The Cambridge Tripos in Economic and Political Science

This chapter outlines the final phases of Alfred Marshall’s campaign to expand the teaching of economics in Cambridge by creating a three-year bachelor’s degree as the exclusive vehicle for the teaching of economics. Detailing the university politics and arguments employed for and against the teaching of economics, it shows why the particular content and structure of the curriculum took the form that it did. Some of this is a familiar story; but the founding of the new Tripos was only a new starting point, and too often it has simply been assumed that there is no need to consider how this new Tripos actually functioned in the ensuing years—the ‘success’ in creating the degree is read across to its subsequent history. By examining a database of student results over the first 50 years, a more nuanced picture is obtained. In particular, Marshall had laid great stress on a three-year programme. However, the degree was divided into a two-year Part I and a one-year Part II (revised to a one-year Part I/two-year Part II after 1930) and it can be shown that for some time a minority of students of economics completed three years: some just studied Part I, some just Part II. Furthermore, it can also be demonstrated that for most of the interwar years, students studying for three years were less successful in the final classification than those who had studied for Part II only.