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Agricultural Economics Economists Harvard

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. William H. Nicholls, 1941

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In his file at the President’s Office of the University of Chicago one finds a carbon copy of William H. Nicholls’ section 18 “Education, Employment, Publications” from what looks to be his U.S. Federal Civil Service application, perhaps required for his consultancy for the Office of Price Administration, Meats Section Washington in 1941-42. We have here a very complete accounting of his activities covering his graduate school years 1934-1940, both coursework and employment.

This post also includes a biographical sketch at his Kentucky alma mater’s Hall of Fame together with a memorial piece in his honor at the department of economics of Vanderbilt University where he was on the faculty for thirty years.

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[Carbon Copy from Federal Civil Service Application(?) ca. January 1941]

18. EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT, PUBLICATIONS, ETC.

18(a). Chronological Record.

Education

1930-34
(School-years)		 University of Kentucky A.B., 1934 Graduated “with high distinction”, Phi Beta Kappa.
1934-37
(School-years)		 Harvard University A.M. in Economics, 1937 Also part-time assistantships (see “Employment” below[)].
Feb., 1941 Harvard University Ph.D. in Economics, 1941 Thesis completed in absentia.

 

Foreign Travel

Summer, 1931         Travel in 12 countries of Europe.

 

Employment (Part-time= *)

Place of Employment Dates Institution Immediate Employer Title Salary
Washington, D.C. June-Sep. 1934 Tobacco Section, AAA Dr. J. B. Hutson
Chief		 Statistical Clerk $1800.
Cambridge, Mass. Sep.1934-June 1935 Harvard Univ. Dr.John D. Black Research Assistant $600.*
Harrodsburg, Ky. June-Sep. 1935 Farm H.F. Parker Farm hand Room & board
Cambridge, Mass. Sep.1935-June, 1936 Harvard Univ. Dr. John D. Black Research Assistant $720.*
New England (Boston) June-Sep.1936 Bureau of Agri. Econ., U.S.Dept. of Agriculture Mr. R.L. Mighell Field Agent $2000.
Cambridge, Mass. Sep.1936-June 1937 Harvard Univ. Dr.John D. Black Research Assistant $500.*
New England (Boston) June-Oct., 1937 Bureau of Agri. Econ., U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Mr. R.L. Mighell Field Agent $2000.
Cambridge, Mass. Oct.1937-Jan.1938 (Independent Research at Harvard University)
Ames, Iowa Feb. 1938-July 1939 Iowa State College Dr. T.W. Schultz Research Assistant & Instructor $2430.
Ames, Iowa July, 1939-July, 1940 Iowa State College Dr. T.W. Schultz Research Assistant & Instructor $3000.
Ames, Iowa Iowa State College Dr. T.W. Schultz Assistant Professor $3300.

 

 

18(b). Graduate Courses at Harvard University and Research

Graduate Courses at Harvard University

Professor Title of Course Grade
F. W. Taussig Economic Theory A-
Joseph Schumpeter Economic Theory
W. L. Crum Theory of Statistics B, A
C. J. Bullock History of Economic Thought Audit
John H. Williams Theory of Money and Banking A-
E. F. Gay Economic History B plus
John D. Black Economics of Agriculture A-
O. H. Taylor Scope and Method of Economics A
John D. Black Interregional Competition A
John D. Black Commodity Prices and Distribution A-

 

  1. Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Field Agent, June-September, 1936.

Supervisors– Ronald L. Mighell, Senior Agricultural Economist, and Dr. John D. Black, Harvard University.

Nature of Work– The project concerned Interregional Competition in Dairying, and was a cooperative endeavor of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and Harvard University. The work consisted of taking farm-survey records on dairy farms in Vermont and Connecticut. The applicant was also responsible for collecting background material on milk marketing problems, including local hauling, operation of milk plants, milk prices and price plans, rail and truck transportation, governmental programs, and cooperative organization.

  1. Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Field Agent, June-October, 1937.

Supervisors– Ronald L. Mighell Dr. John D. Black, Harvard University.

Nature of Work– This was a continuation of the project outline above. The applicant was in charge of the marketing phases of the study in New England. This work consisted primarily of a study of milk distribution and milk control problems in Hartford, Worcester, and Boston, involving contacts with distributors, cooperative officials, administrators of milk control boards, and health officials in those milk markets, as well as research workers in milk marketing at the state colleges of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. A manuscript of 189 pages was prepared, bringing together and analyzing the data gathered. Although this was to be used primarily as service material to the larger study of which it was only a part, it will later be published in some form.

  1. Research Assistant to Dr. John D. Black, Harvard University, September 1934-June, 1935: September, 1935-June, 1936; September, 1936-June, 1937.

Supervisors– Dr. John D. Black, Dr. John M. Cassels, and Dr. J. K. Galbraith, all of Harvard University.

Nature of Work- The duties of these part-time assistantships required some 20-27 hours a week, while the applicant carried a ¾ time graduate study program concurrently.

During the school-year 1934-35, he was responsible for a considerable part of the statistical work on Dr. Black’s book, “The Dairy Industry and the AAA”, as well as two articles in the Quarterly Journal of Economics by J. K. Galbraith and John M. Cassels, respectively.

During the school-year 1935-36 he assisted Dr. Black in the construction of index numbers and the study of farmers’ supply response to price, and made a brief study of tobacco marketing for use in Dr. Black’s course in Prices and Distribution.

During the school-year 1936-37 the applicant made an intensive study and analysis of the dairy-farm records and marketing data collected during the summer of 1936 on the Bureau of Agricultural Economics project. This work was supervised by Dr. Black.

  1. Independent Research, Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 1937-Jan. 1938.

Advisors– Dr. John D. Black and Dr. John M. Cassels of Harvard University.

Nature of Work-During this period, the applicant was working independently on a proposed Ph.D. thesis tracing the historical development of the marketing of manufactured dairy products. This period was one of an extremely intensive survey of the literature on dairy marketing since 1870 in libraries at Harvard and Washington, D. C. It also included several weeks of consulting with the staff of the Dairy Section of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. This project was dropped as a thesis subject in January, 1938, in order that the applicant might accept a position at Iowa State College. This work served as the foundation for several Iowa Experiment Station research publications at a later date (see next item).

  1. Member of Staff, Department of Economics, Iowa State College, Feb. 1938 to date.

In February, 1938, the applicant became a member of the staff of the Department of Economics, Iowa State College, of which Dr. T. W. Schultz is department head. His initial rank was “Research Assistant” at a salary of $2430. His duties involved full responsibility for initiating and carrying out a aresearch study of the price and production policies in the meat-packing industry. During the following year, largely outside of office hours, the applicant produced manuscripts on the butter and cheese industries, based on data collected just previous to his employment at Iowa State College, which were deemed worthy of publication as research bulletins (see “list of publications”).

The objective of the study of the eat-packing industry was to make a comprehensive survey of the industry, with intensive study of those phases which would shed light on the nature of competition and monopoly elements in the industry.

The procedure was divided into four parts:

(1) Conditions in the livestock and meat markets.

The purpose of this phase of the work was to compile background descriptive material such as was necessary as a foundation for the later, more important phases of the project. This general survey was completed, covering such things as the nature of supply of livestock, demand for meats, the marketing mechanism for livestock and for meats, the composition and degree of concentration in the industry, accounting methods in the industry, and the economics of large-scale plant and firm in the industry.

            (2) Price and production policies followed in the meat-packing industry.

The procedure here was to survey past attempts at control of monopoly in the industry, covering a period of some 50 years. The status of individual packers was examined, as well as the effects on competition of such policies as market sharing, price leadership, price discrimination, advertising and branding, handling of by-products and produce, storage, and trade associations. This program necessitated two important steps: (a) the examination of leading agricultural processing-distributing industries better to determine the true nature of competition in such industries, and the applicability to problems faced by the worker in agricultural marketing research of recent developments in the economic theory of monopolistic competition. The studies of the butter and cheese industries contributed a great deal in this direction, in addition to a full year’s empirical work on the packing industry. (b) the adaptation and extension of the existing theory of monopolistic competition to the somewhat peculiar requirements of the agricultural processing-distributing industries as opposed to the strictly “manufacturing” industries, which have been the main interest of the general economist. It should be realized that the applicant is working in an entirely new field—imperfect competition in agricultural processing and distribution and has, therefore, constantly had to develop or adapt new research techniques and tools.

As a result, under the encouragement of Dr. T. W. Schultz and Dr. John D. Black, the applicant devoted the year 1939-40 primarily to developing the pure theory of imperfect competition, with special application to the agricultural processing-distributing industries. In order to make this theory of as general application as possible, not only were problems of immediate concern in the meat-packing project covered, but the theoretical considerations were broadened to include the theoretical aspects of competition in fluid milk among local country-buying units, and under short-run dynamic conditions as well. Particular emphasis was given to the theory of market-sharing, price leadership, and price discrimination, with major attention to the markets between the farm and the processing-distributing “bottleneck”.

A 460-page manuscript, “A Theoretical Analysis of Imperfect Competition, with Special Application to the Agricultural Industries” resulted. This manuscript represented four times redrafting after critical reading by Professors Black and Mason of Harvard; Professor Stigler of Minnesota; Professors Schultz, Hart, Shepherd, Reid, Lynch and Tintner of Iowa State College; Dr. Frederick V. Waugh and Dr. A. C. Hoffman of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics; and Dr. Harold B. Howe, of the Brookings Institution. All of these critics are highly qualified general or agricultural economists, and their reactions have been generally favorable.

In September, 1940, the manuscript was submitted as a Ph.D. thesis at Harvard University, and has since been accepted by Professors Black and Chamberlin. Professor Chamberlin, the leader in this phase of economic theory, states in a letter of December 23, 1940, that it is “a very fine piece of analysis and a very much worthwhile one…….an chievement of first order ……I can honestly say that I have spent more time in going over and working through some of the complex arguments that I have ever spent on any preceding doctor’s theses. This was partly because I was naturally interested in the subject and also because the thesis itself merited. it.” The plan is to push the manuscript toward publication during the next few months. The applicant expects formally to receive his Ph.D. degree before February 15, 1941.

