Author: Irwin Collier

In 1912 the economics department of Harvard initiated a major study of economics instruction in the University that was completed in 1916 and published as: 

The Teaching of Economics in Harvard University. A Report Presented by the Division of Education at the Request of the Department of Economics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1917. 248 pages.

I will of course rummage through the report for tidbits to post in Economics in the Rear-View Mirror, but for now, visitors at least have a link that will take them directly to the published study together with the following reflections of the President of Harvard College at the time A. Lawrence Lowell that were stimulated by the study. One does not really feel 100 years away from Lowell’s time, give-or-take a presentation software package, a MOOC or some learning platform (e.g. “Blackboard”).

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From the Annual Report for 1915-16 of the President of Harvard College, A. Lawrence Lowell:

One of the most interesting things done in the College during the last few years has been an invitation given by the Department of Economics to the Department of Education to investigate the undergraduate instruction in economics with a view to its improvement. Such a request to another body was not needed to prove the open mind, the desire to improve, the willingness to change its methods and to deal with its instruction as a systematic whole, which has been conspicuous in the case of the Department of Economics; but it is highly significant and full of promise. The investigation, which occupied a couple of years, has been very elaborate, making a large use of statistics, of questionnaires to instructors, students and graduates, of examination questions designed to test the progress of students in their capacity to deal with problems, and of other methods of inquiry that need not be described here. It has touched many different aspects of instruction, some of them of value far beyond the department immediately concerned. These things will appear when the report is published, but it may not be out of place to mention a couple of them here.

The fundamental questions in all education are the object sought and the result attained. Is economics studied in college for the sake of its general educational value in training the mind and preparing for good citizenship, or with a view to its vocational utility in the student’s subsequent career; and how far does it actually fulfil each purpose? An answer to these questions was sought by means of questionnaires addressed to all students taking economic courses and to a thousand graduates, beginning as far back as the Class of 1880 and comprising men engaged in every kind of occupation. Of course all the persons addressed did not reply, and many of the answers were too vague to be of use. Yet among the replies there were a large number definite enough to be of great value. Of the students, about one-third intended to take up a business of some kind; more than one-half as many were looking forward to the law; while the rest were distributed among all the different careers of which an undergraduate can conceive. Of all these men, about two-fifths gave as their chief reason for electing economics its value in training the mind or in understanding public and social problems; while even of those intending to adopt some occupation for which the subject is popularly supposed to offer a preparation, only about one-fifth expected to find what they learned directly helpful, although many more trusted that it would be of indirect assistance.

More interesting still are the replies from the graduates, for they had been enabled to measure what they had acquired by the light of experience in their various pursuits. The men in almost every occupation speak more commonly of the general cultural or civic benefit that they obtained than of vocational profit. This is notably true of the lawyers, and in a less degree also of the business men. The only two classes of graduates who speak with equal frequency of the two kinds of benefit derived are the journalists and the farmers; but they are few in number, and their answers do not appear to have been closely discriminating in this respect.

Results like those brought out by the inquiry of the Department of Education have a direct bearing upon the teaching of Economics, and the position of the subject in the undergraduate course of study. If the chief value of economics, is vocational, it ought to be taught mainly from that point of view, and undergraduates ought not to be generally encouraged to elect it who will not pursue some vocation to which it leads. But if, on the other hand, its principal benefit lies in training men to think clearly, and to analyze and sift evidence in the class of problems that force themselves upon public attention in this generation, then the greater part of the courses ought to be conducted with that object, and it is well for every undergraduate to study the subject to some extent. An attempt to aim at two birds with the same stone, is apt to result in hitting neither. Moreover, a confusion of objectives is misleading for the student. An impression often arises, without any sufficient basis, that some particular subject is an especially good preparation for a certain profession, and the theory is sometimes advocated warmly by the teachers of the subject from a laudable desire to magnify the importance of their field. Students naturally follow the prevailing view without the means of testing its correctness; not infrequently, as they afterwards discover, to the neglect of something they need more. The traditional path to eminence at the English bar has been at Oxford the honor school in literae humaniores, at Cambridge the mathematical tripos, and since the strongest minds in each university habitually took these roads, the results appeared to prove the proposition. It is well, therefore, that we should seek the most accurate and the most comprehensive data possible on the effect of particular studies upon men in various occupations, and upon different classes of minds. Such data are not easy to procure and are still more difficult to interpret, but when obtained they are of great value, and would throw light upon pressing educational questions about which we talk freely and know almost nothing.

Another matter with which the Department of Education dealt in their inquiry, again by the use of the questionnaire, is the relative value attached by students to the various methods of instruction. These were classified as lectures, class-room discussion, assigned reading, reports, essays or theses prepared by the student, and other less prominent agencies. Taken as a whole the students ascribed distinctly the greatest value to the reading, the next to the class-room discussion, placing lectures decidedly third, with reports and other exercises well below the first three. This order was especially marked in the case of the general introductory course known as Economics A. In the more advanced courses the order is somewhat changed. Even here the required reading is given the highest value, but the lectures in these courses are deemed more important than the class-room discussion. Among the better scholars in the advanced courses the value attributed to the lectures is, in fact, nearly as great as that ascribed to the assigned reading. These men also give to the reports, essays and theses a slightly greater importance than do the elementary and the inferior advanced students, although they do not place them on a par with the other three methods of instruction.

