ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT SELF REVIEW
October 23, 2007
A. INTRODUCTION
Department Chairman Gary Hansen formed a committee consisting of Andy Atkeson,
Bryan Ellickson, Roger Farmer and Lee Ohanian to write the initial draft of this self
review of the Economics Department. Ellickson served as the organizer of the
committee. Atkeson wrote the initial draft of Section B, with a focus on what the
Department views as the key issue for the Department: recruitment and retention. Hansen
added the subsection on development activities. Ohanian wrote the initial draft on the
undergraduate program (Section C), with assistance from Edward McDevitt in creating
Tables 1 and 2. Farmer wrote the initial draft on the graduate program (Section D).
Ellickson wrote the initial draft of Section E. He also edited and rearranged the various
parts of the review to fit into the format described in the Academic Senate Guidelines for
the Self-Review (2005).
The initial draft was distributed to faculty, staff, graduate students and a number of
undergraduates. A Department meeting was held on October 11, 2007, to discuss the
self-review. Suggestions from that meeting, from email discussion subsequent to that that
meeting, and from staff, graduate students and undergraduates were incorporated into the
final draft. Reactions from the undergraduates are discussed in Section C and from the
graduate students in Section D. Graduate student reactions are also summarized in
Appendix G1.
A vote of the faculty on the self review was held by email ballot. The report was
approved with a vote of 28 YES, 0 NO, and 0 ABSTAIN.
B. GENERAL INFORMATION
Having a highly-ranked economics department is a major priority at all of the top
research universities in the United States. Economics is a popular major for students with
a wide variety of career goals: careers in business or government, pursuit of post-graduate
degrees in law, an MBA or financial engineering, arid (for a few) doctoral degrees in
economics or in public policy. As will be documented in Section C, the UCLA
economics major is the largest undergraduate economics program among major
universities in the country by a large margin, but the size of our faculty is not large
relative to those other programs.
Relatively few undergraduates majoring in economics go on to pursue graduate degrees
in economics. A large proportion of graduate students at UCLA and at the other top
economics departments in the US received their graduate degrees from abroad. Partly this
reflects the exceptionally strong international reputation of economics departments in the
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US and partly the sharp difference in the mathematical rigor of undergraduate and
graduate education in our subject. Graduate education in economics is highly
mathematical and very rigorous. Undergraduate education in economics is much less
rigorous because it is designed to serve students with a wide variety of interests. While
economics at the undergraduate level tends to use much more mathematics than other
social sciences, a couple of quarters of single variable calculus and a quarter of statistics
is sufficient to get by in most of our courses. But we expect our graduate students to be
familiar with considerably more mathematics, including multivariate calculus, probability
theory and multivariate statistics and linear algebra at a minimum. One of the
consequences of the rigorous nature of graduate education in economics is that
economists good enough for UCLA to hire are very expensive, not just in terms of salary
but also in the quality of the environment we need to provide: relatively light teaching
loads, high quality graduate students and ample resources supporting research, space for
research assistants and visitors and the like.
As these general comments about the economics discipline suggest, recruiting and
retention are the biggest challenges that we face as a department. In our view everything
revolves around these issues: our ability to support an effective undergraduate program,
our ability to attract strong graduate students and, of course, our reputation as a strong
research department. In the remainder of this section we outline our goals, the distinctive
features of recruiting and retention in Economics, our accomplishments in recruiting and
retention, and the ongoing issues that we face, with a special focus on retention. While
we clearly need a significant amount of help from the administration in achieving these
goals, we have also taken bold development initiatives with the assistance of the UCLA
College development office. We will conclude this section with a discussion of those
activities.
Our Goals
Our goal is to build a sufficiently large and distinguished faculty to achieve our mission
of providing excellent training in our undergraduate and graduate programs and more
broadly contribute to the university through research and service. In recent years, our
faculty size has been well below what is required to adequately address the very large
demands that we face. We strive to maintain and improve our ranking as one of the top
1O~ 12 Economics Departments in the U.S. by building a distinguished senior faculty and
a lasting reputation as an attractive place for the highest quality junior faculty.
In terms of program direction, we do not focus our recruiting and retention efforts on
narrowly defined fields. Instead, we believe that in order to be successful in training
graduate students, we must have strength in the broad areas of microeconomic theory,
macroeconomics, and econometrics that form the core of every top graduate program in
economics. UCLA also has strength in economic history and applied microeconomics,
although we have recently experienced important losses in both areas. We look to have a
strong presence in these areas. We structure our discussions of hiring priorities around
these five broad fields which together encompass most of the spectrum of methodological
approaches pursued in modern economics.
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We strive to assemble a faculty with a wide range of research interests. We find it fruitful
in covering topics of interest to our students to draw faculty from a variety of the five
central fields in the department. For example, graduate teaching in Industrial
Organization is covered by John Riley, using methods from microeconomic theory, Hugo
Hopenhayn, using methods from macroeconomics, and Dan Ackerberg, using methods
from applied microeconomics. Our aim is to extend the strength of our faculty in the core
areas of economics to cover a wide range of research and teaching topics.
Recruiting and Retention in Economics
The top economics departments in the world are currently engaged in a fierce
competition for talent. Recruiting and retaining top faculty in this competitive
environment is the greatest challenge facing our department. To understand the nature of
this challenge, it is essential to understand that several important aspects of recruiting and
retention for all top economics departments are very different from norms in other
disciplines in the Social Sciences. Here we emphasize three distinctive features of hiring
in Economics.
First, any Economics Department that consistently maintains high standards is required
to make many offers to fill a single FTE. This problem is particularly severe at the senior
level. We voted 35 senior offers in the academic years 1999-2000 to 2006-2007 (an
average of 4.4 offers per year), landing 7. A batting average of 200 (20%) is typical of
senior hiring at top Economics Departments. In 2003 we canvassed the top 17
departments (as ranked by the NRC). Collectively these departments voted 114 senior
offers in the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 academic years (averaging 3.4 senior offers per
department per year), landing 24 - a batting average of21O (21 %). The success rate in
junior recruiting is somewhat higher. We voted 55 junior offers in the academic years
1999-2000 to 2006-2007, landing 24 for a success rate of 43%.
Second, any top Economics Department with a young and exciting faculty faces severe
problems with retention. UCLA is no exception. This retention problem is largely the flip
side of the recruiting problem. Here at UCLA, in the Academic years 2001-2002 to 2006­
2007,22 different senior faculty members received outside offers. Many received
multiple offers, resulting in an average of 3.6 senior retention cases per year. In our
survey of the NRC top 17 departments in 2003, we found that these departments faced a
total of 48 retention cases in the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 academic years, for an
average of 1.4 retention cases per department per year. It is clear that UCLA faces
retention issues somewhat above the norm for top departments, an issue we discuss in
detail below. It is also clear, however, that the best UCLA can hope for is to face roughly
2 senior retention cases per year simply as a result of the competition for talent in
Economics.
And third, while the pool of top economists does include a substantial number of women,
the pool does not include a significant number ofAfrican Americans or Hispanic
Americans largely because the pool oftop economists contains a relatively small number
ofAmericans. This is particularly true of the pool of economists under 40. The makeup of
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this pool is reflected in our hiring. UCLA has done relatively well in terms of attracting
women into the department.
The extraordinary level of recruitment and retention activity at top Economics
Departments is driven by two main forces. First, undergraduate enrollments in economics
have grown broadly nationwide, so many top departments are looking to replenish their
ranks and even grow. Second, several universities, such as Columbia, NYU, Duke, and
Washington University St. Louis, that have not previously been ranked among top 10-15
departments are engaged in major efforts to improve and grow their programs. These two
forces together make for tremendous demand for the highest quality researchers in
economics, particularly those who are young and potentially mobile.
