From “Just a Simple Farm-Boy” to the Ivy League

Hansen’s initial education was in a one-room schoolhouse at Viborg. He was one of the first two students from the area to attend high school, and then the first in his community to attend college as an undergraduate at Yankton, majoring in English. He received a freshman award as the most outstanding student and developed an interest in public speaking, coming second at a state level and then third at the inter-state level, with an oration on “The Tragedy of Lost Childhood” examining the problem of child labour. Following graduation in 1910, Hansen taught at Lake Preston High School, quickly becoming principal and then superintendent of schools (1912–3). Teaching enabled him to finance his graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, where John R. Commons and Richard T. Ely channelled his interest into economics, especially labour economics and cyclical fluctuations. From Wisconsin, he took an instructor’s post at Brown before moving to Minnesota in 1919 to join the new School of Business. Having established his reputation there, when Harvard established a Graduate School of Public Administration 1936, his role as a policy economist made him an obvious choice as the first Littauer Professor of Political Economy.