7 - Manchester

Summary

The department Harry joined in April 1956 was large: It had twenty-two members – economists, economic historians, and statisticians. It had a distinguished history: Its undergraduate commerce degree had been far more successful than the more loudly trumpeted but less rigorous one at Birmingham (Tribe 1993, 185); its distinguished faculty had made important contributions to the subject and to British public life – one need only think of William Stanley Jevons, A. W. Flux, S. J. Chapman, and C. F. Bickerdike of the pre-1914 era or John Hicks, John Jewkes, Harry Campion, Henry Clay, and T. S. Ashton from the interwar department; and it had an important research tradition with a separate research unit dating from the interwar period, which had been able to attract promising researchers early in their careers. Harry's new professorial colleagues included one future Nobel Laureate, W. Arthur Lewis, and Ely Devons, a distinguished applied economist. The quality of his juniors was also high – most of the lecturers and assistant lecturers would retire from chairs – something not all that common in 1950s departments, despite British and overseas university expansion in the 1960s. However, the department's economics programmes were relatively small, and much of its teaching served other programmes such as commerce. It offered a BA, MA, and PhD in economics, but in 1955–6 there had been only thirteen BAs, five MAs, and three PhDs awarded.