Economics Professors Praise Report Findings

This is the second in a series of articles dealing with a recent report by the Faculty Committee on the Behavioral Sciences at Harvard.

Three professors of Economics last night joined in a general endorsement of changes recently proposed for their department by the Faculty Committee on the Behavioral Sciences. The committee's report praised the work of the Department, but recommended the establishment of a Department of Statistics and certain revisions in research and instruction.

The study called for the creation of a small statistics department to reduce duplication in parallel mathematical work in the social sciences.

In addition the suggested department would foster a graduate training and research program leading to a Ph.D. degree in Statistics.

Arthur Smithies, Chairman of the Department of Economics, was "very much in favor of a statistics department" and said that "we've gone ahead with improving our own statistical work" while the University considers setting up the new department.

John K. Galbraith, professor of Economics, called the need for such a department a "matter of first-rate importance. Our statistical work has lagged badly in the last 15 or 20 years," he said.

Another Economics professor, however, Seymour E. Harris, stated that although a statistics department could correlate the techniques used in the Behavioral sciences, the content of case studies would vary widely in different areas. On this account he doubted the wisdom of expanding resources for such a "service course."

Galbraith and Harris agreed with the committee finding that "the economic content of courses open to freshmen is so small that the student who does decide to concentrate in Economics is as often as not flying blind."

Harris hoped that a General Education course with "economic overtones" would be established, while Galbraith wanted Economics 1 to be opened to freshmen.

The report also called attention to the "general tendency in the Economics Department to leave undergraduate teaching to the junior members of the staff." Galbraith agreed with the committee, but saw little cause, if any, for concern on this account. "Junior members are sometimes better teachers than senior men," he said.

Harris, however, said that "a good many senior members of the Department do teach undergraduates. I myself do more work with undergraduates than with graduate students. I even tutor sophomores," he said.

"Unfortunately the pressures of administrative and public service work limit the amount of time a faculty member can devote to original research," Harris said.