As you may know, the Arts and Sciences are under attack. Many claim that a traditional liberal arts education is very expensive and does not prepare students for the job market. The news is full of stories of recent graduates returning to their parents’ homes and unsuccessfully seeking jobs.

This does not apply to all majors. Students in some fields are still finding employment. One field that has been successful at training students for jobs while still providing a liberal arts education is economics. Students know this, and it is not surprising that at Emory, economics is the largest major in the College, with about 700 majors. Our graduates get jobs or go on to graduate training in economics, law or business. Unlike some fields, Emory Ph.D. graduates also all get good jobs as economists. At Emory, the large number of students for a relatively small department has stretched our resources, but we were proud of turning out students who were productive and able to use the education we provided.

At the same time, the reputation of our department, based on publication in academic journals, has been steadily increasing. In fact, a recent study has ranked us at a higher level than we have ever been ranked before. Because of our high student-faculty ratio, we always wanted to hire more faculty, but overall we felt that we were on a successful track.

This is why the recent decision of the College (announced by Dean Forman) to close our Ph.D. program was a true shock. Our Ph.D. program is about 25 years old and has been steadily increasing in quality. Economics faculty, like all faculty, prefer teaching at a university with a Ph.D. program for several reasons. This makes it extremely difficult to attract quality faculty to a program without a Ph.D. In economics, Dartmouth is the only school without a doctoral program that is higher ranked than Emory, and Dartmouth has about twice as many faculty members as Emory. I personally am approaching retirement and will probably not move, but many of my younger colleagues are already seeking jobs at Ph.D. granting institutions.

Aside from the effects on my department, I believe that this decision will be very harmful to undergraduate students. Before we had a Ph.D. program, Emory economics had difficulty attracting quality faculty. There was about a 10-year period when no one hired in the economics department had a publication record that enabled them to receive tenure. As productive faculty leave, they will be replaced by less-productive faculty, and this will mean that the education provided to our majors will be of a lower quality. I predict that starting next year and on into the future, the education provided to the largest number of undergraduate majors at Emory will begin to deteriorate. I also predict that this will hurt Emory’s national ranking.

Paul Rubin is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics.

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