Beginning July 1, 1939, the applicant’s salary was advanced to $3000 per annum. During the school-year 1939-40, he taught elementary Principles of Economics one-quarter time. On July 1, 1940, he was promoted to the rank of Assistant Professor at a salary of $3300, continuing to teach one-quarter time and pursue research three-quarters time. In the spring of 1941, he is scheduled to initiate a course for graduate students on Imperfect Competition in Agricultural Processing and Distribution.

Concurrently with other work previously outlined, the applicant prepared and presented a paper (unpublished) before a round-table of the American Farm Economic Association on December 28, 1938, entitled “A Suggested Approach to a Research Study in Price and Production Policies of an Agricultural Processing Industry”. Through the combination of theoretical hypotheses and empirical support, as based on the previously described work, he presented a second paper before the American Farm Economic Association in December, 1939. This paper, “Market-Sharing in the Packing industry”, presents statistical data for 1931-37 showing that the four dominant packers still buy relatively fixed proportions of hogs and cattle on the terminal markets as they did in 1913-17. It indicates how this may be evidence of oligopsonistic behavior in buying, the possible limitations of “market-sharing” as a monopolistic device, and how it may affect producer and consumer. This paper, the first published results of the meat-packing project, represents that balanced combination of empirical and theoretical analysis which the applicant considers the ideal research method.

In the December, 1940, issue of the Journal of Political Economy, another article (“Price Flexibility and Concentration in the Agricultural Processing Industries”, pp. 883-88) was published, growing out of previous empirical and theoretical work. This paper discusses the terminology concerning price “Flexibility” and alleged relationships between price flexibility and concentration of control in a given industry. It is argues that, in the agricultural processing industries (where short-run control of the supply of the food product is impossible), unlike the manufacturing industries, flexibility of margins is the important consideration, not flexibility of prices. Previous work of Means, Backman, and others in this field have failed to recognize the necessity for making this important distinction.

The great bulk of the descriptive phases of the price and production policies in the meat-packing industry has been completed. The basis no exists, in the applicant’s opinion, for a much clearer understanding of the nature of competition in the industry. Two important steps yet remain, however:

            (3) The RESULTS of these policies.

This will involve the financial analysis of the leading firms (partially completed), the examination of the relationship of such monopolistic practices as do exist to market price differentials, costs and margins, the method of buying of livestock, and the results in terms of the effects on farmer and consumer. In other words, how far do actual results as to prices, profits, employment, and investment—depart from “ideal” results under more nearly perfect competitive conditions?

(4) Practicable solutions to eliminate any ill-effects on farmer and consumer which are found to exist.

This will involve the consideration as to whether or not reform is necessary. If it is, such alternatives as government regulation, distribution as a public utility, dissolution of large firms, cooperation, government competition, etc., will have to be considered.

 

18(c). List of Publications

“Marketing Phases of Interregional Competition in Dairying”, 189-page manuscript, 1937, to be published.

*Post-War Developments in the Marketing of Butter, Iowa Agr. Exp. Sta., Res. Bul. 250, Feb. 1939, 64 pages.

*”Some Economic Aspects of University Patents”, Journal of Farm Economics, May, 1939, pp. 494-98.

“Short-Circuiting the Butter Middlemen”, Iowa Farm Economist, Jan., 1939, pp. 13-14.

*Post-War Developments in the Marketing of Cheese, Iowa Agr. Exp. Sta., Res. Bul. 261, July, 1939, 100 pages.

“Concentration in Cheese Marketing”, Iowa Farm Econmist, April, 1939, pp. 5[?]-6.

*”Post-War Concentration in the Cheese Industry”, Journal of Political Economy, Dec. 1939, pp. 823-45.

“Suggested Approach to a Research Study in the Price and Production Policies of an Agricultural Processing Industry”, paper read at Round-table on Marketing Research, American Farm Economic Association, Detroit, Dec., 1938, 14 pages, to be published.

*”Market-Sharing in the Packing Industry”, paper read at Annual Meeting, American Farm Economic Association, Philadelphia, Dec., 1939. Published in Proceedings, Journal of Farm Economics, Feb., 1940, pp. 225-40.

Review of Malott and Martin, “The Agricultural Industries”, in American Economic Review, March 1940, pp. 147-48.

*”Price Flexibility and Concentration in the Agricultural Processing Industries2, Journal of Political Economy, Dec., 1940, pp. 883-88.

** A Theoretical Analysis of Imperfect Competition, with Special Application to the Agricultural Industries, Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, accepted in December, 1940; 460 pages. To be published on Iowa State College Press by summer of 1941.

 

* Copy available for submission upon request.
**Topical table of contents or summary available upon request.

Source: University of Chicago Archives. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration. Records. Box 284. Folder “Economics 1943-47”.

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Hall of Distinguished Alumni
[University of Kentucky]

William Hord Nicholls

Born in Lexington, Ky., on July 19, 1914. Died, August 3, 1978. University Professor and Administrator. University of Kentucky, A.B., magna cum laude, 1934.

Serving as President of the Southern Economic Association (1958-59) and the American Farm Economic Association (1960-61), his expertise in the area of farm economics has been recognized also by governmental agencies and by a number of professional journals and societies.

After graduating magna cum laude (A.B., 1934) from the University, he then earned an M.A. degree at Harvard University (1938), the Ph.D., (1941) also at Harvard, and did post-doctoral work as a Fellow at University of Chicago (1941-42).

He was instructor, assistant professor and associate professor of economics, Iowa State College, 1938-44; assistant professor of economics, University of Chicago, 1945-48, and went to Vanderbilt University as a professor of economics in 1948. He became Chairman of the Department of Economics and Business Administration there in 1958, serving until 1961, serving the following year as visiting professor of economics at Harvard University. From 1965-77, he was Director of the Graduate Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt, and was Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt, 1973-74.

He served briefly in 1934 as a statistical clerk for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Tobacco Section, Washington, D.C. During the summers of 1936 and 1937, he was field agent for the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, New England. He was research fellow and research assistant to Prof. John D. Black at Harvard, 1934-37, and a consultant, Office of Price Administration, Meats Section Washington, 1941-42. He was managing editor of “Journal of Political Economy,” 1946-48, and a visiting lecturer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, summer of 1947.

He also was a member of the faculty, Salsburg (Austria) Seminar in American Studies, summer of 1949; economist and co-editor of “Mission Report,” “Turkish Mission,” “International Bank of Reconstruction and Development,” Turkey and Washington, in 1950; economist, Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic Advisers, Washington, 1953-54; technical director, Seventh American Assembly on U.S. Agriculture, Columbia University, 1954-56; consultant on Latin America,, Ford Foundation, Brazil and New York, 1960-64; agricultural economist, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro, during the summers of 1965, 1968 and 1970, and for a period in 1963 and early 1964, and guest consultant, Instituto de Planejamento Economics e Social, Ministry of Planning, Rio de Janeiro, 1972-73.

He has served on the board of editors of three professional journals, on a number of national committees and advisory boards, and has won a number of additional honors given by agencies he served in various ways.

His book, “Imperfect Competition Within Agricultural Industries,” (1941) went into a second printing in 1947. He also wrote numerous articles for professional publications, as chapters to books, as papers to be delivered at various professional meetings and as policy reports to various agencies.

William Hord Nicholls was named to the Hall of Distinguished Alumni in February 1965.

Source: Hall of Distinguished Alumni, University of Kentucky website.

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Vanderbilt University Memorial

William H. Nicholls was born in Lexington, Kentucky on July 19, 1914, and died in Nashville on August 4, 1978. Professor Nicholls did his undergraduate work at the University of Kentucky and his graduate work at Harvard University, where he received the Ph.D. in 1941. His doctoral dissertation, published that same year, on Imperfect Competition Within Agricultural Industries, established his reputation as one of the country’s leading agricultural economists. He began his teaching career at Iowa State University in 1938 and moved to the University of Chicago in 1945. While serving as assistant professor at the University of Chicago, he edited one of the major professional journals in economics, the Journal of Political Economy. Nicholls came to Vanderbilt as a full professor in 1948, where he continued his prodigious output of books and articles. He was president of the Southern Economic Association in 1958-59 and presidentof the American Farm Economic Association in 1960-61. He received the Centennial Distinguished Alumnus Award of the University of Kentucky in 1966 and was Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt in 1973. He chaired the Department of Economics and Business Administration from 1958 to 1961 and directed the Graduate Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt from 1965 to 1977.

Distinguished Professor Nicholas Gerogescu-Roegen, writing in support of Professor Nicholls’ nomination for the Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professorship, said of him, “He is the originator of the field of regional development. One would be justified in speaking of a Nicholls’ school, which has attracted numerous doctoral students to our Economics Department, and has enhanced the prestige of the University. His works in the area of agricultural economics have no equal. They reflect a unique combination of theoretical power with a keen insight of the relevant aspects of actuality. The best example is supplied by his (now a classic) volume Imperfect Competition Within Agricultural Industries, in which Bill has created some new and efficient tools for the analysis of monopolistic structure.

“His scholarly interest in agricultural economics and its relation to economic development brought him in contact with the problems of Latin America, with Brazil in particular. Here, again, Bill showed his imaginative approach and his scholarly grip of difficult problems. The excellent name our own department (and implicitly the University) has in Latin America and among the specialists on Latin American Economics, is due in the greatest part to Bill’s contributions”.

Source: Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, full biography link from the In Memorium webpage.

Image Source: Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, in Memorium webpage.

Categories
Chicago Economists

Chicago. Historical Enrollment Trends, Economics Faculty by Age and Educational Background. 1944-45.

