David: Those who believe that a liberal arts education in general is considerably inferior to a technical one (and certainly they are legion) must even more strongly believe (I very much suspect) that an African-American Studies major is among those most lacking in merit out of the grand array of possible liberal arts majors. But perhaps this observation is such a truism that it is not worthy of deliberation.

There is certainly a feeling in some corners that diversity-related courses are less rigorous than non-diversity-related ones. This may even be true on average, but I would like to see some data.

More importantly, one of the purposes of EphBlog is to fight such stereotypes at Williams. Is there any reason to believe that a course like “CLGR 402(S) Homer: The Iliad” is more or less rigorous than a course like “REL 229(F) Liberation Ethics: Social Teachings in Black Sacred Rhetoric (Same as African-American Studies 229)*”?

Not that I am aware of. I assume that all courses at Williams are rigorous until I have reason to believe otherwise. (Informed commentary is welcome.)

Alas, others are not so enlightened. One of the more intriguing tables in the concerns the frequency of double majors. In general, double majors are a good thing, a sign of academic seriousness. So, it is somewhat surprising (given admissions standards) that African American students have the highest rate of double majors. Why would that be? (There is a small N problem here, so this is mostly speculation.)

I would guess that a lot of these double majors feature AAS (African American Studies) as one of the majors. (Nothing wrong with majoring, in AAS or anything else.) I also guess that one of the reasons that students might double up AAS with a more traditional major is a fear that some employers/grad schools would have attitudes like Frank’s, a feeling (justified or not) that diversity majors are not as rigorous as other majors.

Again, I am not justifying that opinion. I am just speculating on how that widespread opinion, and students’ reasonable reaction to it, might explain otherwise puzzling results.

Conjecture: I would wager that, if you removed AAS majors from the count, the distribution of double majors by race would look very different.

Blah, blah, blah. Does anyone read these long comments? On second thought, perhaps this is all gibberish because one can’t even major in AAS; it is only a concentration. Or is this table misleading?

Anyway, I do have a point. Frank’s attitude is widespread. How do we fight it? Simple: Post syllabi, papers and comments for all (or at least Williams people) to see. If AAS 229 is as rigorous as CLGR 402, then this will be obvious for all to see. (And, if it isn’t, then that would be good to know as well.)

Economics has already made a concerted effort to make sure it can meet the rising student demand: it has been hiring 3-4 new people every year for the last 3-4 years or so. That is unprecedented for a liberal arts school and impressive even when compared to some research universities. The department is already the biggest among liberal arts colleges by a margin and because the turnover rates of Professors is much less than in 10 years back, the department is also very stable . The department can only go on such a hiring spree for longer if it beleives that the current spike in enrollment is indeed a permanent one. It needs to wait for 1-2 years to gauge if it needs more faculty. And remember that they knew about the spike in enrollment only in the spring last year and my guess is that the number of hirings for a year gets approved by hopkins early on in the year; or they might even have a multi year plan. So to just cite the enrollment numbers in a given year and the number of opening positions to make a case for the college not paying attention to student demand is extremely misleading.

Deans and their administrative ilk grant hiring lines for a whole host of reasons. Major/Faculty ratio is only one variable in the decision.

Hmmm. Why does Williams need more professors in this area if virtually every course already offered has fewer than 20 students enrolled?

Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I thought that the whole point of a top-rate liberal arts college, such as Williams, is to have class sizes under 20 students.

As to the Econ department. Think “supply-side economics”. Williams has no choice but to limit the supply of resources and force students to chose other majors by making Economics increasingly unattractive.

If the College allocates resources to support 130+ econ majors, then it must immediately begin considering which existing departments and/or programs will phased out. Classics, the modern languages, Music, Theater, Anthropology, Sociology, Religion, and Astronomy all had single-digit numbers of majors last year and would be candidates for the axe. The decision to allocate resources for 25% or more Econ majors is really a decision about Williams keeping a liberal arts curriculum. If you allocate resources to fully support 25%, demand will further increase.

