STATE UNIVERSITY SALARIES. 4*3 



STATE UNIVEESITY SALAEIES. 

 By C. W. FOULK and r. f. earhart. 



FEOM time to time the question of the relatively low pay of mem- 

 bers of the teaching profession is brought to the foreground in 

 the public press. The statements made are as a rule only general in 

 character, or if any actual figures are given for a large group of teachers 

 they usually relate to those in the public schools. It has happened, 

 however, that during the last half year certain comments have been 

 made on the remuneration of college and university professors. Sir 

 William Eamsay, the eminent English chemist, remarked during a 

 recent visit to this country on the absence here of any great academic 

 prizes, positions of high standing and large salary together with leisure 

 for carrying on research. An article in the New York Evening Post 

 of recent date has also been widely quoted. This purports to give a 

 brief account of the salaries paid at Harvard. From it one learns 

 that, roughly speaking, the average salary of a professor there is 

 $4,000, of an associate professor $3,000, of an assistant professor 

 $2,000, of an instructor $1,000, while an assistant must content him- 

 self with from $250 to $400. The Post intimates that the situation 

 at Harvard is better than at any other American university. Whatever 

 may be the real state of affairs, these figures may certainly be looked 

 upon as being among the highest. Indeed, to anticipate one of the 

 chief items in the statistical part of this paper, it may be said that the 

 average salary of the professors in the state universities of the middle 

 west is $2,315. This, whether it be too low or not, is certainly lower 

 than $4,000. 



The question at Harvard is receiving its full share of attention, 

 for it has been noted in a recent number of Science that $1,800,000 

 of a fund of $2,500,000 has been raised to be devoted ' to increase the 

 present totally inadequate amount available for the salaries of the teach- 

 ing staff.' The Carnegie pension fund is another item of interest in 

 the matter. In The Popular Science Monthly of December, 1904, 

 an article under the title ' Status of the American College Professor ' 

 has much to say of the financial side, and in the Atlantic Monthly for 

 May of this year an anonymous writer discusses in detail the necessary 

 expenses of a college professor. These exceedingly pithy articles will 

 be found to have an added interest in the light of the statistics brought 

 out in this paper. 



But if this question of university salaries is to be discussed at all 