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On April 10, 1945, the chairman of the University of Chicago’s economics department, Professor Simeon E. Leland, submitted a 77 page (!) memorandum to President Robert M. Hutchins entitled “Postwar Plans of the Department of Economics–A Wide Variety of Observations and Suggestions All Intended To Be Helpful in Improving the State of the University”.

In his cover letter Leland wrote “…in the preparation of the memorandum, I learned much that was new about the past history of the Department. Some of this, incorporated in the memorandum, looks like filler stuck in, but I thought it ought to be included for historical reasons and to furnish some background for a few of the suggestions.” 

In a recent post I provided a list of visiting professors who taught economics at the University of Chicago up through 1944 (excluding those visitors who were to receive permanent appointments). For this post I have selected a few supporting tables from the memo providing data on the age distribution and educational backgrounds of the economics faculty along with time series on enrollments and registrations.  A later post provides talent-scouting lists for possible permanent, visiting and joint appointments.

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In making his plea for administration support for new additional hires, Chairman Leland began by noting that in 1944 Professor Chester Wright “was transferred to the emeritus status”. Negotiations with Professor H. A. Innis of the University of Toronto to succeed Wright were taking place but Leland did not appear to be overly confident, having written “If he [Innis] does not [accept a Chicago offer], due to the scarcity of men in Economic History, the post occupied by Professor Wright will be very difficult to fill.”

Looking ahead over the six years before the retirements of Knight and Kyrk were scheduled, Leland hoped to get support to begin the process of hiring younger faculty (only three of the staff were under 40 years of age as of the end of 1944), so that  (1) gaps in the existing program would not occur and (2) promising new fields could be covered.

Furthermore Leland argued “…the Department does not seem to have enough young men as instructors and assistant professors. As a result, the chores of running a department, including sharing in administration and advising students, fall heavily on the older, higher-salaried men on the staff.”

 

Ages of Staff Members
(as of December 31, 1944)

Name

 Rank Age

Came to University of Chicago
Bloch, Henry Simon

Instructor

 29

1939
Douglas, Paul Howard

Professor*

 52

1920
Harbison, Frederick Harris

Assistant Professor

 33

1940
Knight, Frank Hyneman

Professor

 59

1917-19; 1927
Kyrk, Hazel

Professor; also Home Economics

 59

1925
Lange, Oscar

Professor

 40

1938
Leland, Simeon Elbridge

Professor; also Political Science

 47

1928
Lewis, Harold Gregg

Instructor*

 30

1939
Marschak, Jacob

Professor

 46

1943
Mints, Lloyd Wynn

Associate Professor

 56

1919
Nef, John Ulric

Professor; also History

 45

1929
Schultz, Theodore William

Professor

 42

1943
Simons, Henry Calvert

Associate Professor

 45

1927
Viner, Jacob

Professor

 52

1916

This list does not include part-time instructors (3), research associates (3), lecturers, or members of the college staff (3).

*On leave for military service

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To reassure the President that the department was not in danger of “inbreeding” the following table was included in the memo. Leland’s first comment was that the educational backgrounds of the economics faculty included some 18 U.S. and 13 foreign institutions. While noting a significant concentration of Harvard and/or Chicago training of the economics faculty, only five of the fourteen actually had advanced training at Chicago and of those just two held Ph.D.’s from Chicago as of 1945 (Kyrk and Leland).

 

Educational Institutions Attended by Members of the Department of Economics

 

Name and Rank Degrees or Advanced Training Other Work
A.B. A.M. Ph.D.
H. S. Bloch
(Instructor)		 Nancy* Nancy Strasbourg*
Paris’
Nancy (Dr. en Droit)		 Acad. Int’l. Law
The Hague
P. H. Douglas
(Professor)		 Bowdoin Columbia Columbia Harvard
F. H. Harbison
(Asst. Prof.)		 Princeton Princeton Princeton
F. H. Knight
(Professor)		 Tennesee(B.S.)
Milligan (Ph.B.)		 Tennessee Cornell University American University, Harriman, Tennessee
H. Kyrk
(Professor)		 Ohio Wesleyan*
Chicago (Ph.B.)		 Chicago
O. Lange
(Professor)		 Poznan* Cracow (LL.M.) Cracow (LL.D.) London
S. E. Leland
(Professor)		 De Pauw Kentucky Chicago Harvard Law School
H. G. Lewis
(Instructor)		 Chicago Chicago* Chicago*
J. Marschak
(Professor)		 Oxford Heidelberg Technolog. Institut, Kiev
Berlin
L. W. Mints
(Assoc. Prof.)		 Colorado Colorado Chicago*
J. U. Nef
(Professor)		 Harvard (B.S.) Paris*
London*
Montpellier*		 Brookings
T. W. Schultz
(Professor)		 South Dakota State Wisconsin Wisconsin
H. C. Simons
(Assoc. Prof.)		 Michigan Michigan* Iowa*
Chicago*
Columbia*
Berlin*
J. Viner
(Professor)		 McGill Harvard Harvard

*Work taken at this level; no degree conferred.

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Two time series were included in Leland’s memo to provide evidence for an upward trend in the demand for economics courses: enrollments and course registrations.

It is difficult to forecast the postwar enrollment in Economics. Since 1928 there has been a steady upward trend in the number of students majoring in the Department, as is shown in the following table. Even the depression only slightly retarded the growth of our student body. Part of the increase was due to the emphasis given our subject matter by the events of the Thirties. Another factor responsible for the gain in students was the strength of the faculty—its reputation in the United States and abroad.

 

Total Number of Different Graduate Students Majoring in the Department of Economics Who Have Been in Residence a Part or All of the Years Indicated Below

 

Years

 Number of Students
1943-44

57

1942-43

77

1941-42

 133
1940-41

162

1939-40

 156
1938-39

144

1937-38

 133
1936-37

113

1935-36

 111
1934-35

98

1933-34

 114
1932-33

111

1931-32

 125
1930-31

113

1929-30

 118
1928-29

101

 

The trend of registrations in the Department for “200- and 300-level courses” (roughly corresponding to former undergraduate and graduate registrations) is shown in the following table. Data are shown only since 1931-32 inasmuch as statistics prior to that date included introductory courses for College freshmen and sophomores. This inflates all statistics prior to 1931 and destroys their validity for comparative purposes. The peak of enrollment in Economics came in 1938-39. It is believed that comparable enrollments will reappear soon after the cessation of hostilities.

 

Registration in Courses Offered by the Department of Economics

Years

Quarters
Summer Autumn Winter

Spring

First Term

Second Term

1944-45

 74
1943-44 62 202 138

185

1942-43

 252 237 249 207 153
1941-42 214 206 329 396

406

1940-41

 264 225 455 529 516
1939-40 262 224 431 589

583

1938-39

 277 244 560 516 689
1937-38 249 214 477 447

592

1936-37

 243 206 407 438 457
1935-36 245 218 367 503

534

1934-35

 239 206 325 460 398
1933-34 183 174 361 371

396

1932-33

 278 244 337 427 244
1931-32 233 224 443 411

339

 

Source: University of Chicago Library, Department of Special Collections. Office of the President. Hutchins Administration Records. Box 73, Folder “Economics Dept., “Post-War Plans” Simeon E. Leland, 1945″.

 

Categories
Chicago Economists

Chicago. Milton Friedman from Cambridge to T.W. Schultz. 29 Mar 1954

About a week ago I posted Milton Friedman’s letter from Cambridge, England to T. W. Schultz dated 28 October 1953. Today we have the next carbon copy of a letter to Schultz from Cambridge in the Milton Friedman papers at the Hoover Institution in which Friedman discusses a range of issues from a one-year appointment in mathematical economics at Chicago, the Cowles’ Directorship appointment, and postdoctoral fellowships. The letter ends with a laundry-list of miscellaneous comments from Arthur Burns’ Economic Report to the President through the reception of McCarthy news in England. Friedman’s candid assessments of many of his fellow-economists make this letter particularly interesting.  More to come!

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If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

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Milton Friedman to T.W. Schultz
29 March 1954

15 Latham Road
Cambridge, England
March 29, 1954

 

Dear Ted:

Of the people you list as possible visiting professors while Koopmans is away, Solow of M.I.T. is the one who offhand appeals to me the most. I have almost no doubt about his absolute competence: I read his doctoral dissertation at an early stage and saw something of him last summer and the preceding summer when he was spending some time at Hanover in connection with one or another of Bill Madow’s projects. He has a seminal mind and analytical ability of a very high order. My only questions would be the other that you raise, whether he is broadly enough interested in economics. And here I am inclined to answer with an uncertain yes, relying partly on the fact that he is flexible and capable of being induced. I do not know Dorfman of California either personally or through his writings. My question about him is that I believe that we would do best if we could use this opportunity in general to bring in someone with a rather different point of view and who will provide a broadening of the kind of thing done under the heading of mathematical economics, and my impression is that Dorfman is very much in the same line as Koopmans – but here too, I don’t have much confidence in my knowledge. As you know, I think very highly of both Modigliani and Christ, but as of the moment for this particular spot, would prefer Solow, partly on grounds of greater differentiation of product.

One rather harebrained possibility that has occurred to me outside your list is Maurice Allais, the French mathematical economist who is Professor at École des Mines. Allais is a crackpot genius in many respects. He came out of engineering and is largely self taught, which means he holds the erroneous views he has discovered for himself as strongly as the correct ones. I have always said that if he had, at a formative age, had one year of really good graduate education in economics he might have become one of the really great names. At the same time, Allais is an exceedingly active and stimulating person who works in mathematical economics of a rather different kind than we have been accustomed to. I think it would be a good thing to have him around for a year – both for us and him – though I am most uncertain that it would be for a longer period. I don’t have any basis for knowing whether Allais would be interested.