Unlike Claremont-McKenna (which is an econ/poli sci specialty school), Williams does not have four consortium colleges sharing its campus which can offer courses in the arts and sciences to its students.

As an Econ/Phil major: I think it’s probably a good thing, in the long run, to discourage 130 students from majoring in Econ. I have had a hell of a time getting into an upper-level elective this year, due to the crowding from other ’07s…this is terrible from my personal interests. However, discouraging such concentration, by making it harder to be an Econ major, is beneficial to the college at large. The Econ department is already huge, and it would be unfair to the other departments if the college continued to concentrate enormous resources on it. As part of the Diversity initiative, I think the College should seek a more diverse distribution of majors. This doesn’t just imply additional hires for AAS, but also for Classics, History, Music, Anthropology, and all the other liberal arts; many of which are desperately short of staff and students.

David: What you describe as “Frank’s attitude” is not! You are shooting the messenger.

David, I think the table is misleading for other reasons, namely that “International Studies” is supposed to act as the new umbrella concentration for a number of fields including African and Middle Eastern Studies. (I was AMES back in the day).

Here’s some rambling thoughts from a semi-satisfied former ECON major…

I agree with Ronit that it would be a good thing if Williams made it harder to be an Econ major. I found it frustrating that the department (at least during the early nineties) seemed willing to “dumb down” its curriculum to appeal to less-than-serious students.

What could (or should) the department do to weed out the less serious students?

During the early nineties one obvious solution could have been to require more math. (At one point, before Deveaux was hired in the math department and while Zimmerman was on sabbatical, there was virtually no way for econ majors to take a real econometrics course.) However, I question whether Williams would want its brand of “liberal arts” economics to become too quant-heavy. There is a place at Williams for serious economic study that does not involve higher math (though maybe that place is the Poli Ec department).

Another thing the department could do (in the long run) is to offer smaller classes. Most (though not all) of my econ classes were of the 25+ student variety. While the material often didn’t suffer from a lecture format, the large-class format did allow students who wished to do so to coast by without engaging the material. The problem with a small-class solution, of course, is that Williams would need to hire even more faculty in the short term, with a (long-term) goal of making student enrollment smaller.

I am sure that the highly skilled professional enrollment managers in Nesbitt’s Admissions Office could enroll fewer economics majors if they were tasked to do so.

The school’s own report on athletics indicates a strong correlation between recruited “A-flag” athlete-scholars and Division II social science courses, with 66% majoring in this division. The same data shows that Economics is the most popular DIV II major in the recruited athlete-scholar cohort. Thus, by filling 28% of the freshman class with recruited “A-flag” students, the college is effectively enrolling a student body that leans towards Economics as a major.

Either intentionally or not, the Admissions Office is being tasked to overenroll Econ majors.

I realize that there is no meaningful connection between this year’s hiring plan for Economics and longer term/needs a trends (although, as always, informed commentary from people like (d)avid and anonymous above is welcome).

I still question the decision to create two brand new tenure track positions within AAS (or whatever the appropriate name for the department being created by Joy James). I think that this is a very bad direction in which to go for the college, a direction that is precisely what Hu-DeHart recommends.

I think it is an embarrassment that intro political science classes are taught in lecture format with 50+ students. This is a problem that the college should be fixing.

David,

As you reported recently, Bean was denied tenure.

Just another point for your analysis.

You make a good point, hwc, but you assume that the recruited athletes are predisposed to be econ majors. I would argue, along slightly different lines, that recruited athletes are predisposed to take easy classes. Make econ less easy, and suddenly the admissions profiles will show that recruited athletes are predisposed to become [other gut social science] majors.

Bean was denied tenure.

Do you think Bean would have been denied tenure if she were a deeper shade of purple? Just asking!

Also, Williams Towner, can you give us more insider scoop on the “noise” being made about these decisions, especially about how two working mothers were denied? (Also, were the promoted not working mothers/parents?)

You are a key source for this sort of stuff.