Answers of this kind are not infallible. There are always a considerable number of students who express no opinions, or whose opinions are not carefully considered. Nevertheless the replies are highly significant as indicating an impression—the impression of persons who, imperfect as their judgment may be, are after all the best judges, if not indeed the only judges, of what they have obtained from the different methods of instruction. In some ways the answers are unexpected. One would have supposed that class-room discussion would be of more value in an advanced course than in an elementary one. For it would presumably be remunerative in proportion as the members of the class possess information about the subject and a grasp of the principles involved. Probably the real reason for the relatively small importance attached to it by students in advanced courses is to be found in the fact that many of these courses are conducted mainly as lecture courses without much class-room discussion. The most illuminating fact that appears from the replies is the high value attached to the assigned reading as compared with the lectures. Even in the cases of the better scholars in the advanced courses it is not safe to assume an opinion that the lectures are of equal value with books, because they may be referring strictly to the reading formally assigned which is only a part of the reading that they do.

The problem of the relative value of books and lectures in higher education, or, for that matter, of books and direct oral teaching at school, is one that ought to receive very careful attention. The tendency for more than a generation, from the primary school to the university, has been to throw a greater emphasis on oral instruction as compared with study of the printed page. Half a century ago the boy at school and the student in college were habitually assigned a certain task, and the exercise in the class-room was in the main a recitation, the work of the teacher consisting chiefly in ascertaining whether the task had been properly performed, the set number of pages diligently and intelligently read, and in giving help over hard places or removing confusion in the pupil’s mind. But since that time the whole trend of education in all its grades has been towards in increase in the amount of direct instruction by the teacher. At school he or she talks to the class more and listens less than formerly, teaches it more directly, imparts more information. In the college or university the recitation has almost entirely disappeared, giving place mainly to lectures and in a smaller degree to class discussion. In fact, the impression among the general public, and in the minds of many academic people, is that the chief function of a professor is to give lectures, — not of course in the literal sense of reading something he has written, but imparting information directly to the class by an oral statement throughout the lecture hour.

Lectures are an excellent, and in fact an indispensable, part of university work, but it is possible to have too many of them, to treat them as the one vital method of instruction. This has two dangers. It tends to put the student too much in a purely receptive attitude of absorbing information poured out upon him, instead of compelling him to extract it from books for himself; so that his education becomes a passive rather than an active process. Lectures should probably be in the main a means of stimulating thought, rather than of imparting facts which can generally be impressed upon the mind more accurately and effectively by the printed page than by the spoken word.

Then again there is the danger that if lecture courses are regarded as the main object of the professors’ chair, the universities, and the departments therein, will value themselves, and be valued, in proportion to the number of lecture courses that they offer. This matter will bear a moment’s consideration, for it is connected with certain important general considerations of educational policy. To make the question clear, and point out its bearing upon our own problems, something may be said about the relations that exist between instruction in the College and in other departments of the University.

Many American universities have adopted a combined degree, whereby the earlier portion of the professional instruction in law, medicine, and other technical subjects, is taken as a part of the college course; and at the same time they maintain separate faculties for the college, or undergraduate academic department, and for the graduate school of arts and sciences. At Harvard we have gone on the opposite principle in both cases. We have separated each of the professional schools almost wholly from the college, with a distinct faculty and a distinct student life of its own. We have done this on the ground that a strictly professional atmosphere is an advantage in the study of a profession, and we believe that the earnestness, the almost ferociously keen interest, of the student body in our Law School, for example, has been largely due to this fact. We believe that the best results in both general and professional education are attained by a sharp separation between the two. On the other hand, we have not established a distinct faculty for the graduate school, but have the same faculty and to a great extent the same body of instruction for undergraduates and graduates, each man being expected to take such part of it as fits his own state of progress. We have done this because we have not regarded the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences as exclusively or distinctly a professional school for future teachers. If it were so, it would probably be necessary to give it more of a pedagogical character than it has today. Indeed there has appeared to be no serious disadvantage, such as exists in the case of a purely professional school, in our practice of not separating the graduate school wholly from the college. Although there is a single faculty the two bodies of students are quite distinct, and the graduates take no part in the athletics or social activities of the men in college. They are in no danger of any lack of industry, nor do they suffer from contact with the college students taking courses primarily for graduates. The best Seniors who have reached the point of electing advanced courses are by no means inferior in capacity, education, or earnestness to the average graduate. And, on the other hand, competent undergraduates benefit greatly by following instruction that would not otherwise be open to them.