I have tried to think over the other European mathematical economists to see if they offer other possibilities. There are others in France: Guilbaud [Georges-Théodule Guilbaud (1912-2008)], Boiteux [Marcel Boiteux (1922-)] (I don’t have that spelled right), but none seem to me as good as Allais for our purposes. There are Frisch and Haavelmo in Norway, Wold in Sweden; of these, Haavelmo would be the best. I find it hard to think of anybody in England who meets this particular bill, and would be at all conceivable. Dick Stone? Has just been over and is not primarily mathematical but might be very good indeed in some ways. Is certainly econometric minded and fairly broadly so. R.G.D. Allen? Has done almost nothing in math. econ. for a long time.*

*[handwritten footnote, incomplete on left side presumably because carbon paper folded on the corner:   “…real possibility here is a young fellow at the London School, A. W. Phillips…invented the “machine” Lerner has been peddling. He came to econ. out of ….good indeed. He has an important paper in the mathematics of stabilization (over) policies, scheduled to appear(?) in Econ. Journal shortly.”]

Getting back home, the names that occur to me have, I am sure, also occurred to you. Is Kenneth Arrow unavailable for a year’s arrangement? What about Vickrey? I don’t believe that in any absolute sense I would rate Vickrey above Christ, say, but for us he has the advantage of bringing a different background and approach.

The above is all written in the context of a definite one-year arrangement in the field of mathematical economics. I realize, of course, that this may turn out to be an undesirable limitation. This is certainly an opportunity to try someone whom we might be interested in permanently; and it may be possible to make temporary arrangements for math. econ. for the coming year – via DuBrul, Marschak, etc. The difficulty is that once I leave this limited field, the remainder is so broad that I hardly know where to turn. For myself, I believe we might well use this to bring someone in in money, if that possibility existed. If it did, I should want strongly to press on you Harry Johnson, here at Cambridge, but originally a Canadian educated at the University of Toronto, who is the one new person I have come to know here who has really impressed me.

One other person from the US left out of the above list but perhaps eligible even within the narrower limitations is William Baumol. Oughtn’t he be considered?

Within the narrower limitations, my own listing would, at the moment, be: Allais, Solow, Baumol, Arrow, Vickrey, Phillips. I would hasten to add that my listing of Arrow fourth is entirely consistent with my believing him the best of the lot in absolute competence, and the one who would still go to the top of this list for a permanent post.

I turn to the other possibility you raise in your letter, a permanent post a la the Tobin one. I am somewhat puzzled how to interpret the change of view, you suggest, I assume that the person would be expected to take over the directorship of Cowles. If this is so, it seems to me highly unfortunate to link it with a permanent post in the department. Obviously, the best of all worlds would be if there were someone we definitely wanted as a permanent member of the department who also happened to be interested in the Cowles area and was willing to direct, or better interested in directing, Cowles. In lieu of this happy accident, I would myself like to see the two issues kept as distinct as possible; to have the Cowles people name a director, with the aid and advice but not necessarily the consent, of the department; have the department offer him cooperation, opportunity to teach, etc., but without having him a full-fledged permanent member. I hope you will pardon these obiter dicta. I realize that this is a topic you have doubtless discussed ad nauseam; what is even more important, if after such discussion, you feel differently, I would predict that you would succeed in persuading me to your view; which is why I leave it with these dicta and without indicating the arguments – you can provide them better than I.

The issue strikes me particularly forcefully because I do feel that in terms of the needs of the department, our main need is not for someone else mainly in the Cowles area; it is for someone to replace either Mints in money, or me in orthodox theory, if I slide over to take Mints’ role.

For Cowles’ sake as well as our own, there might be much to be said for having the directorship be the primary post for whoever comes. It seems to me bad for Cowles to have that post viewed as either a sideshow or a stepping stone. For directorship of Cowles, some names that occur are: Herbert Simon; Dorothy Brady; with more doubt Modigliani. One possibility much farther off the beaten track is Warren Nutter, who has, I gathered, been a phenomenal administrative success in Wash. at Central Intelligence Agency; yet is an economist. Would Charlie Hitch, who has been running Rand’s economic division be completely out?

[Handwritten note: “You know, Gregg Lewis might be better than any of these if he would do it!]

If the post is to be viewed as primarily a professorship in the department, with Cowles directorship as a sideline, I have great difficulty in making any suggestions: I would not, in particular, be enthusiastic about any of those mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Arrow, yes, but he is apparently out. Simon Kuznets, yes, but he would be likely to make Cowles into something altogether different that it is. I feel literally stuck in trying to think of acceptable candidates. Perhaps I can be more useful in reacting to other suggestions.

Let me combine with this some comments on your March 15 letter, which I should have answered long since.

On the post-doctoral fellowship, I feel less bearish than you, primarily, I suppose because I am inclined to lay a good deal of emphasis on the intangible benefits from having a widespread group of people who have had a year at Chicago. It seems to me that a post-doctoral fellowship is more likely to do this than a staff appointment, both because it is likely to bring in a wider range of people to apply and because it is rather more likely to have a one or two year limit and so a more rapid turnover. What has disappointed me most is the limited number of people among whom we have been forced to choose. Why is it that we don’t get more applications? Is it because we do treat it now like a staff appointment? Do we advertise it as widely as we might and stimulate a considerable number of applicants? Or is it simply because the great increase in number of post-doctoral fellowships available (and decrease in quality of people going in for economics?) has lowered the demand for any one fellowship? I find it hard to believe that making it into a staff appointment would help much in providing more adequate review and appraisal – this is I believe a result of the limitations of time on all of us – but it might give it greater prestige and make it more valuable to the recipient in this way, though, it would cost him tax and limit freedom.

I believe that part of the problem you raise about the postdoctoral fellowship has little to do with it per se but is a general problem about the department. Is our own work subject to as much discussion and advice from our colleagues as each of us would like? The answer seems to me clearly no. The trouble is – and I am afraid it is to some extent unavoidable and common at other places – that we have so many other duties and tasks to perform that being an intellectual community engaged in cross-stimulation perforce takes a back seat. This disease is I think one that grows as the square of the professional age. From this point of view, I think that the more junior people around the better in many ways and I think this one of the real virtues of the development of research projects that will enable us to keep more beginners around.

On the whole, I continue to think that the fellowship idea is sound, in the sense that we ought to have a number of people around who have no assigned duties. I would defend the Mishan result in these terms. I think he was a most useful intellectual stimulant and irritant to have around even if his own output was not too striking. The virtue of the fellowship arrangement is that it enables you to shape the hole to the peg. I cannot of course judge about Prais. But I am surprised by your adverse comments on Dewey’s use of it; I would have thought his one of the clearly most successful post-doctoral fellowships so far.

As you have doubtless heard, Muth has decided to go to Cowles. I am sorry that he has. I think he is good. I am somewhat troubled about the general problem of recruiting for the Workshop at a distance. In addition to Muth, I had heard from Pesek, whom I encouraged but left the matter open because he would rather have a fellowship that he applied for that would pay his travelling expenses to Washington. My general feeling is that it would be a mistake to take anyone just because I am not on the spot, that it would be far better to start fairly slowly, and let the thing build up, adding people as they turn up next year. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I am delighted to hear about Fred’s ford project. I had a wire from Willits recently re Harberger and I assume it was in connection with his proposed project. Al Rees will be a splendid editor, I feel, and it is excellent to have him entirely in the department. I hardly know what to think of Morton Grodzins as Dean. I assume that his appointment measn that he was regarded as a successful administrator at the Press. Grodzins has great drive and energy, is clearly bright and intelligent, but whether he has the judgment either of men or of directions of development that is required, and the ability to raise money that Tyler displayed, is something I have less confidence in. Who is taking over the Press?

I enjoyed your comments on both Arthur Burns and McCarthy. With respect to the first, I thought the economic report extraordinarily good, both in its analysis of the immediate situation and in its discussion of the general considerations that should guide policy. It showed courage, too, I think in its willingness to say nasty things about farm supports and minimum wages to mention two. My views about the recession are indicated by the title of a lecture I am scheduled to give in Stockholm towards the end of April: “Why the American Economy is Depression-proof”. After all, there is no reason why Colin Clark should be the only economist sticking his neck out. It continues to seem to me that the danger to be worried about is over-reacting to this recession and in the process producing a subsequent inflationary spurt. Arthur seems to me to be showing real courage in holding out against action. To do something would surely be the easy and in the short run politically popular course.

McCarthyism has of course been attracting enormous attention here. Indeed, for long it has crowded almost all other American news into the background with the result that it has given a thoroughly distorted view of America to newspaper readers. I enclose a clipping in this connection which you may find amusing. it is not a bad summary, though I trust I put in more qualifications.

We have gotten an opportunity to go to Spain via an invitation to lecture at Madrid (Earl’s doing, I suspect), so Rose and I are leaving next week for a week there. Shortly after our return we go to Sweden and Denmark for a couple of weeks. We are very much excited by the prospects. Best regards to all.

Yours

[signed]
Milton

 

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers. Box 194, Folder “194.6 Economics Department S-Z, 1946-1976”.

 

Image: Left, Milton Friedman (between 1946 and 1953 according to note on back of photo in the Hoover Archive in the Milton Friedman papers). Right, Theodore W. Schultz from University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-07484, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Chicago Economists

Chicago. Friedman from Cambridge on Arrow, Tobin, Harry Johnson, Joan Robinson. 1953

Thank goodness for leaves of absence and sabbaticals! In an earlier age letters were actually exchanged between the lone scholar off to foreign groves of academe or government service and colleagues back at the home institution. When Milton Friedman went off to the University of Cambridge for the academic year 1953-54 (see Chapter 17 “Our First Year Abroad”  in Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs), he wrote detailed letters discussing departmental matters and impressions of Cambridge academic life to the chair of the department, Theodore W. Schultz. In this posting we encounter Milton Friedman’s views on possible candidates to take up the directorship of the Cowles Commission, his very positive impression of Harry Johnson, his utter shock regarding Joan Robinson’s views on China, and comparisons between Chicago and Cambridge training in economics. More to come:  Here a letter dated 29 March 1954.