And, it’s really not just the athletes. Williams tilts towards attracting full-fare “preppy” students from affluent suburban high schools and New England prep schools. It always has, of course, but it does so today to a higher degree than most of its peer institutions. Combine that with the hyperinflated interest in “pre-business” majors nationally and it’s not really surprising that the College is seeing an imbalance. It would take the admissions office being specifically tasked to address that imbalance.

Reducing the very high percentage of recruited “A-flag” athlete-scholars in the admissions priorities would be just a part of the equation. I see the Econ imbalance, the drinking issues, the diversity issues, and the social issues underlying the anchor house initiative as being related pieces of the puzzle and largely driven by admissions profiles. Not to a degree that requires a complete about-face, but rather one of shifting a few admissios slots from Column A to Column B. The challenge is that Williams is becoming so identified with Column A that Column B kids are enrolling elsewhere.

Just as a practical note to wannabee-Ephs or their parents in the next few years: Don’t be stupid and write that you want to major in Econ on your application! The doubling of Econ majors from an already high level will undoubtedly get some attention from Nesbitt and his staff.

As someone pointed out above, I agree that rather than trying to weed out potential econ majors during admissions, a better/effective/viable strategy would be to just make econ classes more harder.

One can look at high correlations across atheletes and econ majors but its dangerous to make policy decisions based on that, particularly
in directions that hwc always advocates for. For example, from my own experience, around 40-50% of international students at williams tend to be econ najors. now does this mean we should cut down international admissions? i hope hwc thinks not.

So a definitely better stregy is to make econ classes harder. And there are indications that the econ department is working in that direction.
2-3 easy steps would achieve the purpose:offer
only one version of a hard econometric class as a requisite for the major ( as oppsed to two versions now:one watered down and the other challenging); and make the corporate finance and the money and banking classes a lot more challenging.

The difference, of course, is that international students make up 6% of the student body and varsity athletes make up 40% depending on how you count. So the relative impact on the size of the Econ department could be quite different.

Or get rid of 110 and 120, have 251M, 252, and 255 as the required introductory major courses, and require all students to take multivariable calculus in freshman year. You do that, and beginning the Econ major becomes a challenge at least comparable to Math, Physics, and CompSci, and you attract a much better breed of students.

Ooooh, I like that last one!

Combined with shifting the non-quant over to PoliEc, that sounds like a good idea.

Having more math pre-reqs for courses can’t be a bad thing!

Uhh… isn’t there something repugnant about the nature of the discussion on making the econ major “harder”?

Curriculum decisions should be made based on the educational interests of the students, not on some other criteria.

If it is indeed the case that one cannot have an appreciation of modern economics without understanding quantitative aspects requiring multivariable calculus, then by all means it should be a requirement.

If on the other hand, students can get a basic understanding of economics as a discipline without all the quantitative background, then it seems requiring it for the econ major would be detrimental to those students who want to seriously study economics without having to go through all this quantitative stuff.

This seems like something for the economics faculty to decide based on their understanding of economics as an intellectual discipline. (It might be a myth that this question can be decided in this way, but it is a useful myth.)

If there continues to be a problem with there being too many econ majors, then this problem should be addressed in a more open and honest way, leaving curricular decisions to be made as they should be. One possibility is through undergraduate admissions. Another possibility is for the economics department to select its majors. (Theoretically, since you need approval from a member of the department to declare a major, it has this power now.) (Note that, if the department ends up selecting only majors who would take 255, then it is in effect declaring that 255 is necessary for an understanding of economics, and should have made a curricular decision on curricular grounds.)

Finally, I want to remind those who might have forgotten that there is no PoliEc department. The courses for the PoliEc major are taught by professors from the PoliSci and Econ departments. Shifting econ majors to poli-ec majors doesn’t really reduce the strain on the econ department.

A quotation from David’s post:

“Williams is too small a college to support tiny departments.”

I dispute this. What about Classics?