This fierce competition among top Economics Departments for talent has also led to
rapidly rising compensation packages for the best researchers. UCLA has largely been
competitive in its recruitment and retention packages. With the exception of only a few
cases, the department has received very strong support from the administration here at
UCLA in terms of salaries for recruiting and retention. For the past few years, the Office
of the President of the UC System has been less supportive in approving competitive
salaries at the highest levels, and we continue to work on that problem. In competition
with wealthier private universities, however, we face a disadvantage in terms of securing
commitments for funds for summer pay and research support beyond the 5 year horizon
that can be supported by the Dean's office. It is clear that our fundraising efforts must
play an important role in solving this problem. In addition, housing costs are a special
problem here in Los Angeles, and some more competitive solution to this problem must
be found.
In sum, recruitment and retention are major challenges for economics at UCLA largely
because UCLA is a top economics department and all top departments face these same
challenges. It is worth noting that despite the fact that UCLA has voted a total of 90
offers altogether in the academic years 1999-2000 to 2006-2007, our filled FTE has
increased by only 1 from 42.5 to 43.5. As these statistics make clear, UCLA must
maintain a high level of effort in recruiting on an ongoing basis to simply replenish and
renew our ranks.
Our Accomplishments.
We have two main accomplishments in our recruiting since the last review. First, at the
senior level, the seven faculty that we hired from the outside have contributed
significantly to rejuvenating the department and strengthening our groups in
macroeconomics, econometrics, and economic history. (Atkeson, Cole, and Hopenhayn
in macroeconomics, Hahn and Matzkin in econometrics, Buchinsky in econometrics and
applied microeconomics, and Costa in economic history and applied micro. Adding Dora
Costa this year was particularly fortunate in light of the tragic death of Ken Sokoloff).
Second, and more important, we have vastly improved the quality of our junior faculty,
and UCLA is rapidly developing a reputation as a great place to be a junior faculty
member. At the time of our last review, very few of our junior faculty were getting tenure
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at UCLA or other institutions of comparable quality. Now we have an exceptionally fine
group of junior faculty. Since our previous review, we have voted tenure to 5 junior
faculty (Ackerberg, Black, Doepke, Hellwig, and Moretti), and two of these (Doepke and
Hellwig) won prestigious Sloan Foundation Fellowships. In each of these cases, the
challenge that we faced was with retention rather than tenure. Two others, Mazzocco and
Obara, recently received tenure at comparable institutions, Duke and Minnesota
respectively. Yet two more, Tsyvinski and Schneider, spent their early years here and
then moved on, one to Harvard. The other now has accepted a tenured offer from
Princeton. We fully anticipate that many more of our current crop of assistant professors
will have similar success here at UCLA. We hope to build on this success of our junior
faculty as a foundation for the strength of the department over the long term.
Continuing Challenges
We face two main continuing challenges. The first of these is in our recruiting efforts in
microeconomic theory and applied microeconomics. We must replenish our theory group
with a set of outstanding younger scholars. And we must shape a new group of senior
faculty in applied microeconomics if we are to continue to have a strong presence in this
area. Weare working on these issues now.
The second, and more important ongoing challenge for us is retention. Since the time of
our last review, we have lost 6 senior faculty to other institutions (Azariadis, Cameron,
Currie, Imbens, Levine, and Vegh) and 5 others are on leave this academic year having
accepted offers elsewhere (Cole, Hotz, McGarry, Rosenthal, and Thomas). Clearly,
losing senior faculty at this rate is a serious challenge. We do not believe that these lost
retention cases are a symptom of a serious ongoing political or intellectual problem in the
department. Family or dual career considerations played an important role in 8 of these
cases (Cameron, Cole, Currie, Imbens, Hotz, McGarry, Thomas, and Vegh), astonishing
salary offers in two (Azariadis and Levine), and an inadequate salary response from
UCLA in one (Rosenthal). We were not happy to lose any of these people, and we
appreciate that so many losses are bound to raise questions regarding the stability of our
Department. We believe that the department is quite cohesive. The broad consensus that
we have been able to achieve for our ambitious recruiting agenda over the past eight
years is evidence of the healthy political and intellectual environment in the department.
However, we do need all the help we can get if we are to retain our faculty in the highly
competitive environment that characterizes the market for economists.
To a certain extent, our retention problem over the past 8 years was exacerbated by
uncertainty over the administrations' support for the Economics Department. In
particular, in the 2004-05 academic year, we had no hiring at all and in the next year,
2005-2006, we had no regular senior recruiting and tremendous uncertainty regarding the
scale of our junior recruiting. This uncertainty was not good for morale in the department.
It would be very helpful to the department ifthe administration could layout a longer
term plan for FTE in Economics that set a target for the department to aim at over the
long term. Success in raising funds for research centers and chairs will also be critical in
addressing our senior retention issues over the long term.
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We now have a collection of junior faculty who are likely to be an important source of
new senior faculty at UCLA in the coming years. However, the problem of retaining our
high quality junior faculty is more likely to persist over the long term. This is for two
reasons. The first is the simple reason that our talented young faculty are attracting tenure
offers from other high quality institutions. It is now more the rule than the exception that
we are fighting to retain someone when we tenure them. It is inevitable that some of our
junior faculty will have an interest in exploring other intellectual environments. We
believe, however, that as long as our junior faculty go on to success in the profession,
UCLA will benefit in terms of strengthening our reputation and giving us momentum in
hiring new talented junior faculty. The second reason is idiosyncratic to Los Angeles.
Many young faculty find LA attractive when they are single or childless, but then find it
expensive and less attractive when they start to have children (or find a spouse elsewhere)
in their time here. UCLA needs to improve its housing support and child-care options to
address these issues.
Development Activities
In 2004, the department began an ambitious development agenda that involved creating a
Board of Visitors (BOV). The Board consists of a group of alumni who have come
together to help the department financially, as well as carry out some nonfinancial
projects to benefit our program. The BOV currently has 16 active members, each of
whom has pledged at least $50,000 to support the department, and one honorary member,
Nobel Prize winner William F. Sharpe, who received his BA (' 55), MA (' 56) and Ph.D.
('61) in Economics from UCLA. The founding Chairman of the Board of Visitors was
Gary Beban, BA ('70) in History and UCLA's only Heisman Trophy winner. The
current Chairman is Kevin Albert, BA ('74) in Economics and NillA ('78). Kevin is
currently Managing Director of Elevation Partners, a private equity firm that makes
investments in media, entertainment and consumer related businesses.
To date, the department has received almost 4 million dollars in donations from the BOV
members, or from others who have been solicited as part of this general development
effort. In particular, two endowed chairs have been funded, one by BOV member
Charles Davidson (BA '74 in Economics and MBA '77) and another by Stanley M.
Zimmerman. The Zimmerman Chair is currently held by Professor Andrew Atkeson and
the Davidson Chair, which was previously held by Professor Janet Currie, will be filled
during the 07-08 academic year. Each endowed chair represents a donation of at least
one million dollars.
In addition to the endowed chairs, three research funds have been established and another
is currently under negotiation. Each fund supports a seminar series, conferences and
graduate student research in a broadly defined area of economics. Two examples of these
include the Albert Family Fund in Applied Microeconomics and the Ettinger Fund in
Economic Dynamics.
When the BOV was started, several members strongly advised that an effort was needed
to establish an identity for the department and to create a better understanding of what the
Economics Department is about among students, alumni, and the community at large.
