Shapiro shares experience as student
Ruth Stevens
President Shapiro is quick to point out that his time as a graduate student at Princeton in the early '60s was not typical for that decade.
But his experiences of returning to school after working for a few years and attending classes while supporting a family help him understand the challenges facing some of today's graduate students at the University.
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Shapiro in 1961 |
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"Although my business had been going well, I decided that I wanted to do something different," he said.
"I chose Princeton for two reasons," he continued. "One was that it had a smaller graduate program and I thought I would enjoy that. Second, I knew the governor of the Bank of Canada and I asked him for his advice. He suggested Princeton primarily because Professor Jacob Viner was here. I arrived on campus to find out Professor Viner had just retired!"
Shapiro lived in a house off campus with his wife and children.
"I was very focused on getting my degree -- and getting it quickly -- because I had a family to support," he said. "As a result, I earned my degree in three years."
On the way to his Ph.D. in economics, Shapiro was named a Harold Helm Fellow and a Harold Dodds Senior Fellow. He fondly remembers his professors and his fellow students -- including classmate Burton Malkiel, now a member of the Princeton economics faculty.
"I received an excellent graduate education here," Shapiro said. "I had an enormous amount of freedom. For someone like myself, who really was dedicated and focused on where I was going, that freedom was a tremendous help."
He said the high expectations placed upon students by the faculty accelerated the pace of his learning.
"The very first semester I was here, I took a seminar in which students and faculty presented work and criticized each other's work," Shapiro said. "Students were expected to be able to develop their own projects and take an analytical -- and even critical -- view of the faculty's work. It was the notion that you didn't have to wait until later to develop scholarly interests and capacities that was the most beneficial to me."
He didn't even attend his graduation because he was already teaching at the University of Michigan when the ceremony took place.
Although much of his time at Princeton was devoted to scholarly pursuits and family matters, Shapiro does recall a few instances that are more typical of a graduate student.
"We had a beach party one evening," he said with a smile. "We just appropriated a sand trap on the golf course near the Graduate College."
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September 18, 2000 Contents • Shapiro:
Take advantage of new beginnings • Fuchs
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program hits home run with international
students • Coach
choreographs new game plan • Alumna
uses music to touch lives • By
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