I wouldn’t get rid of the Classics department. I find the idea that a liberal arts college could lack a Classics department absurd (though of course there are some liberal arts colleges without Classics). Note i have never taken a Classics course.

Perhaps there are similar reasons for believing an American liberal arts college “must” have a strong AAS department.

I have to plead ignorance at this point.

The departments at Williams will slowly change over time as student interests change. There used to be a Greek Department, but it is gone now. I don’t have anything against Greek, but if a department can not draw enough students to its classes and its major, it does not pass the cost/benefit test. Perhaps Williams will have a Classics Department in 25 years. Perhaps not. But once a department gets too small, it needs to be merged into another. There is a critical mass of students and faculty required.

Might the new incarnation of AAS be popular enough to deserve department status? Perhaps. To be honest, I am quite confused about the relationships among International Studies, African-American Studies, and African-American and Africana Diaspora Studies. Anyone who understand this should feel free to clarify.

Big picture: It just seems to me that the conversation is over, that it never really began. Joy James only came to Williams, I think, because she was promised the chance to build a serious department with her own hires. I do not think that this is the best way to go.

It was certainly the case that the economics major back in the day was less rigorous that the economics major at other schools. For example, it did not require calculus. This made it much harder for Ralph Bradburd to teach microeconomics than it perhaps should have been.

Does this mean that the economics major at Williams back then was needlessly easy, or that at Harvard it was needlessly hard? I don’t know.

But I do know that economics professors would much rather have a department made up of the smartest, most academically serious half of the current majors than the other half. One way to do that would be to require more math and statistics than it currently does. But, of course, the department would like to have more FTE spots for professors and the best way to guarantee that is to have lots of students and majors. If you are a junior, untenured member of the department, you certainly want 100+ majors, at least for the next few years.

One option is to have two tracks: one math serious, one less so. Harvard does this and it works quite well. Williams has done this for many years in terms of ECON 253 versus 255, so it might consider doing the same thing for 251/252.

Is the Economics major less “hard” than all other majors? If not, then what majors are equally or less “hard” as or than the Economics major? What are they? Does intentionally contracting the number of Economics majors serve the interests of the student body first as individuals and then as a whole?

In my opinion, the Econ major currently is as difficult as you choose to make it. On the easy side, there’s really only one difficult class: 252. 110 and 120 are easy to extremely easy (depending on the professor) if you have some common sense about numbers and markets. You can then take 251 (not 251M, the math intensive version, although even still it isn’t rocket science), 253 (rather than 255), a few soft 200 level electives, and your favorite two advanced electives (there are enough choices to find something interesting). On the hard end, you can take 251M, 255, Stat 201, 346, and perhaps Microeconometrics with Pedroni if you’re really looking to push yourself. Anyone who thinks the “pre-business” courses like Corporate Finance, Money and Banking, or Tax Policy are easy should ask about Gentry’s penchant for assigning work or the average on his midterms (very heavy and below 60 in my experience).
I have no problem defending my track through Economics as rigorous, but the overwhelming number of majors is still a problem: I was dropped from two electives this spring (ie, my last semester here) because they were full of people who still needed to meet graduation requirements. No amount of pleading with Prof. Bradburd could get me into a class I’d been waiting to take until senoir year (because it typically is closed to juniors). Getting locked out of classes in my major as a senior wasn’t in the forefront of my mind when I chose Williams.
I agree that “beefing up” the major would be a good way to narrow down the field of potential majors. There’s no excuse for an econ major to graduate with no training in calculus or statistics: make multivariable calculus and statistics (perhaps even an econ stats class before 255) requirements. People who want to talk aboug economic policies without knowing anything about applied math (I’m talking about practical calculus and stat here, not about the proof stuff the math department focuses on) should be polisci majors and take some econ theory on the side (aka PoliEc majors). Real economics requires numbers, regression, and even calculus (gasp).
Furthermore, I take issue with the tone I sense here and in the department about so called “pre-business” econ classes. Is econ for business somehow less dignified than econ for research? Forgive me if my post Williams goals lean less towards “I want to win a Nobel Prize in Econ” and more towards “I want to make a lot of money exploiting inefficiencies in the market.” I would venture that I’m not alone in that sentiment, as evidenced by the overwhelming interest and placement of seniors/graduates in Banking/Consulting/Business jobs. Must be all those preppy athletes overrunning the campus again.
I’ll be very curious to see what if any changes are made in the coming years regarding Econ, either in terms of hiring enough professors to meet demand (including even demand for more “pre-business” classes) or trying to reduce majors through curricular changes.