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If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

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15 Latham Road
Cambridge, England
October 28, 1953

Dear Ted [Theodore W. Schultz]:

Many thanks for your letter of October 22. It contained a fuller budget of news then I had otherwise received. I am delighted to hear of the decision of the Rockefeller Foundation, and appreciate your taking the necessary steps including repairing my omission in not specifying the effective date. I am sorry to hear that the problems raised by my absence were still further complicated by Allen [W. Allen Wallis?]. The Harberger-Johnson [Arnold Harberger; D. Gale Johnson] arrangement seems, however, excellent.

It is certainly too bad about Arrow. Re Tobin, as you know, I have in the past had a very high opinion of his ability and promise though I would not have put him as high as Arrow. I regret to say, however, that my opinion fell somewhat this summer as a result of going over in great detail his article on the consumption function in the collection of essays in honor of [John Henry] Williams. As you may know, I drafted this summer a lengthy paper on the theory of the consumption function. One of the pieces of evidence I considered was Tobin’s paper, which reached conclusions in variance with most of the other evidence. On close examination, his conclusions turned out not to be justified by his own evidence, but rather to be a product of sloppy and incompetent statistical analysis. One swallow does not of course make a summer, but I am inclined to give this piece of evidence more weight than I otherwise would since it is the only bit of his work that I have gone over with sufficient care to feel great confidence in my judgment of it. My generally favorable opinion has been based on a rather superficial and casual reading of most of his other published work – indeed, on first reading, I had had an equally favorable opinion of the consumption paper. His memorandum on research that you sent me strikes me as being on the whole very sensible and very good.

In view of the above, I am very uncertain how to respond to your request for my “vote”. Everything obviously depends on the alternatives, and these are likely to vary if viewed in terms of the Cowles position in the department. Are either the former, Tobin may well be the best of the available people. Re: the latter, I much more dubious that he is than formerly. In view of my inability to participate in the discussion of the alternatives, the best thing seems to me to be to abstain from casting a definite vote either way, to make it clear that I shall cheerfully accept the decision of my colleagues, but to urge them strongly to canvass possible alternatives carefully and if possible to avoid letting an appointment to Cowles also commit the department to a permanent appointment in the department, unless the letter seems desirable on its own account.

May I complicate your problem further by introducing another name that the department ought to keep in mind in considering its long-run plans, namely Harry Johnson, now here at Cambridge, but originally a Canadian. Of the various younger people I have met around here, he impresses me as being by all odds the best and most promising, and as of the moment I would unhesitatingly rate him above Tobin. As you know, his specialty has been money and he lectures here on money and banking, but he has also been doing some work in international trade. More than most of the people here he has worked in technical and scientific economics instead of allowing himself to be diverted almost entirely to policy issues – which I suppose appeals to me partly because his policy position is so different from my own but impresses me partly also because I have been rather shocked by how large a part of intellectual activity around here is concerned almost exclusively with current policy issues. I have no idea whether Johnson would be interested in moving – he is certainly regarded as one of the clearly important and promising people at Cambridge and seems to have an assured future here – but the chance seems to me sufficiently great that we ought to keep him on our list.

Incidentally, back to Tobin, Dorothy Brady was having my piece on consumption typed up and was to send a copy to Margaret Reid when done, so that the detailed criticism of Tobin’s article that it contains could be made available to anyone who wanted to look at it.

Writing this paragraph just gave me a brainstorm – why not Dorothy for the Cowles post? In her case it would be easier to separate the appointment from a departmental commitment since she would almost certainly not demand tenure; she is a first-rate and experienced administrator; she has the necessary mathematical and statistical background; and she might give the research program a highly desirable shift toward closer contact with significant detailed empirical and economic problems – which is probably at the same time her strongest recommendation and the greatest obstacle to agreement.

On the other issue you raise, I am very much in favor – from our point of view – of Al Rees for the editorship. I think he would be an excellent editor. I am delighted that you were able to persuade Earl [Hamilton] to stay on for another year – I wish he felt able to keep it longer, as I am sure we all do, but Al seems to me clearly the next best alternative.

We have been enjoying Cambridge very much indeed, though I must confess that to date it has been too stimulating and active for me to have gotten much work done. I am enormously impressed – and in some directions, depressed – by the difference in atmosphere from the US. Educationally, the aim of education is to train the future ruling class rather than simply to educate people, which accounts for much more explicit emphasis in teaching and research on problems of immediate economic policy – economics is essentially taught as an art to be employed by rulers rather than as a science. There is enormous emphasis on form and cleverness, which reaches its peak in debates, of which I have participated in one (opposing the resolution “Yankee-eating baiting is unjustifiable and ungrateful” – tell me, how should I interpret the fact that on the vote of the audience, my side won?) And listening to another in the Cambridge Union. Surprisingly, the appeal is to the emotions rather than the reason; the level of wit and of phrasing is amazingly high, of intellectual content, abysmal. Politically, the atmosphere is incredibly redder than at home. This, I think, accounts for a good deal of the misunderstanding here of the state of civil liberties in the US. The right comparison to make is between tolerance of opinions equally deviant from the norm; the comparison that is made is between tolerance of the same opinion; but the normal opinion here would be regarded as clearly “left” at home, and moderately left opinion here is extremely radical; this difference in average opinion leads to the belief here that there is complete intolerance in the United States. These reflections are partly stimulated by a talk Joan Robinson gave on China a little over a week ago. It was an incredible talk to me; I was glad I went because I wouldn’t have believed anybody who had given me an accurate report, and you will have the same difficulty in believing mine. What is incredible is not alone that she sincerely believed the most extreme statements of the Chinese Communists about tremendous progress as a result of the “liberation”, but that she presented them without any examination of the internal consistency of her successive statements, without a sign of critical intelligence at work, without attempting to cite evidence of a kind she could have expected to acquire as a result of her brief visit there. Had the same talk been given by a faculty member in the US there undoubtedly would have been a fuss while here it passed over without a ripple. This difference may in part reflect a difference in tolerance of extreme opinions; but to a much greater extent it reflects the fact that her opinion is nothing like so extreme relative to British opinion as relative to American. The fair comparison is between the reception of her speech and one that, let us say, Maynard Krueger would make; and I doubt that there would be much difference in the reactions in that case.

The anti-American feeling is really extreme. It is widely accepted that America has concluded that war is inevitable, is no longer even interested in maintaining the peace and only waiting for an appropriate time to start a war. The American troops in England and Europe are said to be unwanted – though I’m sure an outcry would go up if they were to be withdrawn. England’s trade difficulties are America’s fault, because American productivity is growing so shockingly fast – this is a theme that in politer form is being increasingly put forth in academic circles, note especially Hicks in his inaugural address. All in all, these views, surprisingly enough, lead the left and not so left here to espouse essentially the Hoover-Taft position about the role America should play.

These are all of course first impressions for a highly biased segment of England, so I know you will take them with the mass of salt they deserve.

We’re all personally fine. The kids are quite happy in their schools. We are happy to be coming to the end of our month in a hotel – we move into the house we rented this Friday.

Our very best to everyone.

 

Yours,

[signed]

Milton

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers. Box 194, Folder “194.6 Economics Department S-Z, 1946-1976”.

Image: Left, Milton Friedman (between 1946 and 1953 according to note on back of photo in the Hoover Archive in the Milton Friedman papers). Right, Theodore W. Schultz from University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-07484, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Chicago Economists Yale

Chicago. James Tobin Autobiographical Letter from Faculty Meeting, 1950

The following autobiographical remarks by James Tobin were circulated among the University of Chicago faculty before its Monday, February 13, 1950 meeting. After discussing the “Old Business” of the Committee Report on Ph. D. Thesis requirements and Departmental policy on library acquisitions, a third item added by hand to the mimeographed agenda was “C. Appointment (Tobin)”. 

Cf. the Search Committee report on Tobin from Columbia University, also from 1950.

Robert Dimand has recently published the book James Tobin in the Palgrave Macmillan series Great Thinkers in Economics.

A list of major works and Tobin-related links are at the Gonseca History of Economic Thought Website.

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If you find this posting interesting, here is the complete list of “artifacts” from the history of economics I have assembled. You can subscribe to Economics in the Rear-View Mirror below. There is also an opportunity for comment following each posting….

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TO: Professor T. W. Schultz

DATE: January 27, 1950

FROM: J. Marschak

 

Following our conversation on Tuesday, I attach 20 copies of the biography of James Tobin, with the request that they be circulated among the members of the Department.

Please note that Tobin’s article “Tax Measures to Encourage Saving” has been published in the meantime in the recent issue of the American Economic Review.

Sincerely yours,

Jacob Marschak

 

 

JAMES TOBIN. (Letter of April 2, 1949)

I was born March 5, 1918, in Champaign, Illinois, attended the local schools and the University of Illinois High School. I went to Harvard College on a National Scholarship and was graduated in 1939. I majored in economics in college, and did two years of graduate work in economics at Harvard 1939-41. I worked at Washington at OPACS and WPB from June 1941 to April 1942, when I went into the Navy and served as a line officer on a destroyer. I was “separated” in January 1946 and returned to Harvard to write a thesis. I was a part-time teaching fellow until I received the degree of Ph. D. I am married and have one child, aged 8 months.

I have indicated my training in economics in the previous paragraph: it is better than my mathematical background. In college I had two years of calculus, and as a graduate student I took a half-year course in mathematical statistics and a half-year course in mathematical economics. One of my chief occupations as a Junior Fellow has been to try to improve my mathematical equipment, by attending some courses and by independent work. I have studied advanced calculus, probability, differential equations, modern algebra.