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Hence, a two year "branding" project was commenced that involved retaining the
services of a consulting finn paid for by funds contributed by members of the Board.
This effort has yielded a new department website and brochure that explains the
department's mission and unique characteristics in way that is meaningful to a broad
audience.
Under Kevin Albert's leadership, the BOV is currently engaged in three additional
projects in partnership with department faculty members. These projects are all designed
to help our undergraduate majors better achieve their career goals. One of these involves
seeking input from the big four accounting finns (a major employer of our graduates) in
order to identify how the department can provide more trained and qualified candidates.
This project was motivated by anecdotal evidence indicating that the two areas where
employers feel that UCLA students need more preparation (versus USC students where
there is an undergraduate business major, for example) are accounting and business
writing. BOV volunteers will be meeting with the appropriate executives at the Big 4
accounting finns to independently assess their views about UCLA economics graduates
to prove or disprove what has been heard infonnally. These findings will put into a short
report along with a set of recommendations.
.
A second project involves adding functionality to our new website that will facilitate
networking among students, alumni and potential employers. So far, a five person team
of second year MBA students from the Anderson School have been recruited to help with
this project and we hope that the actual implementation can be funded by a grant from
one of Big 4 accounting finns. If successful, our hope is that partnerships with additional
finns can be established.
The third project has led to the launching the new William Sharpe Fellows Program for
Undergraduate Internships. This program is modeled on a very successful program at the
University of Chicago called the Jeff Metcalf Fellows Program. Infonnation about this
program can be found at https://caps.uchicago.edu/undergrads/internships/metcalf/.
This program has three aims. The first aim is to give some of our best undergraduates a
chance to distinguish themselves on the job market and improve their self-presentation to
employers. The second aim is to give alumni volunteers an opportunity to advise and
mentor these undergraduates. The third aim is to help match employers to our students,
particularly those who find it difficult to screen applicants through the Career Center.
In this program, the Economics Department and its Board of Visitors solicits finns to
participate by offering substantive paid summer internships for UCLA economics
undergraduates named as Sharpe Fellows. Members of the Economics Department will
do the initial screening of student applications and then alumni volunteers will participate
in the selection process by interviewing and advising undergraduate applicants on their
interview skills and career interests. Once we select our set of Sharpe Fellows, we will
seek to match them to internships with the finns that we have solicited.
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Our plan is to use this year as a pilot year for the program, aiming to name only 10
Sharpe Fellows. Our alumni volunteers in this pilot year will come from our Board of
Visitors. We then plan on growing the plan substantially in coming years. As the program
grows, we anticipate that we will need funding from the University and/or from donors to
provide for staff support for this program.
To date, we have discussed this program with our Provost Scott Waugh, the Executive
Dean Pat O'Brien, the Dean of Social Sciences Reynaldo Macias, and with various
personnel at the Career Center. In each case, we received an enthusiastic response. We
have also received an enthusiastic response from a variety of employers. We have begun
the process of soliciting student applications through the Career Center's computer
program Bruin View and we hope to see an enthusiastic response from them. We
anticipate that this internship program will contribute substantially to the overall
undergraduate experience in Economics.
c. THE UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM
The UCLA economics major is the largest economics undergraduate program among
major universities in the country. The most dominant influence on the undergraduate
program by far is its sheer size, impacting virtually everything we are currently able to do
in our major. The size of our program also affects our future plans, because our current
size places significant limitations on what we can feasibly expect to accomplish. Any
attempt to expand course offerings, reduce class size, and make the program more
personal fundamentally requires significantly more faculty.
Tables 1 and 2 (see Section F) summarize the challenge that our department faces,
relative to other economics departments and relative to other departments at UCLA.
Table 1 shows various data from these programs, including the number of majors, the
number of economics degrees awarded, and the number of faculty at the top 16
economics programs. The data are for AY 2002-03, which is the most recent year we
were able to obtain data for all these departments, and the rankings are from the NRC
1993 ranking.
The most striking features of this table are the size of the UCLA major relative to other
top departments, and the very high student-faculty ratio at UCLA. UCLA has about 1,500
majors, compared to an average less than 500 at the top 10 departments. This disparity is
even more pronounced in terms of degree recipients, with 800 recipients at UCLA,
compared to less than 200 at the top 10. Because our faculty size is roughly the same as
our competitors, the number of degree recipients per faculty member (19) is almost 5
times as high as the top 10 (4).
Our relative size also stands out in comparison to UCLA departments. Table 2 shows
similar data for Economics, and other departments in the College, including History,
Psychology, Sociology, and Political Science. This table presents a similar picture; the
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average standing faculty size across these other departments has persistently been 30-35
percent larger than economics, but the size of the economics major is on average about 35
percent larger, resulting in a very large disparity in student faculty ratios within the
College.
It is important to note that the number of degree recipients has declined recently. This
does not appear to be due to a decline in the demand for the major, rather, it seems to
reflect two recent developments. Perhaps the most important is that the UCLA
admissions office is applying more stringent criteria in admitting transfer students, whom
make up a large fraction of our majors, into the economics major. Our understanding is
that many of these students have grade point averages (GPA) of 3.9 or 4.0. While we
appreciate the admissions office careful screening of these students, our view is that this
admissions bar is probably too high, and that we are missing some very gifted and
ambitious students. We will be meeting with the admissions office in the near future to
discuss this with them. Another factor is that the entrance requirement for the business
economics degree has also been raised. This may result in some students leaving the
major altogether, though we do not have the necessary data in order to evaluate the
quantitative impact of this factor. We anticipate that the size of our graduating classes in
the future will probably be in the 650 - 800 range.
These data clearly show the challenge we face in trying to manage our program. Despite
the number of majors that we have, the size issue is magnified because we administer not
just a single economics major, but several majors, offering degrees in economics,
business economics, international economics, and mathematical economics (jointly with
the Mathematics Department). There is also a specialization in computing in conjunction
with the economics major. Thus, our program is not only large in terms of the number of
students our faculty must teach, advise, and mentor, but is also extremely broad in
interest and scope. We are unaware of any other program in the country with a more
diverse set of majors/sub-majors than at UCLA.
The relative success of our program is that we are able to train a very large student body
in the fundamentals of modern economics taught by a committed (though a somewhat
overwhelmed) faculty, and that after completing our program, students are in high
demand by employers. On the other hand, the size of our program limits some other
aspects of the undergraduate experience. We discuss each of these in turn.
The educational goal of our majors is to provide our students with a thorough and
rigorous grounding in modern economic theory, and then build on that theoretical
foundation with elective courses that introduce students to the tools, data, and concepts
used in the many fields of economics, including economic growth, labor economics,
industrial organization, international trade and finance, money and banking, economic
development, public finance, and financial economics. Our overall goal is to produce
economists who are well-positioned to succeed in a wide range of careers, including
commerce, finance, administration, and government positions. Given our recent outreach
efforts to our alums through the Board of Visitors, it is clear that many of our graduates
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are have had very successful careers in a wide range of fields, and many have pursued
post-graduate education, primarily in business and law.
We have made every attempt to use our limited resources most efficiently. One area we
have made progress in since our last review is the teaching of our core courses. The
courses that are required for all the economics majors include two microeconomic theory
courses (course numbers 11, and 101), and one macroeconomic theory course (102).
