Spoiler alert: you are about to encounter one of the least funny economics skits in the history of the genre, so this artifact is regrettably low on entertainment value. Still the six acts have a certain seven-acts-of-man structure: Act I (the department recruits), Act II ( advising the first-year student), Act III (graduate student complaints), Act IV (choosing guest speakers), Act V (general examinations), Act VI (job market).
After reading the skit, you might need a palate cleansing or better: for that purpose here are a few links to the key word “Funny Business” at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror that take you to some of the greatest hits of economics skits.
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ANOTHER TWO POINTS FOR THE FACULTY,
ANOTHER FOUL ON THE STUDENTS
A Christmas Drama (with suggestions for a cast), December 15, 1961
ACT I
(The curtain rises on a scene of [Edgar Cary] Brown, [Franklin Marvin] Fisher, [Charles Poor] Kindleberger and [Abraham J.] Siegel seated around a table reading applications.
SIEGEL: Here’s a guy who may be OK…No…the place is no good. A cow college. They average only 50 points a game.
BROWN: Here’s a good one.
FISHER: What’s his record?
BROWN: Pretty darn good. Worth at least tuition plus $500. Maybe $750.
FISHER: What’s his record?
BROWN: Pretty darn good. He’s from Podunk. And they’re pretty good. He was the best they had.
FISHER: How did he score, for crying out loud?
BROWN: He’s six-feet-five, weighs 195 pounds, and fast; he averaged 23.7 points a game. He has a great set shot, never misses from the foul line, and superb off the backboard. He’s just what we need in Graduate Economics at M.I.T.
ACT II
(An office: Siegel is advising a student.)
SIEGEL: For the first year I would take pretty standard fare: theory, history, statistics, finance, and international, plus of course the workshop. There’s no use trying to take too much. Pace yourself.
STUDENT (perhaps [Stephen Herbert] Hymer?): I don’t have much math. Why do I need to take statistics?
SIEGEL: Ando is very good. He doesn’t always make things completely clear, but you have to take statistics if you want to be able to handle averages, to work out the point per game and point per shot records; and you need probability to help compute odds on all the league games. Statistics is a must.
STUDENT: Why the history, finance and international?
SIEGEL: International is important. You ought to know how to schedule the Harlem Globetrotters, and who has the best chance in the Olympics. One of our best graduates played on the Oxford team against Poland and Czechoslovakia. That was Chuck Cooper, and it got him a job as Walter Heller’s assistant at the Council. Finance is important. When the gamblers start bribing players you need to know how to invest the funds. And history is vital. On the general exams they always ask who was James Naismith, the man who invented basketball. That’s for every student. The good students they ask when it was invented…of course 1891. And the very best students they ask where…past, Springfield, Mass. Remember, it’s not Springfield, Illinois. That’s Abe Lincoln.
STUDENT: OK. But tell me about the last one.
SIEGEL: Theory isn’t much. [Paul Anthony] Samuelson teaches about how to make inputs for two points, and when to dribble.
STUDENT: Samuelson teaches drivel?
ACT III
(A group of students, griping.)
STUDENT 1 (Francis Michel Bator?): This place is no good. It’s theory, theory, theory all the way. Anyone knows that the way to win at basketball is to practice. Practice makes perfect. Theory makes perfect fools. All you do is study and take exams. “Who was James Naismith? Who was Adam Yea-Smith? When do you chop down the tree?” Bah! I say we ought to study policy. With a two-point lead and three minutes to go, should you freeze the ball or plop in an input for an output of two points?
STUDENT 2 ([Paul Narcyz] Rosenstein-Rodan?): They tell me [Robert Merton] Solow has been converted from theory to policy. He is no longer interested in questions like whether the best set shot is an inverted rectangular parabola, but real issues, like the queuing problem: how many substitutes does a team need to field five men for an hour, with one personal foul every six minutes and four personal fouls per man disqualifying. If you have too many players on the bench you get unemployment. The team needs growth. Maybe you ought to add a man and play six.
STUDENT 3 ([Robert] Evans?): What’s bad is to have to play far away from the Sloan building. Those workshops on top on Walker and over in the Armory are OK, but they are too far away. We need the Ford Foundation to give us a workshop right here.
STUDENT 1: Haven’t you heard? The talk is that the new building to go up in the back lot is a library. But as I see its dimensions unfold- 90 feet by 50 – and transparent backboards and netting and grandstands, I can’t believe it’s a library. It must be a basketball court.
ACT IV
(A meeting of the G.E.A.)
