Both the goods and the bads of mass production accompany majoring in Economics. But the would-be concentrator can take comfort in the fact that the department is currently undergoing a minor revolution that may soon cut down many of its past drawbacks.

For years the department has boasted the top personnel in the field but has been plagued with the problem of huge classes and depersonalized section meetings.

In 1949 and 1950, however, the department took two steps towards inproving the future concentrator's lot: reinstituting the tutorial system and shaking up the basic course.

Tutorial Returns

Chairman Arthur Smithies has high hopes for each of these two moves; but both are having their growing pains, and the department is still experimenting. Probably the more important of the two steps is the tutorial, since chances are that more and more of the curriculum will be taught and amplified in tutorial groups.

This year's expanded tutorial program includes the 51 honors seniors (thesis) and 49 honors juniors (groups). The new group sessions have been receiving high praise from the serious students, who comment that Economics can be much more easily understood through small scale discussions. But this junior tutorial is currently not organized for credit, and, as a result, attendance and participation is coming in varying degrees.

Bender Report modifications of the tutorial system may take place in 1952, and what Economics tutorial will be at that time is still anybody's guess. However, the department is strongly convinced that any widely expanded tutorial should not reduce its current emphasis on the honors men; consequently, individual thesis instruction will continue, and some plan will probably be set up to keep down the size of tutorial groups that include honors students.

The second major change--revision of Economics 1--has also been greeted with mixed response and results, and, like the tutorial, it, too, is due for further alterations. Many criticized the old course, with its stress on tools of technical analysis, as confusing and dull.

Revised Ec 1

The new course seeks to ease concentrators into the field more gently, while at the same time appealing to the non-concentrators. The innovation of lectures every week or so has introduced to students such guest personalities as Hansen and Dunlop; however, some have criticified these lectures, usually given by Smithies himself, as too general and too elementary.

Above the level of Economics 1, the department offers undergraduates a score of more specialized courses, which break down into the fields of money and banking, market organization, labor, theory, and economic history. Well received among the middle group courses have been Ec 141, Money and Banking, Ec. 161, Business Organization and Public Regulation, and Ec 181 a and b, Labor Economics.

The number of formally required Economics courses is low, four, although honors men must take Ec 101, Theory, and would probably do well to take an extra course.

Other interesting offerings already exist in business cycles, international trade, public finance, and the economy of Russia. In addition, Harris will introduce a course next spring on mobilization for war.

Big Names

In its ranks, the department includes such nationally respected economists as Leontief, Hansen, Williams, Slichter, Harris, Dunlop, Mason, Black, and Galbraith; the only trouble is that undergraduates don't always have a chance to meet them. However, several younger men in ther field, including Duceenberry Goodwin, and Kaysen, have drawn praise.

It is customary to warn that concentration in Economics is not going to teach a man how to run a bank or how to make a lot of money in business. But the point bears repeating.

What Harvard Economics seeks to do is merely to develop the economic back-ground to social and political issues and also to present a way of thinking.

The current revisions inside the departments are likely to bring some order out of the chaos of mass education Concentrators must expect dislocations as the department gropes its way over the next few years, but the changes seem to be pointing in the right direction.