Some majors also require econometrics (103). We have made progress in firming up
teaching in these core areas by re-allocating standing faculty to teach these courses. In the
past, these courses were often taught by adjunct faculty, whereas now they are taught
largely by standing faculty. Specifically, only about 40 percent of these courses were
taught by ladder faculty at the time of our last 8-year review, whereas about 60 percent
were taught by ladder faculty over the last 3 years. We should be able to achieve a higher
fraction in the future, as we had on average 11 ladder faculty on leave during the last
three years, which is more than twice as high as the normal level.
These courses are demanding, with routine use of calculus, probability, and statistics.
This training allows students to excel in field courses, which are typically taken in the
senior year. Of course, a shortcoming of our re-allocation of faculty to the core courses
means that many of the advanced courses are not taught by ladder faculty. Moreover,
because our teaching needs swamp the existing size of our faculty, and because of the
fact that we offer courses in 4 different majors, our students often do not find a
sufficiently broad palette of economics courses to choose from in any given quarter.
A new demand on our faculty is that statistics for economists, which previously was
taught by the Statistics Department, is now taught within our department. This course
may be offered 3 times or more per year, and thus further dilutes the number of ladder
faculty available for our core courses or elective courses.
Economics also offers two introductory courses, Principles of Economics
(microeconomics (Econ 1) and macroeconomics (Econ 2». These currently are not G.E.
courses, but we anticipate that we may re-unit the courses in the future to achieve G.B.
status. Due to faculty shortage, these courses have been taught only by adjunct faculty for
many years. This year, however, one standing faculty member has agreed to teach
economics 2. As we are building our faculty numbers, we may be able to allocate more
ladder faculty to principles instruction.
There are several measures of program effectiveness that suggest we have been doing
about as good of a job as can be expected, given the size of the program. One measure is
that our students are in very high demand. Data from AY 2005-06 from the UCLA career
center indicate that on average, business economics majors were pre-selected for about 7
interviews per students, economics about 6 per students, and international and math econ
about 4 interviews per student. Note that these measures were only for on-campus
interviews through the placement office, and thus understate the total number of
interviews that our students are able to obtain. Unfortunately, we are unable to obtain
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more detailed data on placement, such as the average number of offers our graduates
receive.
Another measure is student evaluations of faculty that are completed at the end of each
course. On a scale of 0 (poor) to 9 (outstanding), the median evaluation of ladder faculty,
averaged between AY 99/00 through AY 06/07, is 7.16, which is a median ranking in the
very good - excellent category.
There are also surveys of graduating seniors who are asked whether they were "satisfied"
or very satisfied" with their major field of study. In 2006, 87 percent of economics
majors answered affirmatively to this question, and 95 percent for business economics.
These findings are consistent with the teaching evaluations cited above, and the fact that
our students find significant demand for their services. However, only 57 percent
answered affirmatively regarding quality of faculty instruction for straight economics,
compared to 75 percent for business economics. It is hard to interpret this relatively low
score for straight economics, as it is inconsistent with the end-of-course evaluations cited
above. Nevertheless, our speculation is that the enormous size of the classes we offer
(400 students or more for the core courses and principles courses, often 150-200 students
for electives), combined with the fact that students may feel frustrated over not being able
to take more classes from ladder faculty, may contribute to this view at graduation.
Business economics classes, which received a high evaluation from the graduating
seniors regarding quality of instruction (75 percent), tend to be smaller, and tend to be
taught more frequently by ladder faculty.
We offer support to our undergraduate students through an undergraduate counseling
office. The staff here is very efficient, with just two full time counselor slots to serve
1,500 majors. Presently, (as of October 19, 2007), we have only one slot filled. This
staffing stands in sharp contrast to the Psychology department, which has a slightly larger
major, but 5-6 full time counselors. In the past, 3 counselors seemed to be sufficient to
reasonably address counseling needs in our department, and we certainly hope that that
we will be permitted to have 3 full-time counselors.
The size of our program limits us in offering other aspects of the academic experience
that students find at smaller colleges, or at major universities that have a small student­
teacher ratio, such as Princeton. Nevertheless, we have made several improvements here.
One area is student internships. Since 2003-04, we have offered course credit for students
seeking internships, with enrollment averaging around 55 students per year. We are
currently expanding the size of our internship program with the help of our Board of
Visitors (see discussion in Development Activities). We have also expanded the number
of seminar courses we have taught. In particular, we offered about a dozen of these
courses per year between 1999 and 2003, and we now regularly offer 30 or more of these
courses per year, including fiat lux courses for Freshmen. We have expanded our
enrollment in research courses (economics 195 and 198) from an enrollment of about 100
per year in AY 99/00 to 138 in AY 06/07. Another avenue for undergraduate research is
through using undergraduates as research assistants, which is now done by several of our
faculty. Nevertheless, most economics majors at UCLA complete their program of study
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without a significant research component, and without much interaction with ladder
faculty members, reflecting our faculty shortage.
The counseling office circulated the undergraduate section of the report to several seniors
for comments. Students were selected on the basis of those who had demonstrated
significant interest and ambition in the major through previous interactions with the
department, and thus were those whom we anticipated could provide thoughtful
responses. One student was a former undergraduate who is now in the Ph.D. program.
Students were specifically asked to be honest and critical in their appraisal of the report.
There are two themes that run through 6 comments that were returned, both of which are
largely related to the size of our program. Students are frustrated by very large class size
in most of our classes, the related issue of accessibility of faculty, and the fact that many
elective classes are not taught by ladder faculty. One student writes "High student-faculty
ratio has definitely been noticeable during my time at UCLA. Classes have been quite
large. Professors often seem to feel that they are spread too thin. Students don't know
why we have adjunct faculty. Some think it is because professors don't want to teach a
particular class; 1 feel students aren't aware of the faculty shortage." Another student
writes "I feel that an increase in the size of faculty to a point where the student-faculty
ratio is similar to Berkeley would substantially increase the quality of the (economics)
education here at UCLA." Another theme relates to the fact that there are relatively few
research opportunities available for students. One student writes "I feel that most students
do not even give research any consideration at all. This, again, is due to the lack of
available faculty to guide the research". Another writes "I would also mention that
because professors have such a burden already stemming from shortage of faculty, it is
more difficult for them to take on other tasks such as sponsoring research."
In closing, we note again that the undergraduate major is very large, and is managed by a
faculty that is much too small relative to its peer economics departments or its peer
departments at UCLA. This size disparity means that while students receive quality
training in economics, the experience for most students tends to be impersonal, with very
large classes and limited faculty involvement in research or seminar environments. Only
a significantly larger faculty can ameliorate the size problems that we face in our
undergraduate program.
D. THE GRADUATE PROGRAM
This section describes the existing structure of the graduate program and outlines ways in
which it has improved over the past eight years. UCLA enrolls somewhere between 15
and thirty students each year. Currently we aim for a class of 25 but sometimes that target
is difficult to hit precisely. Approximately one third of the class is American; the
remaining students are drawn from allover the world with a strong Latin American and
Asian representation.
12
Admissions
Our admission process begins in the winter of each year. In early January each
application is reviewed by at least two faculty members who give a score of 1 to 10 to the
application based on a broad set of criteria. We review the students' preparation for a
Ph.D. by looking at GPA, GRE scores, letters of recommendation, personal statement and
preparation in key courses, particularly mathematics and statistics that we have found to
be necessary prerequisites for successful completion of the program. If individual grades
differ by more than two points, the committee members assigned to that file consult with
each other to reconcile their differences. At this stage committee members flag files that
are particularly good fellowship material and are also instructed to look out for files that
might improve the diversity of the program.
