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Almost one-third of Harvard’s varsity upperclassmen athletes study Economics. That’s because it’s too easy.
Recent coverage suggests what many have long suspected: When looking for the easiest concentration, the plurality of athletes (and students overall) settle on Economics. As the College attempts to recenter academics through grading reforms, many students have responded that it should examine potential imbalances between departments. Economics is the place to start.
The problem is twofold. First, the Economics Department offers many of its required courses at two levels of difficulty, letting students elect into an easy pathway. Second, the requirements fail to provide students with a diversity of perspectives on economics, effectively teaching them one view as if it were fact.
To be clear, Harvard’s Economics Department is often rated as the best in the world — rightfully so. Its faculty boasts Nobel laureates and John Bates Clark medalists. They produce outstanding research and, in my experience, are wonderful teachers. Many Economics concentrators are similarly superb, winning national competitions and going on to illustrious careers. While a lot of students apply themselves and excel, the Economics Department offers an easier alternative — and many concentrators take it.
Multiple requirements have two levels: one that requires advanced math and one that doesn’t. This distinction exists for intermediate microeconomics, intermediate macroeconomics, and econometrics. For example, students can take either Economics 1010A: “Intermediate Microeconomics” or Economics 1011A: “Intermediate Microeconomics: Advanced.” It’s clear from the course titles alone that some students are receiving a more rigorous education than others.
A Harvard degree ought to demonstrate excellence in a field, and we should expect our graduates to learn the full picture, not a watered-down version. To correct this, the Economics Department needs to require all concentrators to take the advanced courses.
One might raise concerns about inequities in academic preparation prior to college. However, before taking the intermediate levels, all students are required to take introductory courses. Likewise, concentrators have to take a statistics class before taking econometrics. If students aren’t adequately prepared for the higher-level courses, then the prerequisites aren’t doing their job.
However, the issue with Economics is not just that some students can take easier courses. The concentration also fails to teach students the array of theories in the field, instead offering them a limited perspective.
In my experience, the concentration requirements teach very little of a few economic theorists — and essentially nothing of the rest. All I heard of Adam Smith is the (unimportance of) “the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker.” I learned about John Maynard Keynes’s eponymous economics, but never had to actively wrestle with his ideas. I can say the same for Milton Friedman’s doctrine on the (lack of) social responsibilities of businesses.
What students are taught about these theorists is reduced to what you’d find on a fortune cookie.
Most other thinkers are disregarded completely. It should disturb us that a concentrator can graduate without engaging seriously with some of the most influential economic theorists ever — like Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx. Whether you’re a liberal or conservative (or a demand- or supply-side economist), it’s clear why this is a problem. Students can draw their own conclusions, but they must be asked to reckon with a range of theories. The Economics Department isn’t doing that.
The concentration requirements should go wider and deeper in their coverage of theory. They could even explicitly engage with the ethical and moral questions the department often fails to consider.
This is not to say that these topics aren’t discussed at all in the department, but economic theory should not be an opt-in aspect of the concentration. Without it, students are let off the hook on thinking critically about the discipline in the first place.
If not exposed to alternatives, Economics students may uncritically accept the neoliberal frameworks the department implicitly promotes. This isn’t just bad pedagogy; I’d argue it’s part of what propels Harvard students to sell out.
When students are told not only that they should pursue their self-interest, but that doing so is optimal for society, it’s no wonder they prioritize getting high-paying jobs. Courses like Economics 1745: “Corporate Finance” and Economics 1723: “Capital Markets” give students some of the skills to do so.
One might object that self-interest is actually optimal for society. That is one popular economic theory — and the only one the Economics Department teaches in earnest — but it’s not the only approach, and there’s no reason it should be. (One only needs to look back to the Great Recession to understand why.)
To raise its standards, the Economics Department must mandate rigor in both empirics and theory. The department can further counter its reputation as the easy default by creating a slightly higher barrier to entry and requiring students to submit an application before they are allowed to declare the concentration. It could even cap the number of concentrators — something the Social Studies concentration did historically.
Economics has taught me innumerable skills that influence how I see the world. But it has not taught me how to think about economics.
Matthew R. Tobin ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Economics in Winthrop House.
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