[[21]] The society for the Promotion of Engineering Education has had a standing committee on economics, since 1915. The first committee was composed of three engineers (all of them consulting and in practice and two of them also teachers) and the present writer.
[[22]] In Amherst, as described in Journal of Political Economy by Professor W. H. Hamilton, on "The Amherst Program in Economics"; and in Chicago University beginning in 1916. See also, by the same writer, a paper on "The Institutional Approach to Economic Theory", in the American Economic Review, Supplement, page 309, March, 1919.
[[23]] At the meeting of the American Economic Association in 1897, at which was discussed "The Relation of the Teaching of Economic History to the Teaching of Political Economy," the opinion was expressed by one teacher that economic history should follow the general course. But all the others agreed that such a course should begin the sequence, and this seems to be the almost invariable practice. See Economic Studies, Volume III. pages 88-101, Publications of the American Economic Association, 1898.
[[24]] This plan has at various times been followed at Stanford, Cornell, Harvard, and Princeton, to cite only a few of the numerous examples.
[[25]] In this plan the sections are small (three to seven students) and the preceptor is expected to give much time to the personal supervision of the student's reading, reports, and general scholarship. The preceptorial work is rated at more than half of the entire work of the term. The one great difficulty of the preceptorial system is its cost.
[[26]] A strong plea is made for the "retirement of the lectures" by C. E. Persons, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XXXI, "Teaching the Introductory Course in Economics," November, 1916, pages 96-98.
[[27]] Professor J. H. Hollander, American Economic Review, Vol. VI, No. 1, Supplement (March, 1916), page 135. See dissenting opinions in the discussion that followed.
[[28]] Professor C. E. Persons (art. cited page 86, November, 1916) gives the titles of ten separate books or pamphlets of this kind; since which date have appeared the author's "Manual of References and Exercises," Parts I and II, to accompany Economic Principles, 1915, and Modern Economic Problems, 1916, respectively.
[[29]] Among those most elaborately developing this method has been Professor F. M. Taylor of the University of Michigan. See his paper on the subject and discussion in the Journal of Political Economy, Vol. VII, pages 688-703 (December, 1909). Marshall, Wright, and Field published the Outline of Economics, developed as a series of problems in 1910, which they used for a time as the main tool of instruction in the introductory course in Chicago University.
[[30]] A thoughtful discussion of some phases of this problem is given by Persons, art. cited, pages 98 ff., favoring the more positive treatment with less distracting multiplicity of detail.