Publications: “Note on the Money Wage Problem,” QJE, LV, 1941, 508-15. “The Role of Statistical Forecasts in Planning for Defense,” Public Policy, III, 1942, 197-223. “Liquidity Preference and Monetary Policy,” Rev. Ec. Stat., XXIX, 1947, 124-131. “Rejoinder” (to Clark Warburton, on same subject), ibid., XXX, 1948, 314-317. “Money Wage Rates and Employment,” in The New Economics, 572-587. “The Fallacies of Lord Keynes’ ‘General Theory’” (By Jaccques Rueff): Comment,” QJE, LXII, 1948, 763-770. A note on “Tax Measures to Encourage Saving” will be published in the AER later this year.

My thesis was entitled “A Theoretical and Statistical Analysis of Consumer Saving.” In it I attempted to derive a saving function by using both budget data and time series—a device suggested by you—and to bring in variables other than income: asset holdings, capital gains, price level. An article based on the thesis is promised for the projected volume in honor of John H. Williams. I am very much interested in the problems involved in obtaining statistical demand functions and am at present completing work on one for food, again using both budget data and time series.

 

Source: Hoover Institution Archives, Milton Friedman Papers, Box 79, Folder 2 “University of Chicago Minutes, Economics Department, 1949-1953”.

Image Source: Yale University Manuscripts & Archives. Digital Images Database. “James Tobin in war uniform (1945-December)”.

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Chicago Regulations

Chicago. Committee on Ph.D. Outlines & Requirements, 1949-50 (3)

This is the third of a series of  items related to the University of Chicago Department of Economics’ Committee on Ph. D. Outlines and Requirements chaired by Milton Friedman (1949-50). The first installment and second installment were previously posted. A fourth installment was published after this post originally appeared.

Two seminar appearances, first as prospective candidates for the Ph.D. and ultimately to provide a definitive report of findings, are seen to constitute book-ends for thesis writers. Scope and quality of a thesis to be “comparable to [a] first-rate journal article” with quality control enforced through essentially an iterated process of revise-and-resubmit under the direction of the thesis committee.

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[MEMO #6, 13 June 1949]

[Carbon copy]

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

[Date]   June 13, 1949

[To]    T. W. Schultz                                                                        [Department] Economics

[From] R. Blough, M. Friedman, D. G. Johnson                             [Department] Economics
and J. Marschak

[In re:]           Report of committee on Ph. D. outlines and requirements.

Your note of December 10 establishing this committee asks us to “prepare a memorandum setting forth the problem of students’ Ph.D. outlines and the procedure to be followed by the Department in appraising and approving Ph.D. thesis projects, including the type of outlines and supporting materials that a student should submit to the Department for its use when it passes upon the petition for admission to candidacy.”

We have interpreted this assignment rather broadly, in the belief that an appropriate procedure for admission to candidacy could be formulated only as part of an integrated program for handling the entire thesis requirement. Accordingly, section 1 below presents our conclusions about the standards to be applied to a thesis, and section 2, about the methods for getting more effective supervision, direction, and criticism of a thesis. Section 3 restates and extends our conclusions in the form of specific proposals for action.

  1. Standards to be applied to a thesis.

It is our feeling that the existing (implicit) standards for a thesis are both too high and too low: too high ex ante and too low ex post. In our opinion, we should seek to stimulate shorter, better organized, and better written theses than those ordinarily submitted. The problems here are first, to avoid simply reducing length without improving quality; second, to enforce the standard and make it part of the mores of the Department.

In order to accomplish these purposes we recommend (a) that a statement on the role of the thesis should be prepared for distribution to candidates; (b) that every thesis should be required to have a central core not to exceed roughly 15,000 words.

(a) Role of the thesis

The thesis, in our view, is to be viewed primarily as part of the training of the economist, not as a means of securing additions to knowledge. Any addition to knowledge is a welcome by-product, not a major objective. Up to the point at which he writes a thesis, the student has been concerned primarily with absorbing substantive material, acquiring tools, and becoming familiar with techniques of analysis. He has only incidentally applied these techniques. Equally important, he has had little occasion to acquire absolute standards of quality; most of his written work has been of a “one-shot” variety involving doing his best once and then being through with it. He has not had the experience of re-doing a thing again and again until it is satisfactory in an absolute sense and not merely the best he can do in an hour or a week.

The role of the thesis is to round out the student’s education by remedying these deficiencies. More specifically it should:

(1) give the student training in research by “doing” and instill in him absolute standards of quality in research.

(2) Deepen the student’s knowledge of the technique and subject matter he has acquired in course work by requiring him to apply what he has learned to a particular problem. In the process, he should think through the material he has been subjected to and make it his own.

These objectives affect both the choice of topic and the character of the thesis. The topic should be chosen less from the point of view of novelty or importance than of the contribution it can make to the student’s education—the opportunity it offers for improving and expanding his capacities. As a general matter, this suggests topics sufficiently narrow and specific to permit the student to do a thorough and exhaustive piece of work in the time available. It argues against broad general topics in which maturity and judgment are the prime requisites.

To accomplish these objectives, the final thesis should satisfy exceedingly high standards of quality; this is far more important than quantity. As a regular matter, it should be expected that a thesis will undergo several substantive revisions before final acceptance, that an absolute standard of excellence rather than a labor-theory of value will be applied. This means that at least the central core of the thesis must be relatively brief. The standard should be a first-rate journal article, no a full-length book.

(b) The scale of the thesis

We recommend that every thesis should be required to contain a central core of not more than roughly 15,000 words. This central core is to be self contained. It may, however, be supplemented by additional chapters or appendices containing more detailed material, expansions of points in the central core, etc.

The central core should, in general, not give much space to the general character of the problem [handwritten note: “suggest to insert ‘methodological’ before ‘character’ or otherwise indicate that while we do want to have the problem stated at the beginning (the 3 lines further below) we don’t want vague methodological discussions on its place in the universe of science.”], earlier work on the problem, and the like; those belong in supporting appendices if anywhere. It should concentrate on the original material developed by the writer. It must contain a precise statement of the problem and its economic analysis, not simply summarize data, report views, or describe events. In this context, of course, economic analysis is to be interpreted broadly, not as synonymous with technical economic theory.

It should be emphasized that the restriction of the central core to 15,000 words is not intended in any way to reduce the quantity or quality of performance expected from the student. Its main objective is to improve quality. One further reason for keeping theses to this scale is the desirability of having every member of the faculty read every thesis and vote for or against its approval. This is not at present feasible but might become so if the scale of the thesis were restricted.

  1. Methods for getting more effective supervision, direction, and criticism of theses.

Our chief recommendation on this topic is that there be established a thesis seminar. This seminar should be attended as a regular matter by all students writing theses in residence. By as many faculty members as can find it possible to attend, and, in any event, by the faculty members on the thesis committee of the student reporting at a particular session. Ideally, some one or more faculty members should have direct responsibility for the seminar as part of his teaching load.

The student scheduled to report at any meeting should prepare a written report sufficiently in advance of the meeting to permit duplication and circulation among all faculty members and all student participants in the seminar. He might then begin the discussion with an introductory summary taking not more than, say, five minutes. The rest of the time would be devoted to critical discussion.

It might be expected that a student would ordinarily appear before the seminar twice: once early in his work for a discussion of the topic and its possibilities on the basis of a brief circulated report (on the scale of a term paper); once, toward the end, for a discussion of his results, on the basis of a more detailed report and possibly a draft of the “central core” of the thesis itself.

We recommend that this thesis seminar be integrated with two other steps in the thesis procedure with which there is at present some dissatisfaction: (a) admission to candidacy, (b) the final examination.

The first appearance of the student before the seminar, and the paper prepared for that purpose, should also be used as a basis for deciding on admission to candidacy. At present, it is the general feeling that we have inadequate evidence on which to judge suggested theses. The suggested change in the scale of the thesis opens up the possibility that more time can be spent in the preparatory stages and more can be asked for from the student in the way of supporting evidence. Something of the scale of a term paper is perhaps not too much to ask. In order to insure faculty participation, a tentative faculty committee should be established prior to the student’s first appearance and those named to it should be expected to attend for the department in addition to as many others as can do so.

Dissatisfaction with the final examination arises from a different source. The exam is in fact a pure formality, in view of the stage at which it comes. Candidates are in practice almost never failed at that stage. Yet the candidate is not told that it is a pure formality; he regards it as a crucial and important test.

In place of dispensing with the final exam, the second appearance of a candidate before the thesis seminar might take its place, not in the sense of an occasion for final approval of the candidate, but in the sense of a public exhibition, as it were, testifying to the candidate’s stage of development. Final approval of the thesis would be based on the decision of the thesis committee plus a poll of the entire faculty.

  1. Summary of specific recommendations

To implement the general recommendations outlined above, it is proposed that the department approve the following actions and rules:

(1) Every Ph.D. thesis submitted for final approval must contain a central core not in excess of 15,000 words in length. This central core must be self-contained but may be supplemented by supporting material. The standard of comparison should be a first-rate journal article.

(2) Preparation of a statement on the role of the thesis and the standards to which it is expected to conform for distribution to candidates.

(3) Establishment of a thesis seminar. Regular participation in this seminar is to be required of all candidates writing theses in residence. One or more faculty members is to have direct responsibility for this seminar as part of his teaching load. All other faculty members shall be encouraged to attend.

(4) A Ph.D. candidate, whether or not he writes his thesis in residence, shall be required to make at least two appearances before this seminar.

(5) The candidate’s first appearance before the seminar shall be part of the procedure for admission to candidacy. In advance of this appearance, the candidate shall prepare a brief report (on the scale of a term paper) explaining his thesis topic, the existing state of knowledge on the topic, its potentialities, and his projected plan of attack on the problem. This report shall be duplicated and circulated to all members of the seminar an all members of the faculty in advance of the meeting of the seminar. This report plus the performance of the student before the seminar shall be the principal evidence for granting admission to candidacy, provided, of course, that other requirements are met.

(6) A candidate shall be permitted to make this first appearance preparatory to admission to candidacy if he has passed at least two of the three Ph.D. preliminary examinations.