Once the files have been ranked, the committee meets to decide on potential fellowship
applicants. The department has funds for approximately ten to fifteen fellowships
depending on region. California residents are less expensive than foreign applicants since
they do not payout of state fees. American students become cheaper in year two of the
program since they do not pay these fees in year 2. Currently we differentiate between
students by offering differential aid packages. In 2007 our top students were offered
$30,000 fellowships plus full tuition for five years with teaching obligations in years 2
and 3. We also offered fellowships at $25,000 and $20,000 and typically the take-up rate
for fellowships is less than one in four even when we are strategic in targeting only
students who have ulterior reasons to come to the LA area.
Typically we offer approximately thirty fellowships on the first round and each
fellowship candidate is assigned a faculty member who negotiates with the student and
calls them personally to attract them to the program. In March or April we invite US
students to the campus for an admit weekend and we pay for their airfare and
accommodation. We are currently unable to reimburse foreign students due to Federal
regulations on payments. Out of a typical entering class of 25 approximately 15 will be
funded by UCLA fellowships (either departmental or from various centers on campus) 5
will be funded by fellowships from their home countries and the other five will be self
financed. All students who make satisfactory progress by maintaining a suitable grade
point average and passing exams on time are guaranteed funding in subsequent years as
teaching assistants or through fellowships.
The First Year
Our students all take a required sequence of microeconomics macroeconomics and
econometrics and, in addition, a two week mathematics refresher course in the summer.
At the end of the first year they are required to take comprehensive exams in each
subject. In the past, students were required to pass these exams in two chosen areas - this
was changed for the 2008 class to require passes in all three. If students fail a
comprehensive exam on the first sitting in July they are able to retake it in September
although students in this category may be funded at a lower level in the fall quarter.
Typically the penalty has been that instead of being funded as a teaching assistant they
are instead funded as a grader, a position that pays less money. Students also take two
13
field exams in their second year and currently our regulations allow them seven attempts
at the five exams.
Pass rates have varied from year to year although historically the failure rate in the first
year has not been substantial. Typically a few students (one or two) drop out during the
first year and another two or three may fail the comprehensive exams leaving a typical
second year class of twenty students.
The Second Year
During the second year students typically take two fields. They may also choose to take a
third field or to take the 'breadth option' that is satisfied by taking three additional
courses of which one must be either economic history or history of thought. Most
students follow this latter route and many of them take courses in the math or statistics
departments. Each field must be passed either by an exam or by submitting a paper and,
in recent years, more areas are switching to the paper requirement. In addition, during the
year students are required to register for at least one 'pro-seminar' (a student workshop)
in which they learn to present research, although presentations don't typically take place
until year three. At the end of the second year all students are encouraged to present and
defend a thesis proposal; this called 'advancing to candidacy' or ATe. We have
encouraged students to pass their ATC at this stage as there is a strong university
incentive for them to do so. Once advanced to candidacy, students do not pay foreign
student fees.
The Third Year and Beyond
In their third and fourth years students may continue to take some classes but they are
primarily engaged in writing their dissertations. During these years they must present at
least once and preferably twice in a pro-seminar at which their work is criticized by
faculty in their research area. In the third and fourth years most students are funded as
TAs. In year five students will typically look for jobs and most fifth year students are
funded by 'dissertation year fellowships' paid either by the graduate division at UCLA or
directly from departmental funds.
Initiatives
To encourage progress through the program the department in recent years has engaged
in a number of initiatives. These began as competitive proposals that were submitted to
the graduate division of the university and have resulted in our winning significant
funding ranging from $80,000 to $140,000 with higher awards coming in more recent
years as the university has put more resources into graduate programs.
1. The Teaching Initiative
A top Ph.D. program should promote both research and teaching. To encourage our top
graduate student teachers, three years ago we introduced a teaching initiative that rewards
these students with a quarter free from acting as TA's in order to concentrate on research.
Since effective teaching takes time away from other activities, we reward excellent and
conscientious student teachers with released time so that their research output does not
suffer. The teaching initiative program gives increased preparation to our graduate
14
students in readiness for the competition for teaching jobs at universities and liberal arts
Colleges. In response to this initiative, we have noticed a marked improvement in the
teaching evaluations of our graduate students. While the mean grade of the TA's in 2001­
02 was 7.3 (with median of 7.5), on a scale from 4 to 9, it rose to 7.75 (and a median of
8.0) in 2002-03 and has continued at this high level in subsequent years.
2. The Research Initiative
A second important incentive is provided by our research initiative, initiated in 2004. To
help students advance to candidacy by the end of their second year we reward our best
students by giving them a quarter with no teaching duties in order to facilitate their
research. The program is competitive. Faculty members nominate students on the basis
of their ATC proposals which are judged by the graduate committee. The selection
process ensures that those students selected work closely with their faculty supervisors.
Our experience with the research initiative has been highly successful. The majority of
the entering 2002 class had advanced-to-candidacy by the Fall Quarter of 2004. Since
introducing this initiative we have extended the program to allow a larger percentage of
each class to enjoy the freedom to explore their research ideas without the pressure of
acting as TA's and the quality of research proposals has dramatically improved. We will
continue to monitor closely the students who receive research awards to ensure that they
continue to make timely progress towards the completion of their degrees, and also
towards academic careers, should they desire them.
3. The Conference Travel Program
Two years ago we initiated a program that encourages upper year students to attend
professional meetings and conferences for the purpose of presenting their papers, and to
submit these papers to journals. This program gives visibility to our students and allows
them to exchange ideas with academics in their fields.
Evaluating the Success of Past Initiatives
The measures described above have had a measurable impact on our graduate program.
Table 3 (see Section F) shows that the number of years taken to advance-to-candidacy
declined sharply from 3.8 years for the cohort of students who entered in 1996, to 2.1
years for those who entered in Fall 2002 and all subsequent years. It also demonstrates
that our attrition rates have fallen, as has the average time to completion which fell from
5.6 years in 1996 to an estimated 5.2 years for the entering 2002 class. Although not
recorded in this table, the year of study in which students first enrolled in a pro-seminar
also has declined noticeably. All the current second-year students are now actively
enrolled each quarter in at least one pro-seminar, and many regularly attend more than
one pro-seminar. We are proud to report that the participation of upper level students is
100%.
An important outcome of these reforms is that the quality of our students has improved.
More students are ready to look for jobs at the end of their fourth year and those who
seek jobs are better prepared and have many more research papers in their portfolios.
Consequently, the placement of our students on the U.S. academic job market has also
improved. Traditionally, our students have found good jobs in government and
15
international agencies, in private consulting finns, and in foreign universities; this
success has continued unabated over the past eight years. Particularly notable has been
the recent experience of UCLA graduates in the competition for Young Economist
placements at the International Monetary Fund. Thafcompetition starts with over 1200
applicants for 25-30 places. Over the last four years, 12 of these have gone to recent
UCLA PhDs. This makes UCLA the largest single source of such appointments over this
period. To our knowledge, no other institution has ever achieved such a
concentration over a similar time span.
The main weakness of our program has been that students did not frequently obtain jobs
in U.S. academic (or research) institutions, particularly in academic institutions ranked at
the level of the UCLA economics department or higher (that is, in the top ten). In the
cohort that entered in 1992, only one person took such a job (at Rochester). In contrast,
in the cohorts that entered after 1997, students have taken jobs at Harvard, California
Institute of Technology, Cornell, Duke, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rochester, Stanford,
New York University, U.c. San Diego, Purdue, Rice, McGill, Essex, Australian National
University, and Michigan. In 2002, we placed six students in academic jobs, out of a
total of 14 who entered the job market. In 2003, we placed 8 students in academic jobs
(6 in higWy respected departments in the U.S.), out of a total of 13 students who entered
the job market. This trend continued in 2004, 2005, and 2006, when we placed 10 out of
the 19, 11 out of 22, and 14 out of 21, respectively, from those who entered the job
market in academic jobs and research institutions. At the time of writing, the numbers are
still coming in for the 2007 class.
