portion of this research fund could be used for the employment of doctoral candidates during their period of internship.

 

Arthur F. Burns

Clearly, financial provision for research work is important. I am not sufficiently familiar with the needs of the department (even its boundaries: is the college included?) to have any judgment as to a specific figure. The whole problem should be surveyed before definite recommendations are made.

 

Carter Goodrich

I am not sure of the ten per cent, but I like the general idea. Something of this sort must be done to make 8 possible.

 

Carl S. Shoup

I do not think there would be a marked increase in the research work under this proposal (to allocate, say, 10 per cent of the departmental budget to research) since it does not touch what seems to me the real problem; namely, the desire of many faculty members — especially in the younger group — to supplement their University salaries by research fees and salaries. It is possible that the solution may be found in some form of split salary schedule whereby the faculty member is paid a certain basic amount, viewed as compensation chiefly for teaching services, and, upon application, might be granted an additional amount as compensation for devoting his time to unpaid research, thus foregoing outside paid activities. The tendency to grant the supplementary amount almost automatically to anybody who happened not to be doing outside work would be a real difficulty, but it might be met by having the supplementary amounts granted only upon approval by some outside board, specially constituted for this purpose.

 

 

  1. The department should consider adding the following courses to its curriculum:

1. First-year graduate course in money and banking
2. A course in accounting, designed to meet the needs of economists
3. A course in comparative economic systems (to be given in cooperation with the School of Business)
4. An additional course in international economics (subject matter to be adapted to that of the present course on international trade).

 

Arthur F. Burns

10a. Definitely yes

10b. Probably yes. But the man must precede the course.

10c. Probably, no. Who is an expert on such questions? I can’t think of any. I doubt if the department ought to try to develop one, and I doubt if it would succeed if it tried (the man, if he is any good, would soon specialize). If there is a gap here, we might perhaps try a lecture course to be given by several specialists and coordinated by some instructor. This has at least the negative advantage that the department’s hands will not be tied.

10d. Probably, yes. I would want to know the scope of the course before expressing a more definite opinion.

 

Carter Goodrich

Certainly d, probably the others.

 

Carl S. Shoup

I should like to discuss these prospective courses further before venturing an opinion, especially with respect to the first-year course in money and banking. I believe there is no unnecessary duplication in this field already than in almost other part of our curriculum.

 

 

Source: Columbia University Archives.Columbiana. Department of Economics Collection. Box 1. Folder: “Committee on Instruction”.