ACADEMIC EFFICIENCY 489 



discuss how much it costs to train men in physics in these different 

 institutions and sets up a standard of measurement of what he calls the 

 " student hour," the cost of teaching a student the subject of physics 

 for a single hour. After an elaborate system of figures and a great 

 deal of computation he discovers what is supposed to be the cost of 

 teaching a student in physics for one hour in Harvard and Boston 

 Tech, and these different institutions. Now whether his figures really 

 represent the cost or not is questionable, but there can be no doubt that 

 they do not gauge the efficiency of the institutions under consideration. 



The efficiency of an automobile is not gauged by its cost, and cer- 

 tainly the efficiency of Harvard or Boston Tech is not gauged by their 

 cost. You must of course look to the product. Now a man of 

 Mr. Cooke's acumen could not overlook so obvious a fact, although he 

 passes it over with almost unpardonable brevity in a report that 

 professes to deal with the question of efficiency. He does not always 

 seem quite true to himself. He tells us in one place that " the cost 

 per student-hour has absolutely no value in distinguishing relative 

 educational values." Elsewhere he says " certainly some idea of 

 quality will be gained by simply knowing the cost." However, he does 

 recognize that the quality of the product must be tested before we have 

 any real gauge of efficiency, but when it comes to suggestions for a 

 test of quality he formulates a plan that a serious educator could 

 regard only with laughter or with tears. Here it is — let us establish 

 a central bureau to which may be submitted the examination papers 

 and the answers from the five highest and five lowest students, and let 

 the central authority assign marks for the difficulty of the questions 

 and the rigor with which they were answered. I shall not presume 

 upon your patience by pointing out to what abuses such a plan would 

 be exposed, nor how paltry a contribution it is towards the solution of 

 an extremely important national problem. I should like, however, to 

 call your attention to various matters to be kept in view when we set 

 out on the task of testing the efficiency of any educational institution. 



I would remark at the outset that the matter is extremely complex 

 and that no wise man would even dream of giving a numerical measure 

 of the efficiency of Harvard or the University of Kansas. He would no 

 more do that than he would say that the efficiency of his friend Jones 

 is 62, and of Smith is 55. On the face of it, such apparent accuracy 

 is ridiculous. But we do want to know in a general way how we are 

 to gauge efficiency, and I need only sketch the process which is a 

 fairly obvious one. The natural way of attacking the problem would 

 be to attack it directly. We are interested not in the machinery but 

 in the product. The obvious procedure would be to examine the 

 product in the different institutions and see how they stand relatively 

 to one another. We would have, of course, to set out with some funda- 