The developments reported above have given the department a renewed sense of
momentum. More importantly, students who went on the market in recent years provide
better role models for current students. A crucial aspect of this success is that the
graduate division funds we were awarded allowed us to reward students who advanced
on time.
The Diversity Outreach Program
In line with university policy, in 2007 we initiated a diversity outreach program.
Although, in the past, the department has been relatively successful in increasing the
number of enrolled women, there have been very few minority students studying
economics at UCLA in the past ten years. Table 4 (see Section F) gives data for the
number of minority students entering, and their completion rates.
Although these numbers are small they reflect in part the fact that the number of qualified
applicants is also not large. Table 5 (see Section F) presents data on the percentage of
bachelors degrees awarded in the US to minority applicants in all fields. The number of
economics degrees awarded had remained fairly constant at 11 %, however, not all of
these students apply to graduate programs in economics and of those who do, an even
smaller percentage are qualified to enter a top program.
This year, our applicant pool included 3 African Americans, 10 Latino/a students, 2
Pacific Islanders and 2 Vietnamese Americans for a total of seventeen eligible minority
16
students in a total applicant pool of approximately four hundred and sixty students. Of
these seventeen students 11 were judged by the admissions committee to be too weak to
justify admission leaving 6 out of 17 admissible students or approximately 35%
minorities who applied were admitted. This compares to 23% for the total student
population. Four of the six were nominated (and received) Cota-Robles (University
wide) fellowships. Of these four, three were highly qualified applicants for whom there
was intense competition from other schools.
All four of our Cota Robles candidates were offered fellowships that when supplemented
by departmental funds amounted to packages of $35,000 guaranteed for four years. Even
with offers of this level, we lost all of them to other departments in spite of inviting the
students to UCLA for our admit weekend in April and making regular phone calls from
faculty members in an attempt to persuade them that UCLA is a good place to come.
Conclusions
The improvements in our graduate program over the past eight years are the result of
increased faculty involvement in search, screening and recruiting of students. Students
now typically advance to candidacy in the beginning of their third year and then make at
least one and often two or more presentations each year in one or more pro-seminars.
Choices currently include Applied Microeconomics, Asset Pricing, Econometrics,
History, Industrial Organization, International Economics, Macro Economics and
Economic Theory. These seminars are attended by the other students in the field and
typically 3 or more faculty. Thus most student work is now reviewed and commented
upon by five or more faculty and not just by his or her dissertation advisor.
Our placement has improved, in part, through the activities of a Placement Committee
that advises students, comments on their papers, and provides opportunities for practice
seminars and practice interviews that are videotaped for ex post analysis of performance.
The successes of the graduate program are cumulative: better training and better
placement make UCLA a more attractive place for better students; better students
improve the quality of training (students learn from each other) and lead to better
placements and this in turn helps attract better faculty. But this is not an instantaneous
process and we expect that the progress of the past eight years will continue to lead to
future improvements as our achievements are recognized by potential students and new
faculty.
We are excited that our graduate program has improved over the past eight years; but we
are not complacent. Areas that need more work include diversity and placement, both of
which receive our continued attention. In the past, we have not been able to compete
effectively with top schools for a very small pool of top minority applicants and our
recent attempts in this direction suggest that more effort is needed.
17
We recognize that money is only one ingredient in the creation of a successful graduate
student. Hence, our initiatives seek to promote better outcomes by emphasizing faculty
involvement in dissertation writing, creating incentives for students to succeed, and by
facilitating student involvement in professional activities. As a result of the initiatives we
have created in the past, students today are more connected to their professors and are
able to begin their research careers at an earlier stage. Our programs improve not only
their research capabilities, but enhance their teaching abilities and even though the
Department faces much larger undergraduate enrollment in classes than in previous years,
there has been a consistent improvement in the teaching ratings of our TAs. We will
continue in the future to work to translate these improvements into more successful job­
market outcomes.
E. COMPARISON TO THE PREVIOUS REVIEW
The 1999-2000 Academic Senate review of the Economics Department found that "the
Economics Department has made an impressive recovery." However, the review
committee also emphasized that, with 37 ladder faculty, "Economics is still far short of
the faculty that it needs." That situation has not changed as much as we would like.
Faculty recruitment and retention is the major theme of Section B of this self review.
Evaluating the situation of junior faculty, the previous review made no specific
recommendation, but concluded that "Overall, the Internal Reviewers felt that the lot of
the Assistant Professors was better that the 'benign neglect' suggested by [one of the
external reviewers], and probably more like the uneven success in becoming integrated
into the Department suggested by [the other external reviewer]." Section B of this self
review addresses the current situation of our junior faculty in some detail, which we
believe to be much improved.
The previous review noted that the department "has a very small staff' which "felt both
overworked and inefficiently used," and the reviewers made three specific suggestions.
Our staff is still rather small, but its organization and relationship to the faculty has
changed dramatically for the better. At the time of the 1999-2000 review, the Department
Office, Chair's Office and much of its staff was located on the second floor of Bunche
while faculty offices were located on the 8th and part of the 9th floors (with some
graduate student offices located on the 7th). Shortly after the earlier review, all staff
offices except for the undergraduate advisor and her staff were moved upstairs to the 8th
floor, and we traded our space on the 7th floor for more space on the 9th floor. The
organization of the staff was also changed in major ways. The office for undergraduate
advising was moved to a larger space (made available when the department office was
moved upstairs), and the staff (both full-time and part-time clerical support for the full­
time staff) was expanded, in line with the recommendations of the 1999-2000 review.
As the 1999-2000 review noted, the Department was at that time in the process of
reorganizing its use of space, as noted above. The review recommended that more space
be made available, in particular the 9th floor conference room. Economics now has that
18
conference room and has also added a smaller one. It also obtained a very large room on
the 2nd floor that is used for graduate students (in addition to the space on the eighth and
ninth floor that is used for graduate student "research labs").
The 1999-2000 Review observed that "the most dramatic feature of the undergraduate
program in Economics is its sheer size." That is, of course, still true. The review
recommended that "some shift of ladder teaching resources [be shifted] from the graduate
program to the undergraduate program... " We have moved in that direction. The review
made many specific suggestions for improvement in the undergraduate program. As
discussed in Section C, we have implemented many changes to improve our
undergraduate program. However, without a doubt, the sheer size of the undergraduate
program remains a daunting challenge for our Department. The reviewers suggested that
we discuss the option of capping enrollment in the major. We have considered, but
rejected, that option, largely on the grounds that, despite our severely limited ability to
serve their needs, we feel uncomfortable depriving UCLA undergraduates with a major
that they want and we believe to be of great value.
The 1999-2000 review characterized our graduate program as "basically healthy" and
made only modest suggestions for improvement. However, as noted in Section D, we
have put considerable effort into improving the quality of the graduate program and the
resources available to our graduate students.