(7) A tentative faculty committee shall be named for each candidate prior to this first appearance, and shall be expected to attend the meeting of the seminar at which it takes place.

(8) The candidate’s final appearance before the seminar shall be on the basis of a more detailed report of his findings, preferably on the basis of a draft of the “central core” of the thesis. This report shall be duplicated and circulated to all members of the seminar and all members of the faculty in advance of the meeting of the seminar.

(9) This final appearance before the seminar shall replace the present final examination on the thesis.

(10) The candidates thesis committee shall be expected to attend this final appearance before the seminar.

(11) The central core of the thesis or its equivalent shall be circulated to all members of the faculty before the final acceptance of the thesis. Final acceptance shall be based on approval by the thesis committee plus a vote of all other members of the faculty.

(12) The new procedure for admission to candidacy should apply to all students in residence at the time of its adoption, and to students not in residence who have not been admitted to candidacy prior to January 1, 1950.

___________________________

 

[MEMO #7, 2 February 1950]

[Carbon copy.  Additions to the change in the text are highlighted. Items (7) and (10) are the significant additional changes in the specific recommendations.]

[THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO]

[Date]   February 2, 1950

[To]    T. W. Schultz                                                                        [Department] Economics

[From] R. Blough, M. Friedman, D. G. Johnson                             [Department] Economics
and J. Marschak

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON PH. D. OUTLINES AND REQUIREMENTS

The following summary of specific recommendations is a revision of the summary on pp. 4 and 5 of our earlier report, incorporating comments and suggestions made at the department discussion of the problem. It is proposed that the department approve the following actions and rules:

(1) A Ph.D. thesis submitted for final approval will ordinarily contain a central core not in excess of 15,000 words in length. This central core must be self-contained but may be supplemented by supporting material. In scope and quality, it shall be comparable to first-rate journal article.

(2) Preparation of a statement on the role of the thesis and the standards to which it is expected to conform for distribution to candidates.

(3) Establishment of a thesis seminar. Regular participation in this seminar is to be required of all candidates writing theses in residence. One or more faculty members is to have direct responsibility for the organization and scheduling of this seminar. A session of the seminar will ordinarily be conducted by the chairman of the tentative or final thesis committee of the student presenting a report (see point 7 below). All other faculty members shall be encouraged to attend.

(4) A Ph.D. candidate, whether or not he writes his thesis in residence, shall be required to make at least two appearances before this seminar.

(5) The candidate’s first appearance before the seminar shall be prior to his admission to candidacy. In advance of this appearance, the candidate shall prepare a brief report (on the scale of a term paper) explaining his thesis topic, the existing state of knowledge on the topic, its potentialities, and his projected plan of attack on the problem. This report shall be duplicated and circulated to all members of the seminar an all members of the faculty in advance of the meeting of the seminar.

(6) A candidate shall be permitted to make this first appearance preparatory to admission to candidacy if he has passed at least two of the three Ph.D. preliminary examinations.

(7) The candidate shall have responsibility for applying for the appointment of a tentative thesis committee prior to his first appearance at the seminar. He shall be permitted to make such application at any time after he has passed at least two of the three Ph.D. preliminary examinations. The chairman of the department shall name a tentative faculty committee for each candidate, and this committee shall be expected to attend the meeting of the seminar at which it takes place. At least one member of the tentative committee shall be a person whose major field of interest is outside of the field of the proposed thesis. If admission to candidacy is granted, a final thesis committee shall be appointed by the chairman of the department.

(8) The candidate’s final appearance before the seminar shall be a definitive report of his findings. A brief resume of this report shall be duplicated and circulated to all members of the seminar and all members of the faculty in advance of the meeting of the seminar. The candidate’s thesis committee shall be expected to attend this final appearance before the seminar. [Last sentence was recommendation (10) of previous draft]

(9) The central core of the thesis or its equivalent shall be circulated to all members of the faculty before the final acceptance of the thesis. Final acceptance of the thesis shall be by vote of the members of the faculty upon the recommendation of the thesis committee.

(10) The final examination by the department shall be on the candidate’s major field. The examination shall be a function of the whole department but in any event shall be attended by members of the thesis committee and other faculty members specializing in the field.

(11) The new procedure for admission to candidacy should apply to all students in residence at the time of its adoption, and to students not in residence who have not been admitted to candidacy prior to July 1, 1950.

___________________________

[MEMO #8, undated, almost certainly 1950]

[Mimeographed copy.]

STANDARDS FOR Ph.D. THESIS

(Draft proposal for
circulation among
prospective candidates)

In order to guide candidates for the Ph.D. degree in selection of a thesis topic, the Department of Economics has formulated the following statement of standards which shall apply to doctoral dissertations in the future. Each candidate is urged to familiarize himself with the four main criteria set forth below.

I. The role of the thesis in the educational process is to develop the candidate’s ability to make significant contributions to knowledge in economics. To accomplish this objective the thesis must make a contribution to knowledge.

In addition:

a. The thesis must be concerned with an important and significant problem.

The “importance” and “significance” of a problem are, of course, to some extent matters of individual judgment. Different candidates will have different concepts of what is important what is relatively inconsequential. In selecting a topic, however, the candidate should first ask himself questions such as these: Why is the proposed topic “important”? Why is it worth spending time on? Would research on the topic contribute to general understanding of some central problem of our time? Would it contribute to clarifying or improving the conceptual or logical basis of economics? Questions such as the availability of material, opportunity for utilizing a particular technique, or the possible conclusiveness of findings, though important, are definitely secondary. The candidate should work on something that “matters”.

b. The thesis must involve analysis of an economic problem

Conceivably, any kind of original work, such as for example the mere gathering of statistics which have never been compiled before, might be “a contribution to knowledge”. However, such a task would not meet the requirements for a thesis unless it involved independent analysis of an economic problem. In other words, the compilation of material is not an end in itself; it is only a mans of achieving the objective of the thesis.

II. The topic should be sufficiently limited and specific to permit the candidate to do a thorough and exhaustive piece of work.

The doctoral candidate is not expected to tackle a broad or general problem in its entirety. On the contrary, in most cases, he can make the best contribution to knowledge and develop his capacity for undertaking research by concentrating on a clearly defined segment of an important and significant problem. Since quality rather than quantity will be the main standard for judgment of the thesis, the topic should be limited in scope in order to enable the candidate to concentrate his energies on intensive and exhaustive analysis.

Insofar as possible, the candidate should choose a topic in the broad problem area in which he feels he might want to do further research beyond the thesis. In other words the thesis should be looked upon as a stepping stone to more comprehensive research as the candidate acquires greater maturity and judgment after completing of the formal requirements for the degree. In short, the candidate should avoid choosing a “blind-alley” topic which offers few avenues to future research.

III. Every thesis must contain a central core of not more than roughly 15,000 words, (or approximately 50 typewritten pages.)

This central core is to be self-contained. It may, however, be supplemented by additional chapters or appendices containing more detailed data, expansions of points developed in the central core, etc.

The central core should, in general, not give much space to the general character of the problem, earlier work on the problem, and the like; those belong in supporting appendices, if anywhere. It should concentrate on the original material developed by the writer. It must contain a precise statement of its problem and its analysis, not simply summarize data, report views, or describe events.

IV. The thesis must conform to high standards of quality

The central core of the thesis should be comparable in quality and scope to a first-rate journal article, and the candidate should strive to have the central core of the thesis, or an adaptation thereof, published in a journal.

In order to achieve the standards of quality set forth above, it is assumed, as a regular matter, that the thesis will undergo several substantive revisions before final acceptance. Up to the point of writing a thesis, most candidates have had little occasion to acquire high standards of quality, since most of their written work has been of a “one-shot” variety. The thesis, on the other hand, must be a thorough and well-written piece of research. In other words, it must represent the best work of which the candidate is capable.

The initial reputation of the candidate is made largely on the basis of the excellence of his doctoral dissertation, and his capacity for further research is dependent upon the development of his ability to complete successfully a piece of research requiring analytical capacity, sound judgment and continued application. The thesis, then, is a challenge to the candidate to demonstrate his right to belong to the profession. It is, consequently, a major undertaking, and no something to be brushed off speedily or lightly.

___________________________

Source: Hoover Institution Archives, Papers of Milton Friedman, Box 79, Folder 5 “University of Chicago. Minutes. Ph. D. Thesis Committee.”

Image Source:  T. W. Schultz, University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-07484, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Categories
Chicago Regulations

Chicago. Committee on Ph.D. Outlines & Requirements, 1949 (1)

The University of Chicago Department of Economics was dissatisfied with its procedures for appraising and approving dissertation projects in late 1948 and a committe was formed to make recommendations with Milton Friedman as its chairperson. Here I post T.W. Schultz’s official memo naming the members of the committee and Milton Friedman’s initial memo to the committee clearly signalling his intention of having a major rethink about what a Ph.D. thesis is supposed to be about. 

___________________________

[Memo #1, 10 Dec 1948]

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Date   December 10, 1948

 

To      Mr. Friedman, Mr. Blough, Mr. Marschak,                        Department Economics
Mr. Johnson

 

From T. W. Schultz                                                                             Department Economics

 

The faculty of the Department of economics authorized a committee to prepare a memorandum setting forth the problem of students’ Ph.D. outlines and the procedure to be followed by the Department in appraising and approving Ph.D. thesis projects, including the type of outlines and supporting materials that a student should submit to the Department for its use when it passes upon the petition to admission to candidacy.

May I ask you to serve as members of this committee with Professor Friedman acting as chairman?

The report should be directed to the Department to be circulated well in advance of the departmental meeting in which it is to be considered.

___________________________

[Memo #2, early 1949]

[Undated, written sometime after the Schultz memo of December 10, 1948 and the Friedman memo of May 23, 1949 that followed two meetings of this Committee which had taken place.]

