Economics: Undergraduate Program Undergoes Extensive Re-Evaluation

C. P. Snow, British scientist and author, recently called attention to what he termed the problem of two cultures in our society--the gap in understanding between the traditional humanities and social sciences on the one hand and modern science and technology on the other. Both exist side by side, yet remain intellectually divorced in our modern society. This dichotomy serves well in considering the difficulties surrounding the discipline of economics, for its midway position in such a scheme is indicative of its problems.

The subject matter of economics is the productive system, with all its relations to the world of technology. The concern of economics, however, is this system's role in society and its effect on men, their livelihood, and their institutions. Not an integrator of the two cultures, nevertheless it must span the separation.

The Economics Department is currently undergoing a crisis. It has failed up to now to accommodate both elements in a coherent program. The result is strikingly demonstrated by the flight of undergraduate concentrators from the field. In less than a decade the number has declined by over half; from 709 in 1949 to 340 in 1958. Although the decline may partially reflect a nationwide tendency, it also is the result of the confusion and frustration attending the undergraduate program here, as the instruction gyrates widely from verbal triviality to mathematical incomprehensibility.

Though economics stands mid-way between two cultures, it is its similarity to the natural sciences that causes the greatest problems. Professional economics shares with the sciences an analytic technique "remote from the common experience of the layman and a language that is principally mathematical," to use the words the Bruner Committee applied to the natural sciences. And to judge from the current trend this will become increasingly so.

Another similarity with science is that the study of economics is often cumulative, thereby necessitating an extensive introduction to provide the requisite basic knowledge. These are the same problems with which the Bruner Report was concerned in the teaching of natural sciences in a liberal arts program. That report dealt primarily with the problem of the non-concentrator in science--the General Education courses in natural sciences. The Economics Department, however, because of the interest of its concentrators, encounters the same problems throughout its program.

Some of the concentrators are presumably economists, and the Department little wishes to discourage their interests. The vast majority, however, will be lawyers, doctors, and even, despite the Department's hostility, businessmen.

A final similarity with the sciences lies in the difficulty both areas have in getting the proper senior faculty to teach undergraduate courses. Because of the vast gap between the level of professional work and the elementary nature of undergraduate work--a gap so great that the difference is not only of degree of sophistication but of content--many professors are either reluctant to teach undergraduates or incapable of making the transition.

The combination of the inherent difficulties in teaching economics in a liberal arts college plus the almost total neglect of the undergraduate program in past years has resulted in the precipitous decline in concentrators. The hope of halting that decline lies at the bottom of the Department's plans to re-design the undergraduate program, which are now under way.

Arthur Smithies, Chairman of the Department, met frequently this summer and again this fall with a Department Committee on Undergraduate Education appointed last spring. Headed by Professor Dunlop, members of the group are Professors Chamberlain, Duesenberry, and Meyer, Assistant Professors Gill and Lefeber, and instructors Baer and Berman.

The results of this increased attention are already apparent in changes made this year in Economics 1 and Junior tutorial, Ec. 98. Historical and topical subjects have gained emphasis at the expense of some of the more theoretical and analytical material, which is now consigned to Sophomore tutorial. In former years economic theory was presented in a historical vaccum without any consideration of the evolution of the economic system from a local medieval subsistence economy to the modern international productive system. The first month of Economics 1 is now devoted to filling this gap. Other changes include an increased emphasis upon the problem of underdeveloped countries and the substitution of a three-week study of the economy of the Soviet Union for the former week's survey of comparative economic systems.

Along with these changes in content have come those of organization. Gone is the "parade of stars" which formerly masqueraded as lectures. Instead there are now blocs of integrated lectures covering single aspects of the course, for example the series of lectures the first month that Professor Gill gave on economic history. Another long-standing distinguishing trait of the course, its extensive use of teaching fellows, is also on the way out.

The changes are clearly tending to make the course less an introduction into the Department and more a General Education course in the social sciences. The stress, in the attempt to interest the non-concentrator through presentation of historical and topical issues, is now upon political economy rather than upon economics. In a liberal arts college such a solution to the problems affecting the discipline seems to be the most logical and rewarding for an introductory course.