Our system, by closing professional education to undergraduates, obliges them to devote their college course entirely to academic studies; and at the same time it opens all academic instruction to undergraduates and graduates alike. By so doing it treats the whole list of academic courses as one body of instruction whereof the quantity can be readily measured and the nature perceived. In this way our system brings into peculiar prominence a question that affects the whole university policy in this country. A university, as its name implies, is an institution where all branches are studied, but this principle easily transforms itself into the doctrine that a university ought to offer systematic instruction in every part of every subject; and in fact almost all departments press for an increase of courses, hoping to maintain so far as possible a distinct course upon every sub-division of their fields. This is in large measure due to the fact that American graduate students, unlike German students, tend to select their university on account of the number and richness of the courses listed in the catalogue on their particular subjects, rather than by reason of the eminence of the professors who teach them. Some years ago it happened that a professor of rare distinction in his field, and an admirable teacher, who had a large number of graduate students in his seminar, accepted a chair in another university. His successors at his former post, however good, were by no means men with his reputation. Under these circumstances, one would have supposed that many of his pupils would have followed him, and that fresh students would have sought him in his new chair. But in fact the seminar at the place he left was substantially undiminished, and he had a comparatively small body of graduate students in the university to which he migrated.

The real reason for increasing the list of courses, though it is often not consciously recognized, is quite as much a desire to attract students as a belief in the benefit conferred on them after they come. The result has been a great expansion within the last score of years in the number of courses offered by all the larger universities. Counting two half-courses as equivalent to one full course, our Faculty of Arts and Sciences offered last year to undergraduates or graduates 417½ courses running throughout the year. Of these 67 were designated as seminars, where advanced students work together in a special field under the guidance of the professors. More will be said of these later. Some of the remaining 350½ were in reality of the same character, and others involved purely laboratory work; but most of them were systematic courses of instruction, mainly what are called, not always accurately, lecture courses. In addition, there were 119 more courses listed in the catalogue, but marked as being omitted that year. These are in the main courses designed to be given in alternate years, where the number of applicants is not large enough to justify their repetition annually. A student has thus an opportunity to take them at some time during his college career. They entail upon the instructor almost as much labor in preparation as the others, and are an integral part of the courses of instruction provided by the University. The total number of courses, therefore, offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was 536½, whereby something over 73 were in the nature of seminars.

Some years ago a committee of the Board of Overseers suggested that there were needless courses provided, and the Committee of the Faculty on Instruction examined the whole list, making careful inquiries of the members of the several departments, and reported that with one or two exceptions there were no courses for which good and sufficient reasons could not be given. The result of a similar inquiry would be the same today. There are few, if any, courses that could be seriously considered by anyone as useless or superfluous in themselves. Almost every one of them is intrinsically valuable, and a distinct contribution to the instruction in the subject. Nevertheless, it is a proper subject for consideration whether the policy of offering courses of instruction covering every part of every subject is wise. No European university attempts to do so. No single student can take them all in any large field and his powers would be deadened by a surfeit of instruction if he did. For the undergraduates a comparatively small array of staple courses on the most important portions of the subject, with a limited number of others on more highly specialized aspects thereof, is sufficient. For the graduate students who remain only a year to take the degree of Master of Arts, and who are doing much the same work as the more advanced Seniors, the same list of courses would be enough; and for those graduates who intend to become professors in universities and productive scholars it would probably be better, — beyond these typical specialized courses, which would suffice to show the method of approaching the subject — to give all the advanced instruction by means of seminars where the students work together on related, but not identical paths, with the aid of mutual criticism and under the guidance of the professors. Fewer courses, more thoroughly given, would free instructors for a larger amount of personal supervision of the students, would be better for the pupils; and would make it possible for the University to allow those members of the staff who are capable of original work of a high order more time for productive scholarship. Many a professor at the present day, under the pressure of preparing a new course, cannot find time to work up the discoveries he has made, or to publish a work throwing a new light on existing knowledge.

In making these suggestions there is no intention of urging a reduction of our existing schedule. But it is time to discuss the assumption, now apparently prevalent in all American universities, that an indefinite increase in the number of courses provided is to be aimed at in higher education. The question is whether that policy is not defective in principle, and whether we are not following it to excess, thereby sacrificing to it other objects equally, if not more, important.

Courses are merely a means to an end, and that end is the education of the student. One method of placing courses in their true light as a means of education is the provision of comprehensive examinations for graduation, covering the general field of the student’s principal work beyond the precise limits of the courses he has taken. This has long been done in the case of the doctorate of philosophy; and in the year covered by this report it was applied for the first time to undergraduates concentrating in the Division of History, Government and Economics. Only 24 students of the Class of 1917, who finished their work in three years and concentrated in this field, came under its operation; but they were numerous enough to give a definite indication of the working of the plan. To that extent the results were satisfactory. The examination papers were well designed for measuring the knowledge and grasp of the subject, with a large enough range of options to include the various portions of the field covered by the different candidates; and the examiners themselves were satisfied with the plan as a fair means of testing the qualification of the students. During the coming year a much larger number of men will come up for this comprehensive examination, which promises to mark a new departure in American college methods.

Source: Harvard University. Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College 1915-16 (Cambridge, 1917), pp. 11-19. Reprinted in Harvard Crimson, January 19, 1917.

Image Source: Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell from Harvard Class Album 1920.