Political Economy Graduation Blogging

160 new U.C. Berkeley baccalaureates in political economy today.

Unfortunately, the survey indicates that about 64 of them are "not satisfied" with their major.

For half of those, "not satisfied" means that they wanted to major in undergraduate business or economics, but could not: those majors are "capped"--allowed by California Hall to limit their major numbers.

I decline to speculate why California Hall allows this.

For the other half of those "not satisfied", reasons are various: inability to get into courses where preference in enrollment was given to economics or politics majors, lack of sufficient guidance in designing what is effectively their own interdisciplinary major.

The most common reason mentioned is an inability to take the courses they wanted to take--not offered, not offered in the right semester, not offered in a large enough room.

We do have a problem here.

Plus graduation suffered from the great blank scroll shortage of 2008...

Brad DeLong http://www.j-bradford-delong.net http://delong.typepad.com brad.delong@gmail.com 925 708 0467

"Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task when in
tempestuous seasons they say only that when the storm is long-past the
sea will be flat again"

Comments

[Jonny]

I am a PEIS student and I understand the dissatisfaction. It's hard enough getting into our own courses but a political economist trying to get into political science or economics courses is near impossible. Much more importantly, when crafting one's concentration one will find that it will be rejected over and over again because it doesn't conform to some unwritten mystical requirements while seeming to conform to the published guidelines. It's as if we're being guided into a strict International Political Economy major with an Area Studies concentration, yet that is not the published major and is actually quite different and quite limited in scope, especially for what I had hoped to get out of the major. I would never have chosen PEIS, which I had fell in love with through the published descriptions, had I known I would have been limited to an International Area Studies scope. I was hoping for political economy in the wonderful tradition of moral philosophy, or even perhaps organizational theory, but definitely not solely IPE. Save us oh great one from the internet tubes.

[MouseJunior]

Gah. Bad memories. My alma mater had one class that was offered in semesters where the first month of the semester had a blue moon or something. Seemed like all the interesting courses were that way.

[Dave]

How many straight Econ majors does Berkeley allow? I'd have to assume that the Econ faculty would be in favor of more majors; that would presumably give them more $, more prestige, more clout, etc.

[Jason Christian]

Dang, this never change.

I signed up for PEIS in 1978 based on the catalogue restriction, and immediately started having problems getting into courses in Economics and Political Science, including PoliSci120a, International Relations, which was taught once a year and was required for graduation.

We formed the Political Economy Students Association about a half hour after the end of the first meeting of PS120a in the spring quarter of 1979 when about 50 PEIS seniors were denied a place in that course; I was bold but not a senior, and went down to the front of the Evans Hall lecture theater to announce an immediate mass meeting of PEIS students, at Moses Hall NOW. We filled the lobby of the IIS building, mainly with residents of the Greek-letter houses who wished they were business students and had never protested anything in their lives, but the noise attracted Dr. Rossberg, we soon had a meeting with Provost Park, and L&S paid for another session (in Fall 1979, just in time to turn the lecture into a ringside discussion of the Iranian hostage crisis) and told PoliSci to let our seniors in.

We established, back then, the principle that the College would ensure that there were places for its members who were studying in the group majors rather than in the departmental majors. The group majors need the support of the College, since (if?) the course-giving Departments see no benefit from seating and teaching students outside their majors.

What happened to that deal? Has it slipped away?

I admit, I was a bit of a chicken. I declared a double major (in Economics) to ensure I could get my econ classes. Which is why I first heard the story about Yugoslav worker-managed firms from the newest member of the Economics department, a specialist in Easter European economic systems (and member of the PEIS committee), Laura d'Andrea Tyson.

[a]

it helps mitigate the situation if students are told very clearly up-front about the limit and scarcity situation, and if university employees are supervised to ensure they do not oversell or misrepresent the college to future students.

you have to wonder about the impact on fundraising 30-40+ years from now.

some of the dissatisfaction may be due to a very difficult job environment and career limitations in the short-run from being denied something as an undergrad.

you might point out the positives and how the dissatisfied students may still be relativel much better off than others: it is not like the undergrads were laid off, passed over, and\or delayed one more year in graduation so as to endure yet one more tuition increase. they also have historic transparency given the access to a professor via blog.