RALPH BULL (played by [Robert Lyle] Bishop?): Do any of you fellows have suggestions for speakers besides Cousy, Russell, Jungle Jim Lusketoff, and that 6.8 outstanding economist, [John Kenneth] Galbraith, who can stand with his head coming up through the basket?
STUDENT B: What about Milton Friedman? He is under the five feet which some say is the minimum allowable in a monetary theorist, but he sure is good at the far-fetched shot.
STUDENT B: Why not get Clifford Odets?
RALPH BULL: Clifford Odets? Why him?
STUDENT B: Don’t you remember the famous line in “Awake and Sing”? “My brother Sam joined the Navy. He don’t know from nothin’, that dumb basketball player.” I want to know whether the emphasis is “that dumb basketball player” or “the [sic] dumb basketball player”. Are there any smart basketball players?
ACT V
KINDLEBERGER: As chairman of this exam, let me tell you that you have the right to pick the order of your exam. Do you want to start with Theory, or Statistics?
STUDENT (Samuelson?): I think I’ll start by jumping against Fisher, your professorship, sir. Ando’s the smaller, so I’ll take him last when I’m tired.
KINDLEBERGER: All right. (Student and Fisher face each other. Kindleberger blows whistle and throws imaginary ball. Cheers of amazement from faculty.)
FISHER: Very well. I have decided to let you combine Theory and Economic History.
STUDENT: Hey, Ref, your Ph.D.ship, sir, I’m not responsible for History. Isn’t that a foul?
KINDLEBERGER: I didn’t see nuthin’.
FISHER: Consider the population explosion of the last 150 years. Discuss the relative roles of (a) men and (b) women in this affair.
ANDO [Albert Keinosuke] : Good shot. That’s two points for our side.
STUDENT: I don’t know that, your cap-and-gownship, sir, but I know the roles are neither reflexive, symmetric, or transitive.
KINDLEBERGER: (blows whistle) Foul. You used big words in a generals. That’s only permitted the faculty.
FISHER: I’ll give Albert my free throw.
ANDO: (taking the foul shot) Please discuss the role of the nearly decomposable take-off in the application of a priori oligopoly theory to the A&P case.
STUDENT: Hey! You guys are ganging up on me.
ANDO: Well, you outnumber us in class.
STUDENT: (driving hard for basket) It can be set up as a nine-dimensional matrix problem and the latent roots dispensed with. I think the take-off is fine if done along the turnpike, watching out for model changes in passing cars.
ANDO: Fantastic! (Faculty huddle.)
KINDLEBERGER: That was a good answer. We’ve decided to give you an Excellent minus for being a good scorer, but to ask you to leave the Institute for fouling out on personals.
KINDLEBERGER, ANDO, FISHER: Rah, team!
ACT VI
DOMAR [Evsey David]: Well, you have the degree wrapped up, and now want a job. Not bad. You got a good grade on the orals, and would have gotten a top grade if you hadn’t thought that Stilt Chamberlain played for the Celtics and failed to distinguish Slippery Sam Jones from Casey Jones. Your thesis was entirely satisfactory, on a good topic: How to Get to the Boston Garden from Madison Square Garden: An Application of the Turnpike Theorem. And you even did languages: basketball communication in the Ivy League, or basketball with a broad A. Now the job. What do you think? Big Ten? Ivy League? Small liberal arts? Girls’ rules like Wellesley or Vassar? Or maybe the real big time: Kentucky, Long Island University, St. Joseph’s in Brooklyn, Notre Dame. L.I.U. is to economics like M.I.T. was to economics.
STUDENT (perhaps [Max Franklin] Millikan?): I don’t now if I’m ready for the Big Time.
DOMAR: What about applying some of your basketballmetrics for the government? They need our graduates. Or for an oil company. Maybe you would like to take a ball and a whistle and go abroad, demonstrating technical assistance to underdeveloped countries. There are jobs like that.
STUDENT: No. I guess I’m fussy. What I’d like is just what all the gang would like, to stay here at Cambridge with Harvard and the Celtics, and to referee like you and [Robert Lyle] Bishop and Samuelson, always blowing off your whistle and shouting foul, going first class to conferences, and shouting foul, foul, foul at the students.
Source: M.I.T. Archives. MIT Department of Economics records, Box 2, Folder “GEA 1961-67”.
Image Source: Boston Celtics players Tom Heinsohn, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Frank Ramsey in 1960. “Twelve of the greatest Celtics players of all time” from Boston.com website (March 18, 2018)