Faced, however, with the task of teaching its concentrators some of the methods and techniques of the economist, the department has moved towards increasing utilization of Sophomore and Junior tutorial for this purpose. The analytic material ejected from Ec. 1 has found refuge in Sophomore tutorial, while Ec. 98 (Junior tutorial) although heavily biased towards the empirical is the only course in the Department offering an overall view of the field.

But there is this year, in addition, an increased amount of attention towards policy questions and topical economic issues in both courses, a reflection of the prevalent belief that meaningful economics on the undergraduate level should relate, as Smithies said, "to the great public issues of the day." In practice these two elements--the analytical tools and the social framework in which they must fit--still remain divorced in these courses, but at least the attempt is being made to integrate them.

The most perplexing problems facing the Department occur in the area of the middle group courses. To some extent they are aggravated by the Department's quantative approach to the number of concentrators, with its concern to retain the marginally interested student within the Department. And again the nature of the field, with its disparity between advanced professional techniques and an undergraduate approach, intensifies the problem that confronts many other departments in the College--that of withstanding the polar attractions of pre-professional orientation or of superficiality. Concerning the middle course group area, Dunlop's committee has only just begun its discussions, but the major alternatives are well known.

There is general agreement, according to Dunlop, that the undergraduate program as part of a liberal arts program should not be a pre-professional training. Disagreement, however, becomes manifest quickly after that statement. Many members of the department, for instance, feel that the best concentrators, the potential future economists, should be allowed to take courses on the graduate level, and indeed should be encouraged to do so. In effect these students would be obtaining a pre-professional training, but the supporters of this proposal feel that this is the only way whereby the interest of the economics-oriented student can be prevented from obstruction by the triviality of normal undergraduate economics courses. At present many undergraduates already take graduate level courses, but the new plan would make a sharper distinction between those who do and do not.

Another group in Department, however, voices the opinion that the College student should not clutter his schedule with pre-professional courses, but rather use his time to study such fields as music, literature, and mathematics. If a student does do graduate work later in economics he will have no trouble picking up whatever advanced analytic tools he needs at that time, while if he does not intend to do so there is no sense in wasting his time with a lot of specialized technique, this bloc maintains.

One proposal, approved by nearly all and sorely needed, is to introduce a greater flexibility into the program through increased use of half-year courses. Presently over half of the seventeen courses offered run from September to June. Many of these, it is admitted, could be pared down to a half-year.

This leads to the proposal for a new type course to replace the far-flung surveys. They would probe smaller areas, but penetrate deeper. Based on the combined desire to attract more students, and the premise that the goal is a more intelligent understanding of the public issues of the past and present, the courses would be designed around the topical approach. Examples would be courses on the corporation, on the economic impact of government activity, the present course on the Soviet Union, a half-year course on underdeveloped countries. In discussing this approach, Dunlop stressed that these would not be "watered down versions of the analytic approach but a new crosscut." It should be noted that, while not analytical, these courses would still include some quantitative analysis or even simple economic models, but these methods would not become ends or major concerns of the courses.

Another proposal is to set up a core program in the Department. There is, in fact, almost one already. Ec. 141--Money and Banking, Ec. 161--Industrial Organization, and Ec. 181--Industrial Relations, cover the major areas of the field and at least two of them are necessary to handle Generals well. A real core program where all concentrators would progress from one level of the next has many advantages; it provides a common background which the lecturer can assume, gives a common training, and insures that a student will not neglect a vital aspect of the field. But it also has disadvantages, the primary one being the difficulty of handling non-concentrators who have not had this core. Separate sections in a course might be a simple answer here. A more difficult problem is that of time. Ec. 1, 98, and 99 already constitute three-fifths of the required courses. A central core program of another three semesters would aggravate the present lack of flexibility.

For the Economics Department this is a time of discussion, but it must soon reach the hour of decision. Certainly the present situation is not tolerable. By its over-concern with theoretical models and tools, the Department has separated itself from the true materials of a liberal arts education in economics. It should not, however, allow itself to reach the other extreme, in its quest for concentrators, of reducing the content of the courses to a point where an economics student is no more qualified to discuss and solve an issue of political economy than an intelligent government concentrator.

There is little question of the importance of economics today, with its strategic position between the technological productive system and the literary tradition of the social sciences, and with its unique combination of the empirical and theoretical. It remains only to be taught well.