Ec. Dept Approves Minors Proposal

The Economics Department, already home to the largest number of undergraduate concentrators, voted unanimously at a meeting Tuesday to open its doors to students interested in pursuing a secondary field in economics.

The decision means members of the Class of 2007 may be able to graduate with mastery of the dismal science on their transcripts.

The Economics Department will submit a formal proposal to the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) “shortly,” according to Professor of Economics James H. Stock, the department chair.

“If the proposal is relatively straightforward, it could be approved quickly,” said Assistant Dean of the College Stephanie H. Kenen, who is organizing the approval process of secondary fields.

The proposal recommends that a student be required to take a total of six half courses in economics—two of which must be the two semesters of Social Analysis 10, “Principles of Economics” and one of which must be either intermediate microeconomics or intermediate macroeconomics. The student would choose the remaining three half courses from among courses listed in, or cross-listed with, economics.

The decision comes nearly a month after more than 30 departments submitted secondary-field proposals to the EPC. Departments that missed the fall deadline might have to wait until after Feb. 15 for consideration in the spring.

Kenen said that if the EPC cannot approve the proposal by spring shopping period, the committee would try to approve the proposal in time for the spring filing deadline for seniors.

“We knew that the Economics Department had been debating the question of whether to offer a secondary field or not, so we were just waiting to hear their decision,” Kenen said.

At a full Faculty meeting last spring, Freed Professor of Economics Caroline M. Hoxby ’88 said that while her department was “glad to teach any student who wants to learn economics,” she and her colleagues were worried that a quick increase in the number of students taking economics could swamp the department’s resources.

“At this point, I want to say we would hesitate to add an economics secondary field,” Hoxby said at the time.

At Tuesday’s meeting, not a single professor made an argument against adding a secondary field in economics.

“There was no dissension,” Visiting Professor of Economics Jeffrey Miron said. “It won’t hurt the department. It will just spread the faculty we’ve got over more students, and since we’ve got a huge ratio of students to faculty, we’re very concerned about that.”

“The meeting could not have been less contentious,” Glimp Professor of Economics Edward Glaeser said. “The consensus in the room was that there would only be a mild increase in enrollment. We just thought it was important to give students this option.”

All academic advising will remain the responsibility of a student’s primary concentration.

“We will be happy to provide information and talk to them,” Miron said of students pursuing a secondary field in economics, “but there’s not supposed to be any new, formal apparatus to deal with advising.”

While some students will opt for a secondary field in economics, others thinking about economics as a concentration might now consider pursuing a secondary field in economics and concentrating in another area instead.

Whitney S. F. Baxter ’07, an economics concentrator, said he would have concentrated in sociology or psychology if he could have pursued a secondary field in economics.

“If I had to do it all again, I’m more interested in the applications of the economic toolset in society,” Baxter said.

Beren Professor of Economics N. Gregory Mankiw, who teaches Social Analysis 10, one of the most popular undergraduate courses, said he did not expect enrollment in his course to dramatically change as a result of the secondary-field option.

The big question is the extent to which a secondary field in economics would affect enrollment in intermediate-level economics courses, Mankiw added.

“My guess is that it will have very little effect on Ec 10 enrollment,” said Mankiw, whose course enrolls more than 900 students.

“It’s a question as to what the net effect will be,” Mankiw said. “I truly hope it does encourage more people to take economics.” he added.

—Staff writer Johannah S. Cornblatt can be reached at jcornbl@fas.harvard.edu.