TO:                  R. Blough, J. Marschak, G. Johnson

FROM:            Milton Friedman

SUBJECT:       Committee on Ph.D. Thesis Outlines and Requirements

 

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide a basis for discussion by our committee, of which I am chairman. I have been derelict in my duty in not having prepared it much earlier, or not having called a meeting earlier.

 

  1. Our Assignment

To refresh our memories, I quote from Mr. Schultz’s note establishing the committee: “To prepare a memorandum setting forth the problem of students’ Ph.D. outlines and the procedure to be followed by the Department in appraising and approving Ph.D. thesis projects, including the type of outlines and supporting materials that a student should submit to the Department for its use when it passes upon the petition to admission to candidacy.”

Interpreted literally, this assignment would limit us to the steps up to and including admission to candidacy, and would exclude consideration of the characteristics of the thesis itself and the criteria used in its acceptance. Since it seems to me the earlier stages cannot properly be judged except in terms of the desired end product, I suggest that, at least in our own discussions, we interpret the assignment more broadly to include all problems associated with the thesis requirement.

 

  1. Present Procedure

a. Admission to candidacy. As I understand it, we have no very formalized procedure or requirements. Students typically discuss possible thesis topics with one or more faculty members, construct outlines of the projected thesis, ordinarily get the reaction of one or more faculty members to it, revise it accordingly, and then formally submit the thesis topic and outline to the Department for approval and admission to candidacy. The submitted outline is occasionally extremely detailed, occasionally very general, and is sometimes accompanied by a general statement of objective and purpose, sources of material for the thesis, etc.

b. Thesis requirements. Aside from the general and vague requirement that the thesis be an “original contribution to knowledge”, we have, so far as I know, no concrete standards for theses. Among ourselves, we have frequently expressed the view that short theses of high quality were desirable and to be promoted, and have bemoaned the tendency on the part of students to prepare lengthy, pedestrian, theses. It is my feeling, however, that the students themselves think of the thesis in terms of a full-length book, and feel that quantity is an important requirement.

The procedure for guidance of theses is informal and vague. The student ordinarily consults separately with the members of his committee as he feels the need to do so.

 

  1. The Immediate Reason for a Committee

The immediate occasion for the appointment of a committee to consider the problem is primarily the feeling of frustration and incompetence we all feel when we are required to consider thesis topics and outlines and to approve admission to candidacy. The topics are often, if not typically, vague and broad, the outlines have the appearance of being “dreamed up” along rather formal lines in order to get approval rather than of being really working outlines providing a pattern for work or a real prediction of the final organization of the thesis. We are typically reduced to approving or disapproving the tesis larely on the basis of our knowledge of the ability of the student submitting the outline rather than on the merits of the project itself.

 

  1. The More Fundamental Problem

It seems to me that the dissatisfaction with the procedure of approving admission to candidacy reflects a more basic problem—the function of the thesis in the education of the students and the best means of accomplishing that function. I feel that we will make more progress on our particular assignment by considering afresh the general problem.

It is my own feeling that nothing has done so much in the United States to degrade standards of research in economics as the Ph. D. dissertation in its existing form. (These comments do not apply in any special sense to Chicago—indeed, it seems to me that our record in this respect is outstandingly good). The standard which has, in principle, been set for the dissertation is that it be a major piece of work making an original contribution to the field, the model being a book of substantial magnitude. The usual graduate student, expected to begin his dissertation after two years of graduate work and supposed to be able to complete I in another year, is not at all prepared to do a piece of work of this character or quality in the time allotted. He does not have enough background in the field, or broad enough experience, and even if he had, he could hardly complete the dissertation in one year. Equally important, even if the student could do it, faculty advisers would find it impossible to supervise properly more than one or two studies of this magnitude and scope. Proper supervision would mean applying to the work the standards they would apply to their own work; it would mean repeated and detailed consultations with the student, word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence criticism of drafts of pieces of the thesis and of the entire thesis, some independent checking on the student’s work, etc.

The result is naturally a compromise. Faculty advisers do not provide the supervision and critical guidance required, they do not and cannot be expected to go over manuscripts in great detail and require that it be rewritten repeatedly until it meets a high standard. Even aside from the time and effort required, competition prevents such a course of action. The Ph.D. is something of a trade-union card, competition from other schools and the fair treatment of our own graduates requires that they be able to get one on terms that are not intolerably stiffer than those at other institutions. The result is that the theses all of us accept are typically pretty poor products, poorly organized, and full of poor grammar and writing, to say nothing of bad economics and analysis. The student who has a dissertation of this type accepted not only fails to get the training in economic research the thesis should provide, he also goes away, at least to some extent, with the idea that this is the kind of work that is done in economics and that is acceptable and respectable. In latter years, he is not unlikely to produce a flood of additional work no higher in quality than his original effort and even more useless since it does not even provide a trade-union card.

 

  1. The Role of the Thesis in the Education of the Student

There are a number of different functions that can be assigned to the thesis in the educational process:

 (a) To give the student training in research by “doing” and some feeling for standards of quality in research.

 (b) To sharpen the student’s knowledge of the techniques and subject matter he has acquired in course work by requiring him to apply what he has learned to a particular problem in the belief that in the process he will be forced to think through the material he has been subjected to and make it his own.

(c) To establish habits of work and some feeling for research, in the hope thereby of stimulating him to do work on his own in latter years.

(d) To give him the unquestionably important experience of carrying through to completion a major piece of work.

            The thesis might also be viewed, not solely as a part of the educational process, but also as a means of advancing knowledge in economics. I am myself inclined to give this little or no weight. At the stage at which students are not now expected to write their theses, not one student in a hundred is capable of making a “real” contribution to knowledge. Any contribution to knowledge ought in my view to be considered a welcome by-product, not a major objective.

Of the objectives listed, only the first two seem to me capable of accomplishment, with the present general standards about the stage in his career at which the student is expected to write his thesis and the time he is expected to devote to it. The last two, and particularly (d) would require something of a revolution of these standards.

 

  1. Possible Solutions of the Fundamental Problem

There seem to me only two directions in which one can proceed to solve the fundamental problem if one takes as given roughly the present student-faculty ratio.

(a) One approach would be to restrict the Ph.D. degree to many fewer persons and to make it mean something very different from what it now means. As I understand it, this is more or less the approach followed in the Scandinavian countries where the Ph.D. is ordinarily no granted except for a major piece of work done by a man ten, fifteen, or more years after he has begun his professional career. This approach, while promising and desirable if it could be followed, does not seem to me feasible. It consists essentially in saying that one ought to establish a more advanced degree than the present Ph.D. It still leaves the problem of an intermediate degree like our present Ph.D., which would be a mark of certification that an individual is ready to begin his scientific career. It seems hardly possible for one school to do so or to overturn our established custom that a thesis is part of the attainments certified to by such a degree.

(b) The other alternative that seems to me to be open is to make the professed standard of the Ph.D. more modest while raising the attained standard. Instead of a book, the standard would be a journal article. In a way, this does not involve any change, since I do not believe there is anything in our present rules which would prevent us from accepting the equivalent of a journal article as a thesis. However, unless we explicitly make an effort to change our standard and to set a different standard for our students, I doubt very much that they, or we ourselves, will depart from the standard of a book.

What I have in mind is that we should emphasize that the requirement for the Ph.D. would be satisfied by a piece of work not to exceed a specified number of pages in length and of a quality suitable for publication in a professional journal—whether actually published or not is immaterial. The emphasis should be on quality of performance, not on quantity. The expectation would be that the faculty advisers could really go over a piece of moderate length in great detail, that they could if necessary require it to be rewritten any number of times without imposing too great a hardship on the student. It could further be expected that a larger number of members of the faculty would be led to read the thesis before final acceptance, and that in this way higher standards of quality would both be imposed and actually effected. I should be inclined myself to set something like fifty double-spaced typewritten pages as the absolute maximum limit on the size of any dissertation.

 

  1. The Problem of the Thesis Outline

If we were to follow the line just suggested, it seems to me we could appropriately require higher standards in the thesis outline itself. Instead of the present brief and formal statement, we could require something of the order of a brief term-paper. This paper could be expected to contain three items as a minimum: (1) A brief statement of the problem; (2) a succinct but reasonably comprehensive summary of existing literature on the problem; (3) a fairly precise statement of the particular respects in which the student expects to extend or supplement the existing literature. Whether it contained an outline of the present form seems to me immaterial. In addition there ought to be a flat prohibition on any attempts to “justify” the topic in terms of its path-breaking importance for economic science. If we set the training of students as the primary objective, topics should be judged primarily in terms of the training the student will get, only secondarily in terms of their importance to economics.

It should be expected that the student will in general have gone over this statement with some faculty member and have gotten tentative clearance from him.

This is not a very specific recommendation, and I am hopeful that something better will come from the other members of the committee.

Beyond admission to candidacy, there are a number of additional possibilities we should investigate. I mention them only briefly.

(a) There seems to me considerable merit in the suggestion that has been made by Koopmans that the committee as a whole should meet with the candidate shortly after admission to candidacy so that there can be a meeting of minds on the direction his work should take.

(b) I have the feeling that much could be gained by getting the students to help one another by criticism and discussion. This would be valuable training both for the critic and the criticized. Could we set up some sort of a seminar for students writing their theses? In such a seminar, a student would be expected to submit something in written form, duplicated so that the other members have copies in advance. Some students now get the benefit of such discussion through the Cowles Commission and Agricultural Economics groups. Ought we to extend it to all? Or are informal groupings really more effective?

 

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Milton Friedman Papers, Box 79, Folder 5 “University of Chicago Minutes, Ph.D. Thesis Committee”.

Image Source: Clipping from a photograph from Hoover Institution Archives (Milton Friedman Papers Box 115) in online Wall Street Journal  (18 Oct 2012): Dalibor Rohac’s review of  The Great Persuasion by Angus Burgin.