Fewer Men to Receive Tutorial Work in Economics Department

Speeding up the rate of its transition from a full to a modified tutorial system, the Economics Department will give only about 65 per cent of its concentrators full tutorial this year, and a small group will get practically none at all, Harold H. Burbank, professor of Economics and chairman of that Department told the CRIMSON yesterday.

Although the change from a system under which every student gets full tutorial has been going on slowly for over five years, the number of men who will get no tutorial or only restricted help has jumped a great deal this year.

Following the lead of the History Department's plan "A" and "B", the Economics concentrators will be divided into a group "A", comprising about 65 percent of the total number, and Plan "B", with those remaining.

Of this first group, all of the students are not necessarily honors candidates, and Burbank said that roughly 15 to 20 percent this year will not be honors candidates but will receive the full instruction. Thus the division between groups will not be made on a pure "honors" basis, as in some other fields, but rather on the individual capabilities of the concentrators.

In group "B", about half of the men will receive a modified tutorial. They will not see their tutors as often as those men in "A", and will often work in groups instead of individually. The others. lower in academic rank or with no real interest in their work, will receive little more than just occasional advice on courses from time to time.

Transfers Possible

Men in group "B" who are receiving modified tutorial will be watched care- fully by the Department. Ordinarily these will be those whose records indicate little possibility of an honors degree, but if they improve, they can be shifted to Plan "A" at any time. Burbank knows of several cases where men in the lower group have been allowed to become candidates for honors and have been successful.

The plan is not new this year, but further experimentation is being carried along in it. With no lines definitely drawn, the department does not want to jump to some theoretically satisfactory division between groups, but wants to find that line through actual practical experimenting.

Burbank said that for about 20 years there had been a good deal of waste motion because the tutors had to spend so much time with men who were un-interested or incapable of gaining full benefit from tutorial instruction. This plan was started just before the depression, and the transition was speeded up at first due to financial reasons