If not, then what majors are equally or less “hard” as or than the Economics major?

Psychology is often considered to be one of the easier majors (and thereby attracts many of the athletes that don’t major in Econ). (This is why when someone asks me what I’m majoring in, I say “math,” and don’t mention my second major.) Those two seem to be the main ones.

Consistent with Williams being a liberal arts college, shouldn’t the College refrain from intentionally foreclosing from majoring in Economics those of its students who desire to major in Economics, who have or will have reasonably prepared themselves to do so but who do not desire or expect to be knowledgeable or skillful enough to become professional economists? In other words should the College erect graduate school academic standards as a means of deliberately narrowing the field of participating students in certain disciplines which at the time are oversubscribed?

David: Williams has done this for many years in terms of ECON 253 versus 255, so it might consider doing the same thing for 251/252.

Just to point out…there are also two versions of 251 - 251M uses partial derivatives (so math 105/106 is needed), and 251 doesn’t. Also, as 06eru pointed out, it is certainly possible to make your Econ major into something challenging and rigorous if you’re willing to do so.

I’m now at a point where I might not take any Econ electives at all in my junior spring, leaving two to take in senior year along with the senior seminar. Even as a junior with decent grades and a number of profs who know me well, everything is closed up. This is partially my fault - I didn’t start pleading with profs early enough. But this is the sort of problem that I thought only occurred in large state schools…it’s certainly the first time I’ve experienced it at Williams.

I am currently a senior at Williams and I am a Political Science major. I took PSCI 120 as a freshman (America and the World after 9/11) and I have been a TA for the class for both my junior and senior years.

I believe that PSCI 120 is a discussion/lecture class in order to help freshmen and sophs (for whom the course is intended, Prof McAllister makes it very difficult for upperclassmen to take the class)try political science in an environment that isn’t entirely intimidating. Political Science is not a topic that is very common in high school, and many students have little confidence in expressing their opinions and views on controversial current events. I believe that the size of Professor McAllister’s class helps the students figure out if they like PSCI (I took the class and decided to be a major) and then they will go on to take other and perhaps smaller classes.

Also, another thing is there is a huge difference, as I am sure you know, between 50 and 15. Professor McAllister is an excellent lecturer and I do not believe that his skills are being wasted by having a larger class, rather the students are fortunate to have one of the most talented lecturers in the department.

That all being said, I have had many frustrating moments with the Political Science Department, but for the most part those have been with the lack of advanced electives, not the size of intro seminars. I would really love to see more 300 and 400 level electives, especially in International Relations which is the largest subfield and sorely needs experts in American Foreign Policy and also in regions such as Asia (though Prof Crane is excellent) as well as post-Soviet Russia, South America, and Africa.

Thanks.

“To be honest, I am quite confused about the relationships among International Studies, African-American Studies, and African-American and Africana Diaspora Studies. Anyone who understand this should feel free to clarify.”

African American Studies is traditional Black American studies from slavery to the present which is a very different history from Africana Diaspora studies which usually starts from the 1980s and documents African immigrants to America. African Americans and African immigrants to America have very different cultures which are often at odds with one another.

An interesting case example:
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/bronxbeat/2004Fall/2004-11-01/558.asp

Thanks for the clarificantion, but my confusion was more about the actual status of these fields at Williams. Which are departments, which are concentrations, which are soon to be departments? My guess is that James was promised the chance to create a department (which is why she has the authority to hire two people), but I am only guessing.