19
F. TABLES
TABLE 1: Comparison of Top 16 Departments of Economics, 2002·2003
1
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Chicago
Harvard
MIT
Stanford
Princeton
Yale
UC Berkeley
Penn
Northwestern
Minnesota
11
UCLA
26
62
50
43
56
54
60
33
61
28
42
38
58
26
37
31
9
8
8
15
17
7
9
14
12
6
3
4
3
2
1
4
3
2
1
2
14
2
14
37
39
25
36
38
38
16
24
16
26
19
35
13
27
21
11
22
17
17
14
24
13
4
17
4
1
7
5
7
4
0
750
672
107
301
215
143
900
474
720
425
1,503
Columbia
12
16
1
649
Michigan
13
15
8
824
Rochester
7
14
5
Wisconsin
8
2
15
UC San Diego
5
2
16
909
\%);;i·~iltJ:'W/<
Ave., Top 16
11
44
27
614
3
;;:;C!';:,'ifi!l.4~~;·;!!i;i;i
Ave., Top 10
47
11
28
471
3
Source: Survey of departmental websites and personal corespondence, 2003. Rgures are for 2002-03 Academic Year.
;~
Chicago
Harvard
MIT
Stanford
Princeton
Yale
UC Berkeley
Penn
Northwestern
Minnesota
30
10
18
21
20
35
25
20
20
35
28.8
10.8
2.1
7.0
3.8
2.6
15.0
14.4
11.8
15.2
3.6
3.2
No
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
Yes BSS
No
No
11
UCLA
25
35.8
19.0
No
12
13
14
15
16
Columbia
Michigan
Rochester
Wisconsin
UC San Die
35
30
20
17
27
17.1
14.2
5.1
6.5
No
No
No
Yes
No
1
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
0
8.5
3.8
0.9
4.3
2.1
3.1
6.7
Private
Private
Private
Private
Private
Private
Public
Private
Private
Public
Public
Private
Public
Ptivate
Public
Public
220
236
46
185
116
167
400
unknown
220
90
800
194
378
521
0?'iif,275.Jc%?:C:';
"'(;'Jii.li70i~i!:
3,996
6,649
4,178
6,731
4,600
5,274
23,835
18,050
13,460
47,273
25,328
6,950
24,472
4,440
41,507
17505
Ave., Top 16
24
15,891
Ave., Top 10
23
13,405
20
TABLE 2: Comparison of Economics to Other UCLA Departments on Trends in Faculty
Size, Student Credit Hours and Baccalaureate Degrees, 1995/96 to 2005106
Filled Faculty Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Positions
34.5
34.0
36.5
35.5
ECONOMICS
HISTORY
POUTlCAL SCIENCE
SOCIOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
59.9
34.7
40.7
56.9
60.7
36.3
42.7
56.9
63.4
37.3
44.7
57.4
ECONOMICS
38.1
65.5
39.3
43.7
57.7
20.3%
13.1%
30.8%
13.1%
4.8%
1.00
1.63
1.09
1.11
1.44
HISTORY
POUTlCAL SOENCE
SOCIOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
Student Credit Hours (SCH) per Year
52,314 52,821
ECONOMICS
HISTORY
POUTlCAL SOENCE
SOCIOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
ECONOMICS
HISTORY
POUTlCAL SCIENCE
SOCIOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
81,243
42,384
39,045
69,951
54,407
78,414
44,633
38,386
73,629
79,317
44,055
40,881
68,391
-7.6%
-4.7%
15.8%
-0.2%
9.1%
Undergraduate Majors per Year
1903
2036
ECONOMICS
HISTORY
POUTlCAL SOENCE
SOOOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
ECONOMICS
HISTORY
POUTlCAL SCIENCE
SOOOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
56,229
.78,702
43,155
42,306
72,813
1.00
1.60
1.02
0.81
1.58
1029
1453
910
1999
1013
1449
981
2209
2194
988
1406
1085
2354
2,192
1,008
1,471
980
2,431
14.4%
-2.6%
7.0%
8.4%
33.5%
1.00
0.46
0.71
0.45
1.23
66.7
37.3
44.7
57.7
38.5
69.7
38.3
41.7
56.7
41.5
69.7
40.7
43.7
57.2
1.00
1.66
1.05
1.11
1.45
40.9
68.5
42.1
44.8
59.4
16.9%
3.2%
17.0%
3.4%
4.4%
53,481
75,489
42,582
38,997
73,902
56,847
78,930
43,413
38,286
73,632
60,690
77,631
46,350
36,084
76,503
1.00 50,384.6
1.68 78,126.0
1.11 47,436.6
0.82 37,969.8
1.70 76,262.4
-17.5%
-1.6%
15.2%
-6.6%
1.4%
2191
1000
1382
1054
2416
1.00
0.64
0.81
0.47
1.34
2259
1025
1459
949
2512
2,163.6
1,088.4
1,547.9
985.7
2,654.0
2414
979
1494
927
2606
42.5
66.7
44.7
45.7
59.2
41.5
67.7
45.3
46.0
59.7
54,S19 48,357
78,606 77,397
46,026 49,097
32,544 38,948
77,511 76,327
2363
1028
1568
951
2682
2,177
1,002
1,554
987
2,669
42.5
69.5
44.3
46
63.7
43.5
69.5
42.3
44.5
61.2
41.5
68.8
43.7
46.2
60.2
42285 42750 44148
80259 82431 74265
51714 51276 49035
42309 40185 36405
80205 77118 74901
2019
1106
1635
1069
2858
1879
1274
1656
1008
2794
2007
1293
1635
941
2695
-8.4%
29.3%
18.3%
-10.7%
11.5%
21
TABLE 2 (continued)
Baccalaureate Degrees Granted
572
599
ECONOMICS
443
417
HISTORY
474
484
POLmCAL SCIENCE
416
447
SOCIOLOGY
625
602
PSYCHOLOGY
721
710
673
863
934
850
770
712
620
422
518
459
676
414
480
508
820
436
501
471
829
452
545
426
878
512
600
491
928
512
628
449
868
526
554
580
633
761
589
989
591
617
543
975
766.5
-12.7%
509.5
585.8
507.1
903.4
42.8%
28.5%
6.9%
18.9%
ECONOMICS
740
48.6%
1.00
HISTORY
POLmCAL SOENCE
SOCIOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
451
529
458
778
15.6%
32.5%
7.9%
38.9%
0.60
0.74
0.53
1.02
SCH per Year/Filled Faculty FTE
1,516
1,554
ECONOMICS
1,357
1,307
HISTORY
1,212
POLmCAL SOENCE 1,222
960
958
SOCIOLOGY
1,229
1,202
PSYCHOLOGY
1.00
0.95
1.00
0.88
1.57
940
1,541
1,507
1,477
1,462
1,283
1,165
995
983
1064
1,242
1,156
947
1,268
1,132
1,140
873
1,281
1,133
1,132
919
1,299
1,114
1,140
826
1,338
1,179
1,030
713
1,310
1,144
1,083
847
1,279
1155
1167
920
1259
1186
1212
903
1260
1079
1122
788
1244
1,241.9
-29.4%
1,140.2
1,128.4
848.5
1,283.9
-4.7%
-1.6%
-9.7%
-2.9%
ECONOMICS
1,438
-3.6%
1.00
HISTORY
POLmCAL SOENCE
SOOOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
1,201
1,140
880
1,276
-17.9%
-6.8%
-13.9%
8.9%
0.98
0.93
0.73
1.10
Undergrad. Majors per Year/Filled Faculty FTE
55.2
59.9
60.1
ECONOMICS
17.2
16.7
15.6
HISTORY
41.9
39.9
37.7
POLmCAL SCIENCE
22.4
23.0
24.3
SOCIOLOGY
35.1
38.8
41.0
PSYCHOLOGY
1.00
1.01
1.05
0.74
1.17
61.7
58.7
58.2
55.6
52.5
47.5
43.2
48.4
15.0
37.0
23.6
41.9
14.7
38.1
22.8
44.3
14.0
36.7
21.2
45.6
15.4
35.1
20.8
45.3
14.8
34.3
21.5
44.7
15.9
36.9
23.2
44.9
18.3
39.1
22.7
45.7
18.8
37.4
2D.4
44.8
Undergrad. Majors
ECONOMICS
57.7
HISTORY
POLmCAL SOENCE
SOOOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
15.4
37.6
22.4
42.1
5.50f0
-18.3%
-12.3%
-5.1%
29.8%
0.05
0.01
0.03
0.02
0.04
1.00
0.39
0.77
0.42
0.92
53.2
-21.6%
15.9
36.8
22.0
44.6
25.3%
1.1%
-13.7%
6.9%
22
TABLE 2 (continued)
Baccalaureate Degrees/Filled Faculty FTE
ECONOMICS
16.6
17.6
19.8
HISTORY
7.4
6.9
6.7
POLIllCAL SOENCE
13.7
13.3
13.9
10.2
10.5
10.3
SOOOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
11.0
10.6
11.8
ECONOMICS
HISTORY
POLIllCAL SCIENCE
SOOOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
19.3
6.9
13.4
10.5
13.5
23.5°/0
2.2%
1.3%
-4.6%
32.5%
20.0
6.2
12.9
11.4
14.2
1.00
0.37
0.68
0.48
0.71
17.5
6.3
13.1
11.3
14.6
18.8
7.4
13.9
11.3
15.2
1.00
0.58
0.95
0.79
1.09
20.8
6.5
13.4
9.8
15.4
22.0
7.7
13.4
10.8
15.7
20.5
7.6
13.9
9.8
14.5
18.1
7.6
12.5
12.6
14.8
16.4
9.1
18.0
13.2
16.2
14.9
8.6
14.1
11.8
16.2
-25.3%
38.4%
9.8%
3.3%
13.9%
Sources: UCLA Office of Academic Planning and Budget Undergraduate Council-ACiJdemic ProgfiJm Review Summary Repoltf http://www.apb.ucla.edu/apbaprs.htm
UQ.A Office of Acadanic Planning and Budget: MP Table "Enrollmen~ StudentDedit Hours- Instructional Staffand DegJeeS", http://www.apb.uda.edu/apbtoc.hbn
TABLE 3: 1996-06 UCLA Ph.D. Economics Summary
Class
Entered
w/Fellshp
Total
Class
%
Attrition
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
21
30
27
22
33
34
35
15
26
19
1
4
9
8
12
9
11
5
4
6
52
30
42
26
17
31
18
13
31
11*
Admits
Entering
Years
to
3.8
3.5
3
2.7
2.5
2.2
2.1
2.1
2.1
ATC
Total
%
with
PhD
57
73
73
79
87*
69*
82*
88*
YRSto
%
Employed
%in
Academic
PhD
at PhD
Employment
5.6
5.4
5.5
5.2
5.6*
5.3*
5.2*
100
100
93
100
87*
83*
50
68
42
50
54*
*estimated
23
TABLE 4: Minority Enrollment in UCLA Economics 1996·2006
Entering
Total #
Admitted
with
Class
Entered
Fellowship
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
1
1
2
1
0
0
4
2
1
1
2
0
0
0
100
0
2
0
0
0
1
100
0
100
50
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
3
2
4
Yrs
to
%
Attrition
Total
%
with
PhD
Yrs
to
%
Employed
PhD
at PhD
3
100
100
9
5
100
100
0
100
4
100
6
100
0
2.5
100*
ATC
5
%in
Academic
Employment
Table 5: Percentage of Bachelors Degrees Awarded in All Fields to Minority
Students
Year
1995
Econ.
All Fields
Total Science & Eng.
Math
Psychology
All Social Scienc!'s
(%)
11.9
(%)
13.9
14.7
15.2
15.7
NA
16.5
16.9
(%)
13.5
14.1
14.8
15.3
NA
16.2
16.4
(%)
121
12.8
13.8
14.6
(%)
14.9
15.8
16.9
17.6
NA
19.4
19.6
(%)
15.0
15.9
16.8
17.2
1996
12.0
1997
11.5
1998
11.5
1999
NA
NA
NA
2000
11.8
14.4
17.8
2001
11.8
13.8
17.9
Sources: the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPS1). The data on the percentage of
bachelor's degrees in economics awarded to minorities is derived from the National Science Foundation,
WebCASPAR Database System, based on data from the National Center fur Education Statistics, lPEDS
Completions Surveys; only U.S. citizens and permanent residents are included. Data for all other columns is derived
from national Science FOUlldalion, Science QJ1d Engineering Degrees by Race/EtJmicity ofRecipients: 1992-2001;
only U.S. citizens and perman.entresidents are included.
24
G. APPENDICES
Appendix 1:
On October 15th all of the graduate students were invited to a meeting with the Graduate
Vice-Chair to discuss the draft report. The following points summarize graduate student
sentiment that was expressed at the meeting.
1. Giselle Gijate pointed out that there is currently a weakness in the applied fields that
concerns many of the students. She argued that the Labor field needs to be reinforced
primarily with senior faculty but also with Junior faculty. Labor is a field that has clear
distinctions in terms of the approach that researchers have. We need to have professors
that represent these different approaches so that students can have advisors to fulfill their
research needs. Additionally this is a signaling strategy. As a program we need to tell
prospective students interested in the labor field that UCLA is a good option for them.
The first thing that a person applying to a PhD program does is check the faculty's
interests before they apply. If there is no one or barely one professor for each major
subfield in Labor, then the university might lose many good future students.
2. In previous years the labor field was much better structured. The earlier requirements
for the field were more clearly emphasized. In that sense students were aware of the
necessity to start their research projects as early as the Fall quarter. This helped them to
be able to complete a well rounded 2nd year paper by the end of the Spring quarter.
3. As the requirements are set now, the fields have asymmetric demands. Since there has
been a monetary compensation attached to the success in these different fields, it is
necessary to make sure that these requirements are as homogeneous as possible. Right
now the labor field has the reputation of having the hardest requirements in order to pass
the 2nd year paper. Hopefully this will not continue to be the case or potential labor
students might be facing a negative incentive to fulfill their interests. [N.B. This point is
currently under discussion among the faculty].
4. Juan Pantano commented that currently the department awards two five thousand
dollar prizes for the best dissertation stage papers. Since the students who receive these
awards will shortly be earning money in presumably high paying jobs - the money might
be better spent on earlier stages of the graduate program. The Vice Chair commented that
this was a good suggestion - but that retaining the prize as an honor for the top two
students might still be a good idea since the award has signaling value on the job market.
The department also awards prizes for pre-dissertation stage papers and Juan felt that
these should be kept and perhaps increased by the money from the job market category.
5. Juan also noted that the department lost Enrico Moretti to Berkeley and, although this
was a junior case, Moretti moved to Berkeley with tenure and was a big loss to the
applied group in the department.
25
6. Andres Zambrano pointed out that the department is not competitive in its scholarship
offers and that many other schools offer full scholarships for all entrants. Yale, for
example, offers packages of over $30,000 to all incoming students. Andres points out that
"everybody would like more scholarships. But what 1 wanted to highlight is that if you
have two similar departments (I mean with the similar quality and quantity of professors),
1 believe a student would prefer the department which offers scholarships to all the
entering students. The main problem is the retention of the professors, but a second step
is getting the best students. "
7. Andres pointed out that online applications were not possible in the past at UCLA and
that made it difficult to get letters of recommendation in on time. [NB: that problem has
been rectified for future admissions].
26
Appendix 2:
The material sent to us from the Academic Senate and the previous self review.
27