Ec Honors Juniors to Have Tutors Next Year

Tutorial in the Economics Department will be restored next year for honors juniors for the first time since the war, Professor Arthur Smithies, next year's department head, announced last night.

All juniors concentrating in Economics with grades in the top four rankings will become eligible for tutorial next fall, Smithies said. He also reported that senior tutorial will be strengthened next year so that it will not have the "perfunctory character" that it has had in the past few years.

At the end of the war, the Economics Department completely abandoned its tutorial program because of its large enrollment and lack of a sufficient number of tutors. In 1948, the Department restored tutorial for honors seniors only.

The Faculty had pretty well restricted tutorial in the spring of 1946, and the Economics Department discontinued it altogether. Economics 10a, a course in thesis writing, was substituted. But this was also abandoned in the spring of 1948 as not "tutorial enough."

Decreased Enrollment

The decreased enrollment in the field of Economics has encouraged it to expand tutorial next year. In 1948 there were 748 students concentrating in Economics; in 1949 there were 640. This year the enrollment dropped to 460. An even smaller number is expected next year, since this year's freshman class is considerably smaller than the graduating senior class.

Professor Harold H. Burbank, present head of the department, said that the Economics Department has always been sympathetic to the tutorial program, but was forced to curtail it because of an inadequate number of qualified tutors for the large number of honors candidates.

At present, there are 77 students taking tutorial in the Economics Department.