Columbia. Memo for Planning Graduate Course Work. Vickrey, 1965

What is particularly striking about the following memo written by Columbia University’s economics department chairman William S. Vickrey concerning the academic year 1965-66 is that “macroeconomics” is clearly a word not used in fields or course titles. Macroeconomics is a coming attraction for 1966-67.

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

September 18, 1965

TO: Incoming (first year) graduate students
FROM: William S. Vickrey, Chairman

SUBJECT: Planning your course work for 1965-66

This memorandum is a supplement to two earlier memoranda addresses to incoming and continuing students — dated respectively April 19, 1965 and Labor Day 1965 — which you are presumed to have read. The present supplementary memorandum carries information and advice which otherwise would have to be conveyed orally to each of you in your registration interview with a member of the departmental Committee on Student Progress.

You may disregard the present memorandum in either of two contingencies. If (a) you are coming to us as a transfer student who has had a substantial equivalent of our first-year program of graduate studies, your problems are apt to fall outside the range the memorandum contemplates, and must be dealt with ad hoc. Or if (b) you have already made up your mind to terminate your graduate work with an MA, your problems are much simpler than here contemplated. But if you are now beginning graduate study in economics and are planning a doctoral program (or are planning an MA program which will hold the door open for doctoral work in case you later wish to continue), please study this memorandum and sketch on the attached sheet a plan of course work which takes it into account, as basis for your registration interview.

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As was noted in the mimeographed memorandum of April 19, the academic year 1965-66 is one of transition between the curriculum pictured in the printed Graduate Faculties Bulletin and that sketched for 1966-67 in the mimeograph. Your problem of program-planning has two main sets of objectives: (A) You should aim to arrive as early as possible in your graduate career at a working command of the professional basics which correspond to the four “certificates of proficiency” referred to at the beginning of the statement of new PhD requirements in the memorandum of April 19. Such a command will be presumed in all courses in the number-series 6000, 8000 and 9000; hence both your choice of courses and your ability to master them will be limited until these basics are under control. Furthermore, the earlier you earn your certificates, the more you reduce the danger of an unmanageable peak load arising from simultaneous preparation for these certificates and for the oral examination in subjects. And (B) you should seek in the first year to make an effective beginning with at least one or two of the sequences of more specialized courses which are relevant to fields you are likely to want to present on the oral examination. Since for most first-year students pursuit of objective (A) could readily be made more than a full-time job and pursuit of objective (B) more than a half-time job, you will probably find yourself seeking a compromise– a typical economists’ resource-allocation problem, with your working time as the scarce resource.

Your search for an optimum combination of courses will be conditioned by several peculiarities of the curriculum in this transitional year 1965-66:

1. Because of the absence on sabbatical leave of Professor A.F. Burns, we do not offer the business-fluctuations sequence G4601-02.
2. The sequence on monetary theory and policy takes the form this year of a 6-point course (G4711-12) in the first semester. This course is also the closest equivalent available this year to the macro-economics course G4213 [Note: the “4” here is an uncertain reading of an overstruck number] which will be offered from 1966-67 onwards.
3. Several major subject-matter sequences (those in public finance, international economics, and development-and-planning) are being rearranged to put their logical starting-point in February 1966 (with continuation into autumn 1966). This change does not debar first-year students from all work in these fields: Professor Shoup is prepared to discuss proposals to take G6806 before G6805; and in the international field, students who lack specific undergraduate preparation are presented with a preliminary course (G4901x) in the autumn. Yet on the whole, students to whom these fields are especially interesting will find their time tight in the second semester.
4. On the other hand, a number of other major subject-matter sequences remain on a schedule under which the logical starting-point is September 1965. Students who are especially interested in these fields will find their time tight in the first semester in case either (a) the Placement Examination puts them in G4210 or (b) they find the monetary-economics course G4711-12 urgent.

You will see from these considerations that it would not be rational for your registration adviser to impose a prefabricated program without regard to your special interests and qualifications. Neither would it be rational for him simply to initial any program you happened to lay before him: it is our experience that a large proportion even of the best-prepared students present preliminary study-plans which would store up trouble for later stages of their doctoral work. So please rough out a preliminary plan (or if you prefer, two alternatives), and come to the registration interview prepared both to explain your proposals and to accept your adviser’s help in bringing them closer to your underlying needs.

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To illustrate the foregoing analysis of the logic of course-programming, here are two hypothetical plans, corresponding to two types of interests and qualifications, lying fairly far apart in the continuum of which our advisers have experience.

Program (a):

Subject-matter	Autumn 1965		Spring 1966		Hours committed, as of autumn 1965	Comment
	No.	Pts.	No.	Pts.
Program (a): for a well-prepared student of quantitative orientation, with strong interests already established in public finance and in international economics
Micro-economic analysis	G6213x	3	G6214y	3	Mon., Wed. 12:00-12:50	Required
Economic statistics	G4411x	3	G4412y	3	Tu., Th. 9:00- 9:50	Also lab. Wed.
Monetary economics	G4711x G4712x	6	——	–	(Mon., Wed. 10:00-10:50 Tu., Th. 2:10- 3:00)
Public finance	——	–	G6805y	3	——————–
International economics	——	–	G6903y	3	——————–
		12		12

Plus one other course, with a presumption for economic history of US.

Program (b):

Program (b): for a student of good general background who was not an economics major as an undergraduate, and leans toward historical-institutional studies.
Micro-economic analysis	G4210	6	G4212y	3	Mon., Wed. 12:00-12:50	Also lab. Fri.
Economic history of US	G4311x	3	G4312y	3	Tu., Th. 10:00-10:50
Industrial organization	G4251x	3	G4252y	3	Mon., Wed. 1:10- 2:00
American ec. thought	——	–	G4232y	3	——————–
		12		12

Plus one other course, with a presumption for economic statistics. Macro-economics (and statistics if not taken in 1965-66) urgent business for 1966-67.

Source:  Columbia University Libraries. Manuscript Collections. Department of Economics Collection. Carl Shoup Materials, Box 11, Folder “Economics Memoranda”.

Image Source: August Rodin’s Le Penseur at Columbia University. InSapphoWeTrust from Los Angeles, California, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.