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It's not that complicated, Mat. We don't give "HE Ph.Ds" we give Ph.Ds in Economics.
Training in economics is training in economic research, using the discipline's core tools.
Training in economics (we believe here) is associated with learning particular core tools
of the discipline, and employing them in a dissertation which is original research using
the discipline's tools. Duke is not unique in this. Colander has well-studied and written
on the meaning of a Ph.D in economics in departments of economics. A Ph.D is a
disciplinary socialization process. We believe that a dissertation in HE does not employ
the economist's tools (but rather employs the historian's tools), and so would not be
considered economics, and so would not be appropriate for a Ph.D in Economics. We permit a
chapter in HE in economics dissertations to enable graduate students to develop an ability
to discriminate between good historical writing and the rest. (For example, in those
chapters we don't accept surveys of the literature pushed back a century or two.) As David
Colander correctly noted, we have particular ideas here about what constitutes good
historical research and writing, and it involves the construction of "thick" accounts, and
employs and instantiates serious historical research. (This view as Colander notes differs
somewhat from views of others, perhaps most others, about what is "good history of
economics." So be it.) These are difficult tasks to
accomplish, and ones that take history of science students many years. Our students don't
have the time to do this while writing dissertations in economics. Over time, after the
Ph.D., we trust that their tastes are well-enough developed that they can begin slowly to
work in HE as their careers develop and change, as they always do.
 
E. Roy Weintraub 
Duke University 
 
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