TRENDS REVERSED

Members of the University, both Faculty and undergraduate, who presume to join in the now nation-wide pastime of deducing relations of cause and effect from sets of statistics, will focus their attention on English and Economics when scanning the figures released yesterday by the Committee on the Choice of Electives with regard to Freshman concentrators. The upward trend in Economics, still numerical leader among the fields, has been cut short by a drop of 16, while the English department sees an increase of 31 in the number of men working under it.

The popularity of Economics has been variously explained. Undoubtedly a number of Freshmen elect this field with the idea that Taussig and Pigou will guide them into the six-figure bank account. Yet at the opening meeting of Economics A a warning against this misconception is sounded, and is repeated frequently by instructors in the course; and the business school specifically states that it sees no distinction between the man grounded in the Classics and the concentrator in Economics.

But the view that specialization in Economics in inspired chiefly by pecuniary and vocational motives is probably a distorted one. The field, if not predominantly a cultural one, affords training in clear thinking; and with the present emphasis on the need of economic reorganization if catastrophes of worldwide proportions are to be forestalled, it is not to be regretted that a good proportion of college men are receiving theoretical grounding in this field.

The swing back to the English department, an abrupt one not usually noted in statistics from University C, is to be explained as a return to "normalcy." Raising of the standards in this field several years ago, a change marked by inclusion in examinations of questions calling for marked ability in literary criticism., deterred many men from electing it; this year's figures indicate that the pendulum